We have been for some time under dread from the bilious season, now commencing. Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin have had symptoms of indisposition. We have nearly everything so arranged as that we can carry on the public affairs at our separate stations. I shall therefore leave this on the 1st of August, for that and the ensuing month. We shall avoid, as far as we honorably can, every act which would precipitate general hostilities, and shorten the interval so necessary for our merchants to get in their property and our seamen. Accept my salutations, and assurances of great esteem and respect.
TO THE MASTERS OF VESSELS IN THE PORT OF CHARLESTON, S. C.
The offer of your professional services in any way most useful to your country, merits and meets the highest praise. Should the outrages lately committed by the agents of a foreign power, in the Chesapeake and its neighborhood, extend themselves to your port, your services will be valuable towards its security; and if a general appeal is to be made to the public arm for the support of our rights, the spirit from which your offer flows, that which animates our nation, will, I trust, be their sufficient safeguard.
I tender for your country the thanks you so justly deserve.
DEAR SIR,--I shall to-morrow set out for Monticello. Considering the critical state of things, it has been thought better, during my stay there, to establish a _daily_ conveyance of a mail from Fredericksburg to Monticello. This enables me to hear both from the north and south every day. Should you have occasion then to communicate with me, your letters can come to me daily by being put into the Fredericksburg mail, every day except that on which the mail stage leaves Richmond for Milton, by which letters of that day will come to me directly.
The course which things are likely to hold for some time has induced me to discontinue the establishment at Lynhaven for obtaining daily information of the movements of the squadron in that neighborhood. But still as it is expected that a troop of cavalry will patrole that coast constantly, I think it would be advisable if your Excellency would be so good as to instruct the commanding officer of the troop to inform you daily of the occurrences of the day, sending off his letter in time to get to Norfolk before the post hour. This letter, after perusal for your own information, I would ask the favor of you to forward by the post of the day, under cover to me. I think a post comes one day from Norfolk by the way of Petersburg, and the next by the way of Hampton. If so, the letters may come every day. I salute you with great and sincere esteem and respect.