1808 Printed Military Circular to Plymouth with Printed Subscription Circular for a Military Tactics Manual

Stampless folded letter and printed circular, datelined Boston, April 1808, addressed to "Lieut. Colonel Thomas Lincoln of the 3d Regt. of Infantry, 2d Brigade, 5th Division" at Plymouth. In order for mail to go through the Military Mails, the piece had to relate to Military business, which the book on Military Tactics qualified.
The enclosure is a printed solicitation circular signed in manuscript by J. Amelot De Lacroix, a French émigré officer residing at No. 7 Summer Street, Boston, addressed to American militia officers seeking subscribers for a forthcoming manual on modern military tactics. The author cites "the critical situation, and actual circumstances of the United States...threatened with inevitable war," and offers to prepare "for the immediate use of the American forces a complete system of modern tacticks in their most minute detail, accompanied with necessary plates to enable the officers of all grades completely to acquire the destructive but necessary art of war." The recipient is asked to circulate the proposal among his military friends and to forward subscriber names and advance payments to the author at the Boston address.
The recipient was Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln of Plymouth, Massachusetts, commanding the 3d Regiment of Infantry, 2d Brigade of the 5th Division of the Massachusetts militia. The circular was issued during the diplomatic crisis over British and French interference with American shipping that followed the Embargo Act of December 1807, four years before the formal declaration of the War of 1812.