“ John Adams for a few introductory lines, recommending at the same time to your patronage a work which has long engaged my attention, & which I mean should go to the press the beginning of October, & continue printing till finished . . . Suffer me to request the favour of your support . . .”

Jefferson replied from Paris on July 2: “ . . . from the opportunities you have had of coming at facts known as yet to no other historian, from your dispositions to relate them fairly, and from your known talents, I have sanguine expectations that your work will be a valuable addition to historical science: and the more so, as we have little yet on the subject of our war which merits respect. I fear however that this is not the feild from which you are to expect profit. the translation will sell here: but few read English . . . I got from a bookseller here about forty guineas for a first copy of D ^r. Ramsay’s work, which he had translated. if this would be an object with you I offer you my service . . . ”

On September 6, Gordon wrote: “. . . I shall not begin to print till the end of the next month; when, health & strength permitting, I mean to continue it, till the whole work is finished, which will not be before March or April . . . In case of an agreement propose sending the first three volumes soon after the fourth goes to the press, that so the translator may get in the greater forwardness . . .”

On April 24, 1788, Gordon wrote to Jefferson: ““. . . The reason of my having been so long silent was, that I might be able to acquaint you, that the second volume of the History was printed, which I can at length do. You was pleased generously to offer me your friendly assistance for the procuring a similar consideration for an early copy of the work, to what you obtained for Dr. Ramsay; I am therefore encouraged at the present period to apply for your aid; & design if it meets with your approbation to send you the two volumes for your inspection; & should they be honored, as I hope will be the case, with your recommendation, the bookseller will probably be willing to allow me for them what your Excellency may think reasonable, in order to an immediate translation, with an engagement to be furnished with the 3d & 4th as soon as printed off. The Marquis having obligingly hinted at a translation, I observed to him that you had mentioned the like, but without intimating any thing more, so that your special proposal is not known to him . . . If I mistake not you was a considerable sufferer by Tarleton’s needlessly cruel ravages: wish to have some general account thereof in order for insertion . . .”

And again on July 8, he wrote: “I trouble you afresh from an apprehension, that either your Excellency did not receive my letter of February, or that your answer has miscarried. I mentioned in my letter my having delayed to write, till I had gotten forward in printing; & informed you, that I had finished the two first volumes, & should be obliged to you for your friendly assistance in the way you had proposed, by procuring from some bookseller a gratuity for an early copy, as in the case of D ^r. Ramsay’s History. I have now completed the third volume, & am about 100 pages in the fourth. The three volumes could be sent over immediately, that so the translation might be commenced. The sum you mentioned as granted for D ^r. Ramsay’s would go far toward paying for engraving the maps, & is therefore an object with me. Whether an increase of it should be asked on account of the four volumes I leave to your determination; but your friendship in this business would confer a lasting obligation . . .”

Jefferson replied on July 16: ““ . . . as soon as I knew that it would be agreeable to you to have such a disposal of your work for translation as I had made for D ^r. Ramsay, I applied to the same bookseller with propositions on your behalf. he told me that he had lost so much by that work that he could hardly think of undertaking another, and at any rate ”