Tuesday, December 3.
Joseph Anderson, from the State of Tennessee; Buckner Thruston, from the State of Kentucky; and Robert Wright, from the State of Maryland, attended.
A message from the House of Representatives informed the Senate that a quorum of the House of Representatives is assembled, and have appointed Nathaniel Macon, Esq., one of the Representatives for North Carolina, their Speaker, and are ready to proceed to business. The House of Representatives have appointed a committee on their part, jointly with the committee appointed on the part of the Senate, to wait on the President of the United States, and notify him that a quorum of the two Houses is assembled, and ready to receive any communications that he may be pleased to make to them. The House of Representatives agree to the resolution of the Senate for the appointment of two Chaplains.
Mr. Sumter reported, from the committee appointed yesterday to wait on the President of the United States, that they had performed the service, and that the President of the United States informed the committee that he would make his communications to the two Houses at twelve o’clock this day.
The oath prescribed by law was administered to Mr. Thruston.
The following message was received from the President of the United States:
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America:
At a moment when the nations of Europe are in commotion, and arming against each other, and when those with whom we have principal intercourse are engaged in the general contest, and when the countenance of some of them towards our peaceable country threatens that even that may not be unaffected by what is passing on the general theatre, a meeting of the Representatives of the nation in both Houses of Congress has become more than usually desirable. Coming from every section of our country they bring with them the sentiments and the information of the whole, and will be enabled to give a direction to the public affairs, which the will and the wisdom of the whole will approve and support.
Since our last meeting the aspect of our foreign relations has considerably changed. Our coasts have been infested, and our harbors watched, by private armed vessels, some of them without commissions, some with illegal commissions, others with those of legal form, but committing piratical acts beyond the authority of their commissions. They have captured in the very entrance of our harbors, as well as on the high seas, not only the vessels of our friends coming to trade with us, but our own also. They have carried them off under pretence of legal adjudication; but, not daring to approach a court of justice, they have plundered and sunk them by the way, or in obscure places, where no evidence could arise against them; maltreated the crews, and abandoned them in boats in the open sea, or on desert shores, without food or covering. These enormities appearing to be unreached by any control of their sovereigns, I found it necessary to equip a force to cruise within our own seas, to arrest all vessels of these descriptions found hovering on our coasts, within the limits of the Gulf Stream, and to bring the offenders in for trial as pirates.
The same system of hovering on our coasts and harbors, under color of seeking enemies, has been also carried on by public armed ships, to the great annoyance and oppression of our commerce. New principles, too, have been interpolated into the law of nations, founded neither in justice nor the usage or acknowledgment of nations. According to these, a belligerent takes to itself a commerce with its own enemy which it denies to a neutral, on the ground of its aiding that enemy in the war. But reason revolts at such an inconsistency, and the neutral, having equal right with the belligerent to decide the question, the interests of our constituents, and the duty of maintaining the authority of reason, the only umpire between just nations, impose on us the obligation of providing an effectual and determined opposition to a doctrine so injurious to the rights of peaceable nations. Indeed, the confidence we ought to have in the justice of others still countenances the hope that a sounder view of those rights will, of itself, induce from every belligerent a more correct observance of them.
With Spain, our negotiations for a settlement of differences have not had a satisfactory issue. Spoliations during a former war, for which she had formally acknowledged herself responsible, have been refused to be compensated but on conditions affecting other claims in nowise connected with them. Yet the same practices are renewed in the present war, and are already of great amount. On the Mobile, our commerce passing through that river continues to be obstructed by arbitrary duties and vexatious searches. Propositions for adjusting amicably the boundaries of Louisiana have not been acceded to. While, however, the right is unsettled, we have avoided changing the state of things by taking new posts or strengthening ourselves in the disputed territories, in the hope that the other power would not, by a contrary conduct, oblige us to meet their example, and endanger conflicts of authority the issue of which may not be easily controlled. But in this hope we have now reason to lessen our confidence. Inroads have been recently made into the territories of Orleans and Mississippi, our citizens have been seized and their property plundered in the very parts of the former which had been actually delivered up by Spain, and this by the regular officers and soldiers of that Government. I have, therefore, found it necessary, at length, to give orders to our troops on that frontier to be in readiness to protect our citizens, and to repel by arms any similar aggressions in future. Other details, necessary for your full information of the state of things between this country and that, shall be the subject of another communication. In reviewing these injuries from some of the belligerent powers, the moderation, the firmness, and the wisdom, of the Legislature will all be called into action. We ought still to hope that time and a more correct estimate of interest, as well as of character, will produce the justice we are bound to expect. But should any nation deceive itself by false calculations, and disappoint that expectation, we must join in the unprofitable contest of trying which party can do the other the most harm.
Considerable provision has been made, under former authorities from Congress, of materials for the construction of ships of war of seventy-four guns. These materials are on hand, subject to the further will of the Legislature.
An immediate prohibition of the exportation of ammunition is also submitted to your determination.
Turning from these unpleasant views of violence and wrong, I congratulate you on the liberation of our fellow-citizens who were stranded on the coast of Tripoli and made prisoners of war. In a Government bottomed on the will of all, the life and liberty of every individual citizen become interesting to all. In the treaty, therefore, which has concluded our warfare with that State, an article for the ransom of our citizens has been agreed to. An operation by land, by a small band of our countrymen, and others engaged for the occasion, in conjunction with the troops of the ex-bashaw of that country, gallantly conducted by our late Consul Eaton, and their successful enterprise on the city of Derne, contributed, doubtless, to the impression which produced peace; and the conclusion of this, prevented opportunities of which the officers and men of our squadron, destined for Tripoli, would have availed themselves to emulate the acts of valor exhibited by their brethren in the attack of the last year. Reflecting with high satisfaction on the distinguished bravery displayed, whenever occasions permitted, in the late Mediterranean service, I think it would be a useful encouragement, as well as a just reward, to make an opening for some present promotion, by enlarging our peace establishment of captains and lieutenants.
With Tunis some misunderstandings have arisen, not yet sufficiently explained, but friendly discussions with their Ambassador, recently arrived, and a mutual disposition to do whatever is just and reasonable, cannot fail of dissipating these. So that we may consider our peace on that coast, generally, to be on as sound a footing as it has been at any preceding time. Still, it will not be expedient to withdraw, immediately, the whole of our force from that sea.
The law providing for a Naval Peace Establishment fixes the number of frigates which shall be kept in constant service in time of peace, and prescribes that they shall be manned by not more than two-thirds of their complement of seamen and ordinary seamen. Whether a frigate may be trusted to two-thirds only of her proper complement of men, must depend on the nature of the service on which she is ordered. That may sometimes for her safety, as well as to ensure her object, require her fullest complement. In adverting to this subject, Congress will, perhaps, consider whether the best limitation on the Executive discretion in this case, would not be by the number of seamen which may be employed in the whole service, rather than by the number of vessels. Occasions oftener arise for the employment of small than of large vessels, and it would lessen risk as well as expense, to be authorized to employ them of preference. The limitation suggested by the number of seamen would admit a selection of vessels best adapted to the service.
Our Indian neighbors are advancing, many of them, with spirit, and others beginning to engage in the pursuits of agriculture and household manufacture. They are becoming sensible that the earth yields subsistence with less labor and more certainty than the forest, and find it their interest, from time to time, to dispose of parts of their surplus and waste lands for the means of improving those they occupy, and of subsisting their families while they are preparing their farms. Since your last session, the northern tribes have sold to us the lands between the Connecticut Reserve and the former Indian boundary, and those on the Ohio, from the same boundary to the Rapids, and for a considerable depth inland. The Chickasaws and Cherokees have sold us the country between and adjacent to the two districts of Tennessee, and the Creeks the residue of their lands in the fork of Ocmulgee, up to the Ulcofauhatche. The three former purchases are important, inasmuch as they consolidate disjoined parts of our settled country, and render their intercourse secure; and the second particularly so, as, with the small point on the river, which we expect is by this time ceded by the Piankeshaws, it completes our possession of the whole of both banks of the Ohio, from its source to near its mouth, and the navigation of that river is thereby rendered for ever safe to our citizens settled and settling on its extensive waters. The purchase from the Creeks too has been for some time particularly interesting to the State of Georgia.
The several treaties which have been mentioned will be submitted to both Houses of Congress for the exercise of their respective functions.
Deputations, now on their way to the seat of Government, from various nations of Indians inhabiting the Missouri and other parts beyond the Mississippi, come charged with assurances of their satisfaction with the new relations in which they are placed with us, of their dispositions to cultivate our peace and friendship, and their desire to enter into commercial intercourse with us. A state of our progress in exploring the principal rivers of that country, and of the information respecting them hitherto obtained, will be communicated so soon as we shall receive some further relations which we have reason shortly to expect.
The receipts at the Treasury during the year ending on the 30th day of September last, have exceeded the sum of thirteen millions of dollars, which, with not quite five millions in the Treasury at the beginning of the year, have enabled us, after meeting other demands, to pay nearly two millions of the debt contracted under the British treaty and convention, upwards of four millions of principal of the public debt, and four millions of interest. These payments, with those which had been made in three years and a half preceding, have extinguished of the funded debt nearly eighteen millions of principal.
Congress, by their act of November 10, 1803, authorized us to borrow $1,750,000, towards meeting the claims of our citizens, assumed by the convention with France. We have not, however, made use of this authority; because, the sum of four millions and a half, which remained in the Treasury on the same 30th day of September last, with the receipts which we may calculate on for the ensuing year, besides paying the annual sum of eight millions of dollars, appropriated to the funded debt, and meeting all the current demands which may be expected, will enable us to pay the whole sum of three millions seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, assumed by the French convention, and still leave us a surplus of nearly a million of dollars at our free disposal. Should you concur in the provisions of arms and armed vessels, recommended by the circumstances of the times, this surplus will furnish the means of doing so.
On the first occasion of addressing Congress, since, by the choice of my constituents, I have entered on a second term of administration, I embrace the opportunity to give this public assurance, that I will exert my best endeavors to administer faithfully the Executive Department, and will zealously co-operate with you in every measure which may tend to secure the liberty, property, and personal safety, of our fellow-citizens, and to consolidate the republican forms and principles of our Government.
In the course of your session, you shall receive all the aid which I can give, for the despatch of public business, and all the information necessary for your deliberations, of which the interests of our own country, and the confidence reposed in us by others, will admit a communication.
TH. JEFFERSON.
December 3, 1805.
The Message was read and three hundred copies thereof ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate.