Autograph letter signed US Minister Eliphalet Nott about Napoleon Boneparte 1815

"The little man of Elba has become a great one" - a contemporary American reaction to Napoleon's return, seventeen days before Waterloo.

[BONEPARTE, Napoleon]; NOTT, Eliphalet (1773-1866). Autograph letter signed to Andrew G. Whitney aboard USS Guerriere, discussing Napoleon’s return from Elba, 1 June 1815.

Large folded sheet 200x260mm, written on three pages in ink and signed by Eliphalet Nott, with integral address panel to "Andrew G. Whitney Esq., On board the Guerriere (Commodore Decatur), Mediterranean." Numerous original folds, the odd split at the folds, light toning and handling marks, with remnants of red sealing wax and docketing. The year in the heading is very indistinctly written and has subsequently been pencilled "1815"; the date is securely established by the contents and by Whitney's address aboard Commodore Stephen Decatur's USS Guerriere during her 1815 Mediterranean expedition in the second Barbary War. Very good.

A superb letter from Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College, written during Napoleon's Hundred Days and only seventeen days before the Battle of Waterloo. Nott opens with a contemporary assessment of Napoleon's return from exile: "The little man of Elba has become a great one - Not greater in my estimation than he always has been -"

Nott continues by discussing the dramatic political transformation in France, referring to Lazare Carnot and Napoleon Bonaparte: "M. Carnot can I presume give a much better account of the late change in France than N. Bonaparte - Adversity may have taught this favourite of fortune wisdom - If so France may yet support him - Armies are beaten - but a nation disposed to maintain its independence is never conquered -" Writing from the United States, Nott acknowledges the difficulty of judging rapidly changing European events at a distance, observing that Americans "know so little of Europe and see every object so indistinctly, that opinions and predictions go for nothing."

The recipient, Andrew G. Whitney, was then aboard USS Guerriere, flagship of Commodore Stephen Decatur's squadron bound for the Mediterranean during the Second Barbary War. Guerriere had sailed from New York on 20 May 1815; only sixteen days after Nott wrote, Decatur's squadron captured the Algerian flagship Mashouda, before forcing a new treaty upon Algiers at the end of June.

Nott also offers Whitney extended advice on making useful and morally worthwhile use of his travels, urges him to record interesting observations, discusses manuscripts which Whitney had sent him for possible publication in New York, and encourages him to collect inexpensive curiosities from the Mediterranean: "Whatever is interesting relate and whatever is curious, cheap and portable collect - a pebble picked up Elba or a weed gathered from the rock of Tripoli has its value when transported."

Eliphalet Nott was a minister, educator, inventor and an influential American college president. He served as President of Union College from 1804 until his death in 1866 - the longest presidential tenure in the history of the college - and exercised considerable influence on American higher education of his time. A remarkable American letter connecting two simultaneous events of 1815: Napoleon's dramatic return from Elba and Decatur's Mediterranean expedition against the Barbary States.