SIR: Your letter of the 29th of December found me confined to bed, with a violent bilious fever, and it was eight days after its arrival before I was able to read it; the fever, however, about that time, left me, and my convalescence appeared to promise a moderately quick recovery. I, therefore, wrote you my note of the 16th ultimo; in two days after I relapsed, and have had a most violent attack, which has reduced me very low, but as soon as I am in a situation to write, you shall hear from me to the point. I am, sir, Your obedient servant, JAMES BARRON. Com. STEPHEN DECATUR, _Washington_. Transcriber Notes: Obsolete spellings of words (e.g., behove, shew, somtime, stile, etc.) have been retained. On page 5, "degraged" was replaced with "degraded". On page 7, "be the folllowing" was replaced with "by the following". On page 9, "a Miss ******" was replaced with "a Miss----". On page 10, in "I should no otherwise notice" the phrase "should no otherwise" could have been "should not otherwise", but then "should no otherwise" could have been correct at the time. Thus, no change was made. On page 13, "henious" was replaced with "heinous". On page 16, "sattellites" was replaced with "satellites". On page 18, the period after "obtain my rank" was replaced with a comma. On page 18, a period was added after "22 inst". On page 21, "NO. 12" was replaced with "No. 12". There was no "No. 13" letter. Instead the letter numbers jump from twelve to fourteen.