_December 20, 1836_.
The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
SIR: On the morning of the 15th instant I performed the painful duty
of reporting to you orally the destruction of the General Post-Office
building by fire, and received your instructions to inquire into the
cause and extent of the calamity, for the purpose of enabling you to
make a communication to Congress.
A few hours afterwards I received, through the chairman of the Committee
on the Post-Office and Post-Roads of the House of Representatives, an
official copy of a resolution adopted by that House, instructing the
committee to institute a similar inquiry, and the chairman asked for
such information as it was in my power to give. The investigation
directed by you was thus rendered unnecessary.
The corporation of the city of Washington with honorable promptitude
offered the Department the use of the west wing of the City Hall, now
occupied by the mayor and councils and their officers and the officers
of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. The proprietors of the medical
college also tendered the use of their building on E street, and offers
were made of several other buildings in the central parts of the city.
An examination was made of such as promise by their magnitude to afford
sufficient room for the force employed in the Department, but none
were found equal in the commodiousness of their interior structure and
abundant room to Fuller's Hotel, opposite the buildings occupied by
the Treasury Department on Pennsylvania avenue. That building has been
obtained on terms which the accompanying papers (marked 1 and 2) will
fully exhibit. The business of the Department will be immediately
resumed in that building.
The agreement with Mr. Fuller will make necessary an immediate
appropriation by Congress, and upon that body will devolve also the duty
of providing for the payment of the rent, if they shall approve of the
arrangement.
In the meantime steps have been taken to secure all that is valuable in
the ruins of the Post-Office building, and to protect from the weather
the walls of so much of it as was occupied by the General Post-Office
which stand firm.
The Department has no fund at command out of which the services
necessary in the accomplishment of these objects can be paid for, nor
has it the means to replace the furniture which has been lost and must
be immediately obtained to enable the clerks to proceed with their
current business.
These facts I deem it my duty to report to you, that you may recommend
to Congress such measures thereupon as you may deem expedient.
With the highest respect, your obedient servant,