The great volume of these communications and the delay it would produce to make out a second copy will, I trust, be deemed a sufficient reason for sending one of them to the one House, and the other to the other, with a request that they may be interchanged for mutual information rather than to subject both to further delay.
TH. JEFFERSON.
FEBRUARY 18, 1802.
Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
In a message of the 2d instant I inclosed a letter from the Secretary of War on the subject of certain lands in the neighborhood of our military posts on which it might be expedient for the Legislature to make some provisions. A letter recently received from the governor of Indiana presents some further views of the extent to which such provision may be needed, I therefore now transmit it for the information of Congress.
TH. JEFFERSON.
FEBRUARY 24, 1802.
Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
I communicate to both Houses of Congress a report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the subject of our marine hospitals, which appear to require legislative attention.
As connected with the same subject, I also inclose information respecting the situation of our seamen and boatmen frequenting the port of New Orleans and suffering there from sickness and the want of accommodation. There is good reason to believe their numbers greater than stated in these papers. When we consider how great a proportion of the territory of the United States must communicate with that port singly, and how rapidly that territory is increasing its population and productions, it may perhaps be thought reasonable to make hospital provisions there of a different order from those at foreign ports generally.