Friday, February 7.
Case of Jonathan Robbins.
The following Message and documents were received from the President of the United States, which were read, and ordered to lie on the table:
Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:
In consequence of your request to me, conveyed in your resolution of the fourth of this month, I directed the Secretary of State to lay before me copies of the papers intended. These copies, together with his report, I now transmit to the House of Representatives, for the consideration of the members.
JOHN ADAMS.
United States, Feb. 7, 1800.
Department of State,
February 6, 1800.
The Secretary of State has prepared, as directed, and now respectfully submits to the President of the United States, copies of the papers which probably were contemplated by the House of Representatives, in their resolve of the 4th instant; although no requisition, as the resolve supposes, has ever been received, nor any communication made to the Judge of the District Court of South Carolina, concerning any man by the name of Jonathan Robbins. But by the proceedings before that Judge, as they have been published, it appears that a seaman named Thomas Nash, the subject of the British Minister's requisition, did assume the name of Jonathan Robbins, and make oath "that he was a native of the State of Connecticut, and born in Danbury, in that State." The Secretary, therefore, besides the copy of the requisition, and the copies of his letter to the Judge of the District Court of South Carolina, and of the Judge's answer, has prepared, and herewith encloses, copies of the certificates of the selectmen and town clerk of Danbury, and extracts of letters from Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, satisfactorily proving that the Thomas Nash, calling himself Jonathan Robbins, who, on the requisition of the British Minister, was delivered by the Judge aforesaid, with the assent of the President of the United States, was not an American citizen, but a native Irishman, who to his other crimes added perjury, in the hope, thereby, to escape the punishment due to piracy and murder. The original certificates of the selectmen and townclerk of Danbury are in the Secretary's possession; and he has compared the extract of Admiral Parker's letter to Mr. Liston with the original, and the extract of the Admiral's letter to the British Consul at Charleston, with the passage as recited in the Consul's original letter to Mr. Liston.
All which is respectfully submitted.
TIMOTHY PICKERING.
Copy of a note from Robert Liston, Esq., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty, to Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State of the United States.
Philadelphia, May 23, 1799.
R. Liston presents his respects to Col. Pickering, Secretary of State. A seaman of the name of Thomas Nash having been committed to jail in Charleston, South Carolina, at the instance of His Majesty's Consul there, on suspicion of his having been an accomplice in the piracy and murder committed on board His Majesty's ship Hermione, and information of the circumstance having been transmitted to Vice Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, a cutter was despatched to Charleston, with an officer on board to whom the man was well known, in order that his person might be identified, and that he should be carried to the West Indies for trial. But on the application of the Consul for the restoration of Nash, in conformity to the treaty of 1794, Judge Bee and the Federal Attorney were of opinion that he could not with propriety be delivered up, without a previous requisition on my part made to the Executive Government of the United States. May I therefore request, sir, that you will be pleased to lay this matter before the President, and procure his orders that the said Thomas Nash be delivered up to justice.
Letter from the Secretary of State to Judge Bee.
Department of State,
Philadelphia, June 3, 1799.
Sir: Mr. Liston, the Minister of His Britannic Majesty has requested, that Thomas Nash, who was a seaman on board the British frigate Hermione, and who, he is informed, is now a prisoner in the jail of Charleston, should be delivered up. I have stated the matter to the President of the United States. He considers an offence committed on board a public ship of war, on the high seas, to have been committed within the jurisdiction of the nation to whom the ship belongs. Nash is charged, it is understood, with piracy and murder, committed by him on board the above mentioned British frigate, on the high seas, and consequently within the jurisdiction of His Britannic Majesty; and therefore, by the 27th article of the Treaty of Amity with Great Britain, Nash ought to be delivered up, as requested by the British Minister, provided such evidence of his criminality be produced as, by the laws of the United States or of South Carolina, would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial, if the offence had been committed within the jurisdiction of the United States. The President has in consequence thereof authorized me to communicate to you "his advice and request" that Thomas Nash may be delivered up to the Consul or other agent of Great Britain, who shall appear to receive him. I have the honor to be, &c.
TIMOTHY PICKERING.
Hon. Thomas Bee,
Judge of the District of South Carolina.
Letter from Thomas Bee, Esq., to the Secretary of State, dated Charleston, South Carolina, July 1st, 1799.
In compliance with the request of the President of the United States as stated in your favor of the 3d. ult., I gave notice to the British Consul that at the sitting of the district court on this day I should order Thomas Nash, the prisoner charged with having committed murder and piracy on board the British frigate Hermione, on such strong evidence of his criminality as justified his apprehension and commitment for trial, to be brought before me on habeas corpus, in order to his being delivered over agreeably to the 27th article of the Treaty of Amity with Great Britain. The Consul attended in court and requested that the prisoner should remain in jail until he had a convenient opportunity of sending him away. I have therefore directed that he remain in prison, until the Consul shall find it convenient to remove him. I have the honor to be, with great respect, your most obedient servant,
THOMAS BEE,
District Judge of South Carolina.
Hon. T. Pickering, Secretary of State.
Danbury, Sept. 16, 1799.
We, the subscribers, selectmen of the town of Danbury, in the State of Connecticut, certify that we have always been the inhabitants of said town, and are from forty-five to fifty-seven years of age, and have never known an inhabitant of this town by the name of Jonathan or Nathan Robbins, and that there has not been, nor now is any family known by the name of Robbins within the limits of said town.
Certified, per
ELI MYGOT.
EBEN BENEDICT.
JUSTUS BARNUM.
BEN. HICHCOK.
Danbury, Sept 10, 1799.
The subscriber, late town clerk for the town of Danbury, in the State of Connecticut, certifies that he kept the town records twenty-five years, viz: from the year 1771 until the year 1796; that he is now fifty-six years of age, and that he never knew any person by the name of Robbins, born or residing in the said town of Danbury, during that term of twenty-five years, before or since.
MAJOR TAYLOR.
Extract of a letter from Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, to Robert Liston, Esq., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of his Britannic Majesty to the United States, dated
Port Royal Harbor,
"Jamaica, Sept. 9, 1799.
"I have had the honor of receiving duplicates of your Excellency's letters, numbered 10, 11, 12, and, in answer thereto, acquaint you that in consequence of Nash, one of the ringleaders in the mutiny, murders, &c., on board the Hermione, being delivered up by the United States to me, he has been tried at a court martial, and sentenced to suffer death, and afterwards hung in chains, which sentence has been put into execution. He acknowledged himself to be an Irishman."
Extract of a letter from Benjamin Moodie, Esq., Consul of his Britannic Majesty at Charleston, South Carolina, to Robert Liston, Esq., Envoy of his said Majesty to the United States, dated
November 19, 1799.
In consequence of many obstacles I had to encounter in obtaining the delivery of Thomas Nash, late of His Majesty's ship Hermione, and of the numerous publications to the northward and in this place, I wrote to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, requesting he would be good enough to send me minutes of the court martial, to which he answered under date 13th September: "I am to acquaint you that Nash has been executed agreeably to a court martial, and that he confessed himself to be an Irishman; and it further appears, by the Hermione's books, that he was born at Waterford; on the 21st December, 1792, entered a volunteer on board the Dover, received £3 bounty money, and was removed to the Hermione, 28th of January, 1793. And with respect to transmitting the minutes of his trial, that is not in my power, but rests with the Lords of the Admiralty only."