To Thomas Jefferson from Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat, 16 November 1803
From Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat
New York Nov. 16th. 1803
Sir,
The important subject of Lousiana which has engaged your attention for sometime past, and the succes with which it has been crowned gives me hope that the enclosed prospectus relative to the Voyage of General Collot through that Country will appear to you worthy of some examen. My Partner in France has been induced by Mr Livingston and all the Americans in Paris to purchase the copy-right of the original work from the author, and he has devoted a large proportion of his fortune to the suitable expence for its appearance before the public of the United States. He has even done more, he left his family and all other business to come over and attend in person to that interesting object.
Its favourable reception and the number of subscribers depends entirely on your approbation, and the copies will be struck off in exact proportion to the encouragement obtained. We intend to offer the Original Charts Maps &c to Congress; Their Size (some being 12 & 13 feet long) and the elegance of their Style making them fit for the Archives of the United States as well as for those of France, where they should have been placed had that Republic remained in Possession of Lousiana. This offer will be without any condition and we shall be happy if accepted to feel consious of having done some thing useful to our adopted Country.
The favour of a word of answer will be received with the utmost gratefulness by
Sir Your most Obedient Servant
H. Caritat
Book-seller
The translation of the Prospectus was not finished, or otherwise I should have sent it in English.
RC (DLC); at foot of first page: “Thomas Jefferson President of the United States”; endorsed by TJ as received 19 Nov. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure not found, but see below.
Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat (b. 1752) emigrated to the United States in 1792, settling in New York City. There, he ran afoul of the Washington administration when he outfitted a French privateer, one of the incidents that led the administration to formalize its neutrality stance in 1793. After federal charges against him were quashed, he returned to France, where he was declared an émigré, resulting in the revocation of his citizenship. He again moved to New York in 1797 and took over the operation of a circulating library and bookstore. He augmented its collection, which at one time numbered some 25,000 volumes, and also published books. In 1805, Caritat moved back to France, where he published a periodical devoted to the United States. He returned to the United States in 1816 but moved back to France the following year (New York Diary, or Loudon’s Register, 1 May 1797; New York Republican Watch-Tower, 26 June 1805; Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 2 Apr. 1806; New York National Advocate, 15 Oct. 1816; New-York Columbian, 23 June 1817; George Gates Raddin, Jr., Caritat and the Genet Episode [Dover, N.J., 1953], 10, 16-17, 41-6; George Gates Raddin, Jr., Hocquet Caritat and the Early New York Literary Scene [Dover, N.J., 1953], 30; Vol. 26:259-60, 282n).
A translation of the enclosed prospectus appeared in newspapers, describing the proposed work as an account of the “travels through Louisiana” undertaken in 1796 by Victor collot. It would consist of two volumes in quarto with 30 engraved plates and maps and encompass observations on the climate, topography, rivers, population, commerce, and natural productions of the North American interior. Caritat explained that the French government had been prepared to publish the work, but the sale of Louisiana to the United States suspended that plan, and now the work enjoyed the patronage of Robert R. Livingston, James Monroe, and Joel Barlow, among other prominent Americans in Paris. Collot’s journey had been a reconnaissance mission seeking information on a region that France expected to regain and, if necessary, to fortify against American and British encroachments. Although Caritat filed for copyright under the title Journey of Gen. Victor Collot, he apparently did not attract enough subscribers. An English translation of the work was printed in 1826 in Paris as A Journey in North America (New York Evening Post, 2, 5 Dec. 1803; George W. Kyte, “A Spy on the Western Waters: The Military Intelligence Mission of General Collot in 1796,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 34 [1947], 427-42; Durand Echevarria, “General Collot’s Plan for a Reconnaissance of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, 1796,” , 3d ser., 9 [1952], 512-20; Vol. 33:406n).
partner in france: during a visit to Paris in the winter of 1801 and 1802, Caritat joined the English Press, a publishing consortium. Other principals included John Hurford Stone, Helen Maria Williams, and the Levrault brothers, who were printers (Raddin, Hocquet Caritat and the Early New York Literary Scene, 96-101, 137-8; Vol. 40:98n; Vol. 41:397, 398n).