Scope and Contents
Note: The bracketed letterbook numbers [in Arabic] represent the actual physical volumes. Rush assigned Roman numerals to all of his letterbooks except volume [2]--hence, the disparity in numbering.
Richard Rush makes the following statements at the beginning of the first letterbook volume:
- The only parts of the contents of this and the succeeding volumes of this set of books, not written by my own hand, where they bear my own signature, are the orders upon the Mess. Barings for the payment of money. These were always drawn by Mr. Smith, the secretary of Legation, and signed by me. It is he also by whom the whole has been copied.* R.R. London, May 1825
- *The mistakes in copying have been very frequent, not only in changing words so as to confuse the meaning, but occasionally in ommissions from the original, making the confusion worse. R.R.
- These volumes contain, besides all official despatches to the Secretary of State written while I was minister at the Court of London, nearly all my other letters of business during that period; also a portion of my private letters to the President, and other persons in publick stations. Of my private correspondence while I was away, there is much of which I have no record whatever. The portion of it from my arrival until September 1819 not found in these books, has been copied by Mrs. Rush into a set of green booksin quarto. R. Rush