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REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT.

DECEMBER 14, 1798.

To the House of Representatives of the United States of America.

GENTLEMEN: My sincere acknowledgments are due to the House of Representatives of the United States for this excellent address so consonant to the character of representatives of a great and free people. The judgment and feelings of a nation, I believe, were never more truly expressed by their representatives than those of our constituents by your decided declaration that with our means of defense our interest and honor command us to repel a predatory warfare against the unquestionable rights of neutral commerce; that it becomes the United States to be as determined in resistance as they have been patient in suffering and condescending in negotiation; that while those who direct the affairs of France persist in the enforcement of decrees so hostile to our essential rights their conduct forbids us to confide in any of their professions of amity; that an adequate naval force must be considered as an important object of national policy, and that, whether negotiations with France are resumed or not, vigorous preparations for war will be alike indispensable. The generous disdain you so coolly and deliberately express of a reliance on foreign protection, wanting no foreign guaranty of our liberties, resolving to maintain our national independence against every attempt to despoil us of this inestimable treasure, will meet the full approbation of every sound understanding and exulting applauses from the heart of every faithful American.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your candid approbation of my sentiments on the subject of negotiation and for the declaration of your opinion that the policy of extending and invigorating our measures of defense and the adoption with prudent foresight of such systematical measures as may be expedient for calling forth the energies of our country wherever the national exigencies may require, whether on the ocean or on our own territory, will demand your sedulous attention.

At the same time, I take the liberty to assure you it shall be my vigilant endeavor that no illusory professions shall seduce me into any abandonment of the rights which belong to the United States as a free and independent nation.

JOHN ADAMS.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:

JANUARY 8, 1799.

In compliance with your desire expressed in your resolution of the 2d of this month, I lay before you an extract of a letter from George C. Moreton, acting consul of the United States at The Havannah, dated the

13th of November, 1798, to the Secretary of State, with a copy of a letter from him to L. Tresevant and William Timmons, esquires, with their

answer.

Although your request extends no further than such information as has been received, yet it may be a satisfaction to you to know that as soon as this intelligence was communicated to me circular orders were given by my direction to all the commanders of our vessels of war, a copy of which is also herewith transmitted. I also directed this intelligence and these orders to be communicated to His Britannic Majesty's envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United States and to our minister plenipotentiary to the Court of Great Britain, with instructions to him to make the proper representation to that Government upon this subject.

It is but justice to say that this is the first instance of misbehavior of any of the British officers toward our vessels of war that has come to my knowledge. According to all the representations that I have seen, the flag of the United States and their officers and men have been treated by the civil and military authority of the British nation in Nova Scotia, the West India islands, and on the ocean with uniform civility, politeness, and friendship. I have no doubt that this first instance of misconduct will be readily corrected.

Gentlemen of the Senate:

JOHN ADAMS.

JANUARY 15, 1799.

I transmit to you the treaty between the United States and the Cherokee Indians, signed near Tellico on the 2d day of October, 1798, for your consideration. I have directed the Secretary of War to lay before you the journal of the commissioners and a copy of their instructions.

JOHN ADAMS.

JANUARY 18, 1799.

Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: The communication relative to our affairs with France alluded to in my address to both Houses at the opening of the session is contained in the sheets which accompany this. A report of the Secretary of State, containing some observations on them, will be sent to Congress on Monday.

JOHN ADAMS.

JANUARY 28, 1799.

Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: An edict of the Executive Directory of the French Republic of the 29th of October, 1798, inclosed in a letter from our minister plenipotentiary

in London of the 16th of November, is of so much importance that it can not be too soon communicated to you and the public.

JOHN ADAMS.

FEBRUARY 6, 1799.

Gentlemen of the Senate:

In consequence of intimations from the Court of Russia to our minister plenipotentiary at the Court of Great Britain of the desire of that power to have a treaty of amity and commerce with the United States, and that the negotiation might be conducted in London, I nominate Rufus King, our minister plenipotentiary at the Court of Great Britain, to be a minister plenipotentiary for the special purpose of negotiating with any minister of equal rank and powers a treaty of amity and commerce between the United States and the Emperor of all the Russias.

JOHN ADAMS.

UNITED STATES, February 15, 1799.

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:

.

In pursuance of the request in your resolve of yesterday, I lay before you such information as I have received touching a suspension of the arrêt of the French Republic, communicated to your House by my message of the 28th of January last. But if the execution of that arrêt be suspended, or even if it were repealed, it should be remembered that the arrêt of the Executive Directory of the 2d of March, 1797, remains in force, the third article of which subjects, explicitly and exclusively, American seamen to be treated as pirates if found on board ships of the enemies of France.

JOHN ADAMS.

Gentlemen of the Senate:

FEBRUARY 18, 1799.

I transmit to you a document which seems to be intended to be a compliance with a condition mentioned at the conclusion of my message to Congress of the 21st of June last.

Always disposed and ready to embrace every plausible appearance of probability of preserving or restoring tranquillity, I nominate William Vans Murray, our minister resident at The Hague, to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic.

If the Senate shall advise and consent to his appointment, effectual care shall be taken in his instructions that he shall not go to France without direct and unequivocal assurances from the French Government, signified by their minister of foreign relations, that he shall be received in charac

ter, shall enjoy the privileges attached to his character by the law of nations, and that a minister of equal rank, title, and powers shall be appointed to treat with him, to discuss and conclude all controversies between the two Republics by a new treaty.

[Translation.]

JOHN ADAMS.

PARIS, the 7th Vendémiaire of the 7th Year
of the French Republic, One and Indivisible.

The Minister of Exterior Relations to Citizen Pichon, Secretary of Legation of the
French Republic near the Batavian Republic:

I have received successively, Citizen, your letters of the 22d and 27th Fructidor [8th and 13th September]. They afford me more and more reason to be pleased with the measure you have adopted, to detail to me your conversations with Mr. Murray. These conversations, at first merely friendly, have acquired consistency by the sanction I have given to them by my letter of the 11th Fructidor. I do not regret that you have trusted to Mr. Murray's honor a copy of my letter. It was intended for you only, and contains nothing but what is conformable to the intentions of Government. I am thoroughly convinced that should explanations take place with confidence between the two Cabinets, irritation would cease, a crowd of misunderstandings would disappear, and the ties of friendship would be the more strongly united as each party would discover the hand which sought to disunite them. But I will not conceal from you that your letters of the 2d and 3d Vendémiaire, just received, surprised me much. What Mr. Murray is still dubious of has been very explicitly declared, even before the President's message to Congress of the 3d Messidor [21st June] last was known in France. I had written it to Mr. Gerry, namely, on the 24th Messidor and 4th Thermidor; I did repeat it to him before he sat out. A whole paragraph of my letter to you of the 11th Fructidor, of which Mr. Murray has a copy, is devoted to develop still more the fixed determination of the French Government. According to these bases, you were right to assert that whatever plenipotentiary the Government of the United States might send to France to put an end to the existing differences between the two countries would be undoubtedly received with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation.

I can not persuade myself, Citizen, that the American Government need any further declarations from us to induce them, in order to renew the negotiations, to adopt such measures as would be suggested to them by their desire to bring the differences to a peaceable end. If misunderstandings on both sides have prevented former explanations from reaching that end, it is presumable that, those misunderstandings being done away, nothing henceforth will bring obstacles to the reciprocal dispositions. The President's instructions to his envoys at Paris, which I have only known by the copy given you by Mr. Murray, and received by me the 21st Messidor [9th July], announce, if they contain the whole of the American Government's intentions, dispositions which could only have added to those which the Directory has always entertained; and, notwithstanding the posterior acts of that Government, notwithstanding the irritating and almost hostile measures they have adopted, the Directory has manifested its perseverance in the sentiments which are deposited both in my correspondence with Mr. Gerry and in my letter to you of the 11th Fructidor, and which I have hereinbefore repeated in the most explicit manner. Carry, therefore, Citizen, to Mr. Murray those positive expressions in order to convince him of our sincerity, and prevail upon him to transmit them to his Government.

I presume, Citizen, that this letter will find you at The Hague; if not, I ask it may be sent back to you at Paris.

Salute and fraternity,

CH: MAU: TALLEYRAND.

Gentlemen of the Senate:

FEBRUARY 25, 1799.

The proposition of a fresh negotiation with France in consequence of advances made by the French Government has excited so general an attention and so much conversation as to have given occasion to many manifestations of the public opinion, from which it appears to me that a new modification of the embassy will give more general satisfaction to the Legislature and to the nation, and perhaps better answer the purposes we have in view.

It is upon this supposition and with this expectation that I now nominate Oliver Ellsworth, esq., Chief Justice of the United States; Patrick Henry, esq., late governor of Virginia, and William Vans Murray, esq., our minister resident at The Hague, to be envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary to the French Republic, with full powers to discuss and settle by a treaty all controversies between the United States and France.

It is not intended that the two former of these gentlemen shall embark for Europe until they shall have received from the Executive Directory assurances, signified by their secretary of foreign relations, that they shall be received in character, that they shall enjoy all the prerogatives attached to that character by the law of nations, and that a minister or ministers of equal powers shall be appointed and commissioned to treat with them.

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JOHN ADAMS.

MARCH 2, 1799.

Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: Judging it of importance to the public that the Legislature should be informed of the gradual progress of their maritime resources, I transmit to Congress a statement of the vessels, with their tonnage, warlike force, and complement of men, to which commissions as private armed vessels have been issued since the 9th day of July last.

JOHN ADAMS.

PROCLAMATIONS.

[From C. F. Adams's Works of John Adams, Vol. IX, p. 172.]

PROCLAMATION.

MARCH 6, 1799.

As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher

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