To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:
The claim of the representatives of the late Caron de Beaumarchais having been recommended to the favorable consideration of the Legislature by my predecessor in his message to Congress of the 31st of January last, and concurring in the sentiments therein expressed, I now transmit copies of a new representation relative to it received by the Secretary of State from the minister of France, and of a correspondence on the subject between the minister of the United States at Paris and the Duke of Richelieu, inclosed with that representation.
JAMES MONROE.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:
I have the satisfaction to inform Congress that the establishment at Amelia Island has been suppressed, and without the effusion of blood. The papers which explain this transaction I now lay before Congress.
By the suppression of this establishment and of that at Galveztown, which will soon follow; if it has not already ceased to exist, there is good cause to believe that the consummation of a project fraught with much injury to the United States has been prevented.
When we consider the persons engaged in it, being adventurers from different countries, with very few, if any, of the native inhabitants of the Spanish colonies; the territory on which the establishments were made—one on a portion of that claimed by the United States westward of the Mississippi, the other on a part of East Florida, a Province in negotiation between the United States and Spain; the claim of their leader as announced by his proclamation on taking possession of Amelia Island, comprising the whole of both the Floridas, without excepting that part of West Florida which is incorporated into the State of Louisiana; their conduct while in the possession of the island making it instrumental to every species of contraband, and, in regard to slaves, of the most odious and dangerous character, it may fairly be concluded that if the enterprise had succeeded on the scale on which it was formed much annoyance and injury would have resulted from it to the United States.
Other circumstances were thought to be no less deserving of attention. The institution of a government by foreign adventurers in the island, distinct from the colonial governments of Buenos Ayres, Venezuela, or Mexico, pretending to sovereignty and exercising its highest offices, particularly in granting commissions to privateers, were acts which could not fail to draw after them the most serious consequences. It was the duty of the Executive either to extend to this establishment all the advantages of that neutrality which the United States had proclaimed, and have observed in favor of the colonies of Spain who, by the strength of their own population and resources, had declared their independence and were affording strong proof of their ability to maintain it, or of making the discrimination which circumstances required.
Had the first course been pursued, we should not only have sanctioned all the unlawful claims and practices of this pretended Government in regard to the United States, but have countenanced a system of privateering in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere the ill effects of which might, and probably would, have been deeply and very extensively felt.
The path of duty was plain from the commencement, but it was painful to enter upon it while the obligation could be resisted. The law of 1811, lately published, and which it is therefore proper now to mention, was considered applicable to the case from the moment that the proclamation of the chief of the enterprise was seen, and its obligation was daily increased by other considerations of high importance already mentioned, which were deemed sufficiently strong in themselves to dictate the course which has been pursued.