These letters were answers to one written by the committee of safety to the congress of the United States.

The executive department being the organ through which all foreign intercourse was to be conducted, each branch of the legislature had passed a resolution directing this letter to be transmitted to the President, with a request, that he would cause it to be answered in terms expressive of their friendly dispositions towards the French republic.
So fervent were the sentiments expressed on this occasion, that the convention decreed that the flag of the American and French republics should be united together, and suspended in its own hall, in testimony of eternal union and friendship between the two people.

To evince the impression made on his mind by this act, and the grateful sense of his constituents, Mr.Monroe presented to the convention the flag of the United States, which he prayed them to accept as a proof of the sensibility with which his country received every act of friendship from its ally, and of the pleasure with which it cherished every incident which tended to cement and consolidate the union between the two nations.
[Sidenote: Mr.Adet succeeds Mr.Fauchet.] The committee of safety, disregarding the provisions of the American constitution, although their attention must have been particularly directed to them by the circumstance that the letter to congress was referred by that body to the executive, again addressed the legislature in terms adapted to that department of government which superintends its foreign intercourse, and expressive, among other sentiments, of the sensibility with which the French nation had perceived those sympathetic emotions with which the American people had viewed the vicissitudes of her fortune.

Mr.Adet, who was to succeed Mr.Fauchet at Philadelphia, and who was the bearer of this letter, also brought with him the colours of France, which he was directed to present to the United States.

He arrived in the summer; but probably in the idea that these communications were to be made by him directly to congress, did not announce them to the executive until late in December.
{1796} The first day of the new year was named for their reception; when the colours were delivered to the President, and the letter to congress also was placed in his hands.
In executing this duty, Mr.Adet addressed a speech to the President, which, in the glowing language of his country, represented France as struggling, not only for her own liberty, but for that of the human race.