1851, the bronze copies of the medals
formerly deposited there had been transferred to the Smithsonian
Institution. At the latter place I was shown the remains of the
collection, all more or less injured by fire. Moreover, the five
wanted were not to be found; and further investigations made in
December, 1877, in the Philadelphia Mint, showed that four of the
dies, namely, those of Generals Greene and Wayne, and of
Lieutenant-Colonel de Fleury and Major Stewart, are still missing from
that establishment.

During the year 1872, I obtained permission from the Honorable
Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, to examine in the archives of (p. xxix)
his department the official papers relating to the medals of the War
of Independence, and was fortunate enough to find the correspondence
concerning the Diplomatic medal between Jefferson, William Short, the
Marquis de la Luzerne, and the Count de Moustier. Afterward, in the
reports of the Massachusetts Historical Society (vol. vi., 3d series),
I found a description which seemed to apply to this same medal. I then
went to Philadelphia to see the writer of the description, Joshua
Francis Fisher, Esq., but he was on his death-bed, and it was
impossible to prosecute the inquiry. After his decease, I was informed
that no medal of the kind described was contained in his collection.

In 1790, President Washington ordered two Diplomatic medals to be
struck and presented, one to the Marquis de la Luzerne, French
Minister to the United States, and the other to his successor, the
Count de Moustier. In Paris, in 1874, I made application to the
present heads of those families, the Count de Vibray[14] and the
Marquis de Moustier,[15] for information concerning these medals; but
no trace of the object of my search could be found among their family
papers.

[Footnote 14: The Count de Vibray is the
representative in the female line of the de la
Luzerne family, which is extinct in the male line.]

[Footnote 15: The Marquis de Moustier is the
great-grandson of the Count de Moustier.]

About this time, Mr. Charles I. Bushnell, of New York city, kindly
sent me plaster casts of an obverse and of a reverse, in which I at
once recognized the Diplomatic medal, but neither bore the signature
of Dupre. Nevertheless, I had a plate engraved from them, hoping by
its aid to find the original.

I then turned on