directly expressed by their free suffrages; where the principal
executive functionaries and those of the legislature are renewed by them
at short periods; where under the character of jurors they exercise in
person the greatest portion of the judiciary powers; where the laws are
consequently so formed and administered as to bear with equal weight and
favor on all, restraining no man in the pursuits of honest industry and
securing to everyone the property which that acquires, it would not be
supposed that any safeguards could be needed against insurrection or
enterprise on the public peace or authority. The lawrs, however, aware
that these should not be trusted to moral restraints only, have wisely
provided punishment for these crimes when committed. But would it not be
salutary to give also the means of preventing their commission? Where an
enterprise is meditated by private individuals against a foreign nation
in amity with the United States, powers of prevention to a certain
extent are given by the laws. Would they not be as reasonable and useful
where the enterprise preparing is against the United States? While
adverting to this branch of law it is proper to observe that in
enterprises meditated against foreign nations the ordinary process of
binding to the observance of the peace and good behavior, could it
be extended to acts to be done out of the jurisdiction of the United
States, would be effectual in some cases where the offender is able to
keep out of sight every indication of his purpose which could draw on
him the exercise of the powers now given by law.
The States on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present
to respect our peace and friendship; with Tunis alone some uncertainty
remains. Persuaded that it is our interest to maintain our peace with
them on equal terms or not at all, I propose to send in due time a
reen-forcement into the Mediterranean unless previous information shall
shew it to be unnecessary.
We continue to receive proofs of the growing attachment of our Indian
neighbors and of their disposition to place all their interests under
the patronage of the United States. These dispositions are inspired by
their confidence in our justice and in the sincere concern we feel for
their welfare; and as long as we discharge these high and honorable
functions with the integrity and good faith which alone can entitle us
to their continuance we may expect to reap the just reward in their
peace and friendship.
The expedition of Messrs. Lewis and Clarke for exploring the river
Missouri and the best communication from that to the Pacific Ocean has
had all the success which could have been expected. They have traced the
Missouri nearly to its source, descended the Columbia to the Pacific
Ocean; ascertained with accuracy the geography of that interesting
communication across our continent, learnt the character of the country,
of its commerce and inhabitants; and it is but justice to say that
Messrs. Lewis and Clarke and their brave companions have by this arduous
service deserved well of their country.
The attempt to explore the Red River, under the direction of Mr.
Freeman, though conducted with a zeal and prudence meriting entire
approbation, has not been equally successful. After proceeding up it
about 600 miles, nearly as far as the French settlements had extended
while the country was in their possession, our geographers were obliged
to return without completing their work.
Very useful additions have also been made to our knowledge of the
Mississippi by Lieutenant Pike, who has ascended it to its source, and
whose journal and map, giving the details of his journey, will shortly
be ready for communication to both Houses of Congress. Those of Messrs.
Lewis, Clarke, and Freeman will require further time to be digested
and prepared. These important surveys, in addition to those before
possessed, furnish materials for commencing an accurate map of the
Mississippi and its western waters. Some principal rivers, however,
remain still to be explored, toward which the authorization of Congress
by moderate appropriations will be requisite.
I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at
which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw
the citizens of the United States from all further participation in
those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on
the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the
reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager
to proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect
till the first day of the year 1808, yet the intervening period is
not too long to prevent by timely notice expeditions which can not
be completed before that day.
The receipts at the Treasury during the year ending on the 30th day of
September last have amounted to near $15,000,000, which have enabled us,
after meeting the current demands, to pay $2,700,000 of the American
claims in part of the price of Louisiana; to pay of the funded debt
upward of three millions of principal and nearly four of interest, and,
in addition, to reimburse in the course of the present month near two
millions of 5-1/2 per cent stock. These payments and reimbursements of
the funded debt, with those which had been made in the four years and a
half preceding, will at the close of the present year have extinguished
upward of twenty-three millions of principal.
The duties composing the Mediterranean fund will cease by law at the
end of the present session. Considering, however, that they are levied
chiefly on luxuries and that we have an impost on salt, a necessary
of life, the free use of which otherwise is so important, I recommend
to your consideration the suppression of the duties on salt and the
continuation of the Mediterranean fund instead thereof for a short time,
after which that also will become unnecessary for any purpose now within
contemplation.
When both of these branches of revenue shall in this way be relinquished
there will still ere long be an accumulation of moneys in the Treasury
beyond the installments of public debt which we are permitted by
contract to pay. They can not then, without a modification assented to
by the public creditors, be applied to the extinguishment of this debt
and the complete liberation of our revenues, the most desirable of all
objects. Nor, if our peace continues, will they be wanting for any other
existing purpose. The question therefore now comes forward, To what
other objects shall these surpluses be appropriated, and the whole
surplus of impost, after the entire discharge of the public debt, and
during those intervals when the purposes of war shall not call for them?
Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to foreign over
domestic manufactures? On a few articles of more general and necessary
use the suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the great
mass of the articles on which impost is paid are foreign luxuries,
purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the
use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance
and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads,
rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may
be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal
powers. By these operations new channels of communication will be opened
between the States, the lines of separation will disappear, their
interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and
indissoluble ties. Education is here placed among the articles of public
care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out
of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all
the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone
supply those sciences which though rarely called for are yet necessary
to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the
improvement of the country and some of them to its preservation. The
subject is now proposed for the consideration of Congress, because if
approved by the time the State legislatures shall have deliberated on
this extension of the Federal trusts, and the laws shall be passed and
other arrangements made for their execution, the necessary funds will
be on hand and without employment. I suppose an amendment to the
Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary, because the objects
now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and
to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.
The present consideration of a national establishment for education
particularly is rendered proper by this circumstance also, that if
Congress, approving the proposition, shall yet think it more eligible
to found it on a donation of lands, they have it now in their power to
endow it with those which will be among the earliest to produce the
necessary income. This foundation would have the advantage of being
independent of war, which may suspend other improvements by requiring
for its own purposes the resources destined for them.
This, fellow-citizens, is the state of the public interests at the
present moment and according to the information now possessed. But such
is the situation of the nations of Europe and such, too, the predicament
in which we stand with some of them that we can not rely with certainty
on the present aspect of our affairs, that may change from moment
to moment during the course of your session or after you shall have
separated. Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are and
to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to
be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never
should have been without them. Our resources would have been exhausted
on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for
what is really to take place. A steady, perhaps a quickened, pace in
preparations for the defense of our seaport towns and waters; an early
settlement of the most exposed and vulnerable parts of our country; a
militia so organized that its effective portions can be called to any
point in the Union, or volunteers instead of them to serve a sufficient
time, are means which may always be ready, yet never preying on our
resources until actually called into use. They will maintain the
public interests while a more permanent force shall be in course of
preparation. But much will depend on the promptitude with which these
means can be brought into activity. If war be forced upon us, in spite
of our long and vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and
vigorous movements in its outset will go far toward securing us in its
course and issue, and toward throwing its burthens on those who render
necessary the resort from reason to force.
The result of our negotiations, or such incidents in their course as may
enable us to infer their probable issue; such further movements also
on our western frontiers as may shew whether war is to be pressed there
while negotiation is protracted elsewhere, shall be communicated to
you from time to time as they become known to me, with whatever other
information I possess or may receive, which may aid your deliberations
on the great national interests committed to your charge.
TH. JEFFERSON.
SPECIAL MESSAGES.
DECEMBER 3, 1806.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
I have the satisfaction to inform you that the negotiation depending
between the United States and the Government of Great Britain is
proceeding in a spirit of friendship and accommodation which promises a
result of mutual advantage. Delays, indeed, have taken place, occasioned
by the long illness and subsequent death of the British minister charged
with that duty. But the commissioners appointed by that Government
to resume the negotiation have shewn every disposition to hasten its
progress. It is, however, a work of time, as many arrangements are
necessary to place our future harmony on stable grounds. In the meantime
we find by the communications of our plenipotentiaries that a temporary
suspension of the act of the last session prohibiting certain
importations would, as a mark of candid disposition on our part and of
confidence in the temper and views with which they have been met, have
a happy effect on its course. A step so friendly will afford further
evidence that all our proceedings have flowed from views of justice and
conciliation, and that we give them willingly that form which may best
meet corresponding dispositions.
Add to this that the same motives which produced the postponement of
the act till the 15th of November last are in favor of its further
suspension, and as we have reason to hope that it may soon yield to
arrangements of mutual consent and convenience, justice seems to require
that the same measure may be dealt out to the few cases which may fall
within its short course as to all others preceding and following it.
I can not, therefore, but recommend the suspension of this act for a
reasonable time, on considerations of justice, amity, and the public
interests.
TH. JEFFERSON.
DECEMBER 15, 1806,
_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:
I lay before Congress a report of the surveyor of the public buildings,
stating the progress made on them during the last season and what is
proposed for the ensuing one.
I took every measure within my power for carrying into effect the
request of the House of Representatives of the 17th of April last
to cause the south wing of the Capitol to be prepared for their
accommodation by the commencement of the present session. With great
regret I found it was not to be accomplished. The quantity of freestone
necessary, with the size and quality of many of the blocks, was
represented as beyond what could be obtained from the quarries by any
exertions which could be commanded. The other parts of the work, which
might all have been completed in time, were necessarily retarded by the
insufficient progress of the stonework.
TH. JEFFERSON.
JANUARY 5, 1807.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
I transmit to each House of Congress a copy of the laws of the Territory
of Michigan passed by the governor and judges of the Territory during
the year 1805.
TH. JEFFERSON.
JANUARY 22, 1807.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
Agreeably to the request of the House of Representatives communicated
in their resolution of the 16th instant, I proceed to state, under the
reserve therein expressed, information received touching an illegal
combination of private individuals against the peace and safety of the
Union, and a military expedition planned by them against the territories
of a power in amity with the United States, with the measures I have
pursued for suppressing the same.
I had for some time been in the constant expectation of receiving
such further information as would have enabled me to lay before the
Legislature the termination as well as the beginning and progress of
this scene of depravity so far as it has been acted on the Ohio and its
waters. From this the state of safety of the lower country might have
been estimated on probable grounds, and the delay was indulged the
rather because no circumstance had yet made it necessary to call in the
aid of the legislative functions. Information now recently communicated
has brought us nearly to the period contemplated. The mass of what I
have received in the course of these transactions is voluminous, but
little has been given under the sanction of an oath so as to constitute
formal and legal evidence. It is chiefly in the form of letters, often
containing such a mixture of rumors, conjectures, and suspicions
as renders it difficult to sift out the real facts and unadvisable
to hazard more than general outlines, strengthened by concurrent
information or the particular credibility of the relator. In this state
of the evidence, delivered sometimes, too, under the restriction of
private confidence, neither safety nor justice will permit the exposing
names, except that of the principal actor, whose guilt is placed beyond
question.
Some time in the latter part of September I received intimations that
designs were in agitation in the Western country unlawful and unfriendly
to the peace of the Union, and that the prime mover in these was Aaron
Burr, heretofore distinguished by the favor of his country. The grounds
of these intimations being inconclusive, the objects uncertain, and the
fidelity of that country known to be firm, the only measure taken was to
urge the informants to use their best endeavors to get further insight
into the designs and proceedings of the suspected persons and to
communicate them to me.
It was not till the latter part of October that the objects of the
conspiracy began to be perceived, but still so blended and involved in
mystery that nothing distinct could be singled out for pursuit. In this
state of uncertainty as to the crime contemplated, the acts done, and
the legal course to be pursued, I thought it best to send to the scene
where these things were principally in transaction a person in whose
integrity, understanding, and discretion entire confidence could be
reposed, with instructions to investigate the plots going on, to enter
into conference (for which he had sufficient credentials) with the
governors and all other officers, civil and military, and with their
aid to do on the spot whatever should be necessary to discover the
designs of the conspirators, arrest their means, bring their persons
to punishment, and to call out the force of the country to suppress any
unlawful enterprise in which it should be found they were engaged.
By this time it was known that many boats were under preparation,
stores of provisions collecting, and an unusual number of suspicious
characters in motion on the Ohio and its waters. Besides dispatching
the confidential agent to that quarter, orders were at the same time
sent to the governors of the Orleans and Mississippi Territories and
to the commanders of the land and naval forces there to be on their
guard against surprise and in constant readiness to resist any enterprise
which might be attempted on the vessels, posts, or other objects under
their care; and on the 8th of November instructions were forwarded to
General Wilkinson to hasten an accommodation with the Spanish commandant
on the Sabine, and as soon as that was effected to fall back with his
principal force to the hither bank of the Mississippi for the defense
of the interesting points on that river. By a letter received from
that officer on the 25th of November, but dated October 21, we learnt
that a confidential agent of Aaron Burr had been deputed to him with
communications, partly written in cipher and partly oral, explaining his
designs, exaggerating his resources, and making such offers of emolument
and command to engage him and the army in his unlawful enterprise as he
had flattered himself would be successful. The General, with the honor
of a soldier and fidelity of a good citizen, immediately dispatched a
trusty officer to me with information of what had passed, proceeding
to establish such an understanding with the Spanish commandant on the
Sabine as permitted him to withdraw his force across the Mississippi
and to enter on measures for opposing the projected enterprise.
The General's letter, which came to hand on the 25th of November, as has
been mentioned, and some other information received a few days earlier,
when brought together developed Burr's general designs, different parts
of which only had been revealed to different informants. It appeared
that he contemplated two distinct objects, which might be carried on
either jointly or separately, and either the one or the other first,
as circumstances should direct. One of these was the severance of the
Union of these States by the Alleghany Mountains; the other an attack
on Mexico. A third object was provided, merely ostensible, to wit, the
settlement of a pretended purchase of a tract of country on the Washita
claimed by a Baron Bastrop. This was to serve as the pretext for all
his preparations, an allurement for such followers as really wished to
acquire settlements in that country and a cover under which to retreat
in the event of a final discomfiture of both branches of his real
design.
He found at once that the attachment of the Western country to the
present Union was not to be shaken; that its dissolution could not be
effected with the consent of its inhabitants, and that his resources
were inadequate as yet to effect it by force. He took his course then
at once, determined to seize on New Orleans, plunder the bank there,
possess himself of the military and naval stores, and proceed on his
expedition to Mexico, and to this object all his means and preparations
were now directed. He collected from all the quarters where himself or
his agents possessed influence all the ardent, restless, desperate,
and disaffected persons who were ready for any enterprise analogous to
their characters. He seduced good and well-meaning citizens, some by
assurances that he possessed the confidence of the Government and was
acting under its secret patronage, a pretense which procured some credit
from the state of our differences with Spain, and others by offers of
land in Bastrop's claim on the Washita.
This was the state of my information of his proceedings about the last
of November, at which time, therefore, it was first possible to take
specific measures to meet them. The proclamation of November 27, two
days after the receipt of General Wilkinson's information, was now
issued. Orders were dispatched to every interesting point on the Ohio
and Mississippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans for the employment of such
force either of the regulars or of the militia and of such proceedings
also of the civil authorities as might enable them to seize on all the
boats and stores provided for the enterprise, to arrest the persons
concerned, and to suppress effectually the further progress of the
enterprise. A little before the receipt of these orders in the State
of Ohio our confidential agent, who had been diligently employed in
investigating the conspiracy, had acquired sufficient information to
open himself to the governor of that State and apply for the immediate
exertion of the authority and power of the State to crush the
combination. Governor Tiffin and the legislature, with a promptitude,
an energy, and patriotic zeal which entitle them to a distinguished
place in the affection of their sister States, effected the seizure
of all the boats, provisions, and other preparations within their
reach, and thus gave a first blow, materially disabling the enterprise
in its outset.
In Kentucky a premature attempt to bring Burr to justice without
sufficient evidence for his conviction had produced a popular impression
in his favor and a general disbelief of his guilt. This gave him an
unfortunate opportunity of hastening his equipments. The arrival of
the proclamation and orders and the application and information of our
confidential agent at length awakened the authorities of that State
to the truth, and then produced the same promptitude and energy of
which the neighboring State had set the example. Under an act of their
legislature of December 23 militia was instantly ordered to different
important points, and measures taken for doing whatever could yet be
done. Some boats (accounts vary from five to double or treble that
number) and persons (differently estimated from 100 to 300) had in
the meantime passed the Falls of Ohio to rendezvous at the mouth of
Cumberland with others expected down that river.
Not apprised till very late that any boats were building on Cumberland,
the effect of the proclamation had been trusted to for some time in the
State of Tennessee; but on the *19th of December similar communications
and instructions with those to the neighboring States were dispatched by
express to the governor and a general officer of the western division
ofthe State, and on the 23d of December our confidential agent left
Frankfort for Nashville to put into activity the means of that State
also. But by information received yesterday I learn that on the 22d of
December Mr. Burr descended the Cumberland with two boats merely of
accommodation, carrying with him from that State no quota toward his
unlawful enterprise. Whether after the arrival of the proclamation, of
the orders, or of our agent any exertion which could be made by that
State or the orders of the governor of Kentucky for calling out the
militia at the mouth of Cumberland would be in time to arrest these
boats and those from the Falls of Ohio is still doubtful.
On the whole, the fugitives from the Ohio, with their associates from
Cumberland or any other place in that quarter, can not threaten serious
danger to the city of New Orleans.