Presentation copy from the author. Sent from Paris through David Baillie Warden who, on January 19, 1810, wrote to Jefferson: “I have the honor of sending you, by Captain Fenwick, a copy of Mr. Bottas work--Storia della guerra Americana. It is well written, and contains information not found in any other narrative on the same subject. The Author is a member of the French Legislative body: his principles are just and liberal, and he is a most amiable man . . .”

On August 18, 1810, Captain Fenwick reported sending the books, which were acknowledged by Jefferson on September 18.

On July 15, before his receipt of the books, Jefferson wrote to Botta: “ I am honoured with your letter of the 12 ^th. of January, and altho’ the work you therein mention is not yet come to hand, I avail myself of an occasion, now rendered rare & precarious between our two countries, of anticipating the obligation I shall owe for the pleasure I shall have in perusing it, and of travelling over with you the important scenes quorum pars minima fici . . . ”

On Augsut 10, 1815, in a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . On the subject of the history of the American revolution, you ask who shall write it? who can write it? and who ever will be able to write it? nobody; except merely it’s external facts. all it’s councils, designs, and discussions having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. these, which are the life and soul of history must for ever be unknown. Botta, as you observe, has put his own speculations and reasonings into the mouths of persons whom he names, but who, you & I know, never made such speeches. in this he has followed the example of the antients, who made their great men deliver long speeches, all of them in the same style, and in that of the author himself. the work is nevertheless a good one, more judicious, more chaste, more classical, and more true than the party diatribe of Marshall. it’s greatest fault is in having taken too much from him. I possessed the work, and often recurred to considerable portions of it, altho’ I never read it through. but a very judicious and well informed neighbor of mine went thro’ it with great attention, and spoke very highly of it . . . ”

Two years later, on May 5, 1817, Jefferson wrote to Adams: “ . . . I am now reading Botta’s history of our own revolution. bating the antient practice, which he has adopted, of putting speeches into mouths which never made them, and fancying motives of action which we never felt, he has given that history with more detail, precision and candor than any writer I have yet met with. it is to be sure compiled from those writers; but it is a good secretion of their matter, the pure from the impure, and presented in a just sense of right in opposition to usurpation . . . ””

In 1818 Louis Girardin was considering translating Botta’s work into English and had correspondence with Jefferson on this subject.

On December 26, Jefferson wrote to Girardin: “ . . . Botta gives a list of the authorities he consulted: but in fact has chiefly followed Marshal & often merely translated him in his American facts but even there transfused into his narration his own holy enthusiasm for liberty of which his icy original had not one spark. his 2 ^d great excellence over Marshal is in the foreign events of his history, in which he shines, while Marshal notes them either briefly or not at all . . . ”

On March 16, 1819, Jefferson again wrote to Girardin: “ I recieved last night your favor of the 11 ^th. and now forward you the Volume of Botta in which are the speeches supposed to have been made in Congress on the question of independence, but which never were made there. the selection of these as specimens of the work for the public, is a most unlucky one, giving fiction as a specimen of fact. it is exactly the part of the work which has given some discredit to it. Botta was seduced into this error by the example of the Greek and Roman historians, who composed speeches which they supposed adapted to the circumstances and put them into the mouths of persons named by themselves. Botta has chosen Lee and Dickerson for the fathers of his ”