To the Senate of the United States:
In compliance with a resolution of the Senate, of November 30, 1807, I now transmit a report of the Secretary of State on the subject of impressments, as requested in that resolution. The great volume of the documents, and the time necessary for the investigation, will explain to the Senate the causes of the delay which has intervened.
TH. JEFFERSON.
March 2, 1808.
Department of State, Feb. 29, 1808.
Agreeably to a resolution of the Senate of the 30th November last, the Secretary of State has the honor to submit to the President, for the information of the Senate, the statements herewith enclosed, from No. 1 to 18, inclusive.
No. 1. A statement of impressments from American vessels into the British service, since the last report made from this department on the 5th March, 1806, founded upon documents transmitted in the first instance to this office.
Those from No. 2 to 13 inclusive, being a series of returns and abstracts received from General Lyman, the agent of the United States at London, giving an account of the applications made by him in relation to seamen, from 1st April, 1806, to 30th June, 1807, and of the result of those applications, and exhibiting other particulars required by the resolution.
Not having received any returns from the West Indies since the date of the last report to the House of Representatives on this subject, nor from General Lyman for the quarter ending on the 1st January last, the Secretary of State has not the means at present of giving, with any degree of precision, the information asked for in the last clause of the resolution. From the returns in the office it would appear that four thousand two hundred and twenty-eight American seamen had been impressed into the British service since the commencement of the war, and that nine hundred and thirty-six of this number had been discharged, leaving in that service three thousand two hundred and ninety-two. General Lyman, in a letter dated on the 21st October, 1807, estimates the American seamen now detained in the British service at a number greatly beyond what is here stated; but he does not give the data on which his estimate is made.
All which is respectfully submitted.