“ any changes upon evidence which should be satisfactory to you. the moment I receive his notes I will communicate them to you . . . ”

M. Crevecoeur immediately sent for the papers, and on February 2, Jefferson dispatched them to Soulés: “ I send you the papers M. de Crevecoeur sent to Normandy for. the account of the destruction of Wyoming begins page 40. you may rely certainly on the author’s facts, & you will be easily able to separate from them his reflections. you can best judge whether an account of that interesting settlement, condensed into a few lines might not form an agreeable episode in your history, and prepare the mind more awfully for it’s final catastrophe . . . ”

The notes written by Jefferson were translated into French by Soulés and incorporated into his work, with the result that his Histoire has material not to be found in other contemporary histories. For example, he is the only historian of the day who ascribes to Jefferson the authorship of the address of the Virginia assembly in June 1775, beside the quotation from which, in Marshall’s Life of Washington , q.v., Jefferson has written drawn by T. Jefferson.

The following passages will serve as examples of how closely Soulés kept to Jefferson’s text:

Jefferson wrote: “ . . . I was under appointment to attend the General congress: but knowing the importance of the answer to be given to the conciliatory proposition, and that our leading whig characters were then with Congress, I determined to attend on the assembly, & tho’ a young member, to take on myself the carrying thro’ an answer to the proposition. the assembly met the 1 ^st. of June. I drew, and proposed the answer & carried it through the house with very little alteration, against the opposition of our timid members who wished to speak a different language . . . ”

The text of the book (Vol. I, page 203) reads: L’Assemblée examina sur le champ le Bill du Ministère, & M. Jefferson, à présent Ministre Plénipotentiare des Etats-Unis à la Cour de France, proposa la réponse qu’on devoit faire au Gouverneur. Il y eut de grands débats à ce sujet; mais il eut assez de crédit pour la faire approuver, malgré l’opposition de quelques Membres timides & chancelans, qui auroient souhaité qu’on tînt un langage différent . . .

Other references to Jefferson occur in the text.

Jefferson mentioned this work several times in his correspondence. On January 14, 1787, in a letter to Louis Guillaume Otto, the chargé des affaires of France in New York, he gave a list of books in the press, including: “ a history of the American war by a Mons. ? Soulés, the two first volumes of which, coming down to the capture of Burgoyne I have seen, & think better than any other I have seen . . . ”

In August of the same year, he described it to the Count de Vermi as “ a general history, of which we can only say it is the best of those written in Europe.”

François Soulés:, [punct. sic-- Ed.] 1748-1809, French author. This history, dedicated to Louis XVI, is considered his best work.

Bound, probably for Jefferson, in tree calf, gilt back, borders, and inside borders, g.e., marbled end papers, rebacked with the original backstrip preserved. Initialled by Jefferson at sigs. I and T. Pencil marks occur, not by Jefferson. With the Library of Congress 1815 bookplate.