ALS signed “Jas. Monroe,” one page, 7.25 x 9, March 27, 1785. Letter to statesman John Francis Mercer, the future governor of Maryland. In part: “I have been very ill lately of a pleurisy & have only so far recover’d as to move about a little—this disease hath confined me several days to my bed & I believe the medic once thought my corporal part on its way to St. Paul’s churchyard—but I did not think so myself…I find you are return’d to Annapolis. I hope you have your health for sickness is intollerable…I can give you no information of things in Congress, having been absent near a fortnight. I wish much to visit Virg’a. When will you be either there or here?” Also hand-addressed on the reverse of the second integral sheet by Monroe to “The honble John F. Mercer Esq’r, Annapolis,” and franked in the lower left, “Jas. Monroe.” In fine condition, with intersecting folds and trivial soiling. Monroe was stricken by malaria while visiting swampland along the Mississippi River in 1785, probably what he was suffering from at the time he wrote this letter. He suffered sporadic episodes of fever throughout the rest of his life, including during his presidency in 1818. A rather humorous, early letter from his time as a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation. Pre-certified PSA/DNA.
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