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Letter to the Committee of General Safety (Department of the Haute- Loire, District of Brioude), Accession #8739-b, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
This letter was given to the Library on November 4, 1987 by Bentley Courtenay of Madison, Wisconsin.
This letter, October 17, 1794, from Madame de Lafayette to the Committee of General Safety of the Department of the Haute- Loire, was written while she was a prisoner of the French Republic at Le Plessis, Paris. This appeal for justice maintains that there was no motive for her arrest and that her certificate of good citizenship proves her innocence. She refers to a petition and other proof of good conduct and false arrest and requests her deportation to the United States of America, and further begs as a favor that this request be granted.
A marginal note mentions the execution of her grandmother, mother and sister the previous July twenty-second. This petition may have been among the papers conveyed to James Monroe, American Minister to France on October eighteenth for forwarding to the Committee of Safety. There is a transcription of this letter which was prepared on November 17, 1980.