1. Howard enclosed the following resolution, “Unanimously assented to” by the legislature on 25 Nov.: “The General Assembly of Maryland, impressed with the liveliest sense of the important and disinterested services rendered to his country by the President of the United States, convinced that the prosperity of every free Goverment is promoted by the existence of rational confidence between the people and their trustees, and is injured by misplaced suspicion and ill founded jealousy; considering that public virtue receives its best reward in the approving voice of a grateful people, and that when this reward is denied to it, the noblest incentive to great and honorable actions, to generous zeal and magnanimous perseverance, is destroyed; observing with deep concern a series of efforts by indirect insinuations or open invective, to detach from the first magistrate of the union, the well earned confidence of his fellow citizens, think it their duty to declare, and they do hereby declare their unabated reliance on the integrity, Judgement and patriotism of the President of the United States” (DLC:GW).

Other copies of the resolution were transmitted to GW on 27 Nov. by Gustavus Scott (see below) and by Maryland governor John Hoskins Stone, who wrote: “Altho I am not called on Officially, yet I cannot refrain from gratifying my own inclination in transmitting to you a declaration made by the General Assembly of Maryland, and I do this with the more pleasure as it was an unanimous vote of both Houses, and I believe made with great sincerity” (ALS, MdAA).