Four months after the spring blessing of Episode 17, the Erskine agreement has collapsed: Canning repudiated his own minister, and Madison has issued a second proclamation restoring non-intercourse. Writing from Monticello on August 17, 1809, Jefferson opens with a delayed journey to Bedford — “sickness among my laboring people” — defends both proclamations against “the chicanery of the Anglomen,” and finds profit in the humiliation: “Their dirty gain is richly remunerated to us, by our placing them so shamefully in the wrong.” He then reasons at length on the legality of the second proclamation before conceding he has “never read” the statute in question. The famous prediction follows, and it is conditional: “Should Bonaparte have the wisdom to correct his injustice towards us, I consider war with England as inevitable… I have no doubt you will think it safe to act on this hypothesis, & with energy.” He then names a target — “we should take possession of Baton rouge” — lest New Orleans become “irrecoverable & the Western country blockaded during the war.” He closes by defending Erskine's integrity against “the unprincipled rascality of Canning” and condemning the ministry: “Copenhagen will immortalize their infamy.”

Key Themes

• The Erskine collapse: a vindication revoked inside a single season

• A conditional prophecy — the prediction turns on Bonaparte, not on Britain

• Baton Rouge: the “empire for liberty” of Ep 17 acquiring its first specific target

• “Having never read the latter one” — legal reasoning without the law

• Erskine defended, Canning blamed: fairness toward the man who failed

• The ledger: “sickness among my laboring people” as a scheduling problem

Primary Source Reference. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 17 August 1809. Founders Online, National Archives: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-01-02-0364. Original print source: The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, vol. 1. RC (DLC); FC (DLC: Jefferson Papers).