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Judging by your lack of response (assuming you were not otherwise occupied) you don't really want to get at what is the truth, you just want to believe what you believe. I don't mind people like this, I've argued with many of them, but I would suggest they at least be honest regarding their opinions and motives.

Now i've asked you a tough question, one to which you do not have a credible answer. (Sure, they accidentally wrote down 1811 instead of 1810.) I would advise you to quit living in the world of what you want things to be, and start living in the world that is.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've given you a lot more of my time than you deserve.

Again, if the answer is so cut and dried as you believe, why did it take a year and nine months, plus the intervention of a Supreme Court Justice, a Congressman from South Carolina and Several Documents, to finally move Monroe to act?

If this is the question you want answered, I've already answered it: IT DIDN'T.

Are you so d*** stupid that not only do you not undersand "Publius's" letter, you can't even understand what I've written? Apparently so.

I've already been over this, but I will repeat it. It really does not take a high school degree to understand.

According to the letter, the order to arrest McClure was given in April of 1810. The writer tells us that Armstrong refused to intervene on McClure's behalf in March of 1810. The letter was written in October of 1811, and the Madison administration responded in November of 1811.

Now if you strain really hard, it might occur to you that something does not quite add up here. March comes before April. Not just this year, but every year. Including 1810.

And look, you don't have to take my word for that. You can read it on the internet, just like you read that it takes citizen parents to make a natural born citizen.

So. Armstrong denied McClure's request for help, before any order was ever given that McClure should be arrested?

Now you might think that General Armstrong was a gifted fortune teller, and knew that McClure was going to be arrested the next month and eventually ask him for help. I don't.

Or, you might think that General Armstrong had a time machine, and went back in time a few months to deny McClure's request before it could possibly have been given. I don't.

Any reasonable person would conclude that the most likely explanation for this impossible date sequence is one of the year dates is wrong. Perhaps the writer of the letter wrote 1810 when he meant 1811 (or vice-versa) or, probably more likely, the typesetter at the Richmond Enquirer got it wrong.

Since it is not possible that the order to arrest McClure came in April of 1811 and was followed in March of 1812 by Armstrong's refusal, the only reasonable conclusion is that the date of March 1810 HAD to in reality be March of 1811.

Now take that and study it for a couple of hours, and I am sure you will be able to figure it out. If you can't get it, then let me know and I will try and break it down more simply for you. Maybe we can draw some pictures.

So we have that Armstrong's refusal, as far as we an tell, came on March 16, 1811.

It appears that McClure was arrested in April of 1810, and there was a "stir" about the matter in the United States when news of McClure's arrest reached the USA (summer, fall). Apparently people here intervened on McClure's behalf to obtain for him certificates of his birth and baptism, and even threw in a copy of his father's naturalization papers for good measure, and sent them back across the sea (autumn or perhaps spring, depending on when ships could sail). No doubt people thought the matter was resolved.

So it was largely forgotten until a letter came from Mr. Rodman to the United States Gazette, dated July 4, 1811, saying McClure's request for help had been denied.

Why was it dated July 4, 1811? Because (as we just concluded) the denial by Armstrong had taken place in mid March of 1811, just a couple of months before, and nothing Rodman had been able to do in Paris had had any effect.

Rodman's letter would have taken probably at least a month (probably a bit longer) to reach the US and be published by the editor of the US Gazette. Then the Gazette had to be distributed and so forth, which is why we had the letter from "Publius" written in September and first published on October 1st.

In November, Madison's administration acted to free McClure.

So (I am repeating the obvious because you appear to be of limited understanding) it DIDN'T take Madison's administration some mythical year and a half to intervene on McClure's behalf and declare him a citizen. On the contrary, they seem to have acted admirably quickly for the United States federal government.

I should note that to make sure McClure was released, they went and got an official judgment from a member of the US Supreme Court. And that, and the affidavits they gathered, took some additional time.

In fact, when you add it all up, it appears that the Madison administration acted pretty much immediately to clarify that McClure was a US citizen - by virtue of the fact that he was born in the United States.

Perhaps the writer of the letter wrote 1810 when he meant 1811 (or vice-versa) or, probably more likely, the typesetter at the Richmond Enquirer got it wrong.

So you are sticking with this theory, eh? Well the typesetter for the Alexandria Herald must have also got it wrong because he printed the same dates.

Could we consider the possibility that the dates are correct, and that it is your theory regarding them which is in error? No doubt demonstrating you to be incorrect is a waste of your time.