1. The Marine Committee, in a letter of 5 May, had requested Trumbull to prepare the Spy “to carry dispatches to France.” These were the ratified copies of the Franco-American treaties received by Trumbull in a letter from the Committee for Foreign Affairs dated 19 May (Charles Oscar Paullin, ed., Outletters of the Continental Marine Committee and Board of Admiralty, 2 vols., N.Y., 1914, 1:235; MHS, Colls. description begins Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections and Proceedings. description ends , 7th ser., 2 [1902]:234; see also Foreign Affairs Committee to [Jesse] Brown, in Burnett, ed., Letters of Members description begins Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Washington, 1921–1936; 8 vols. description ends , 3:258–259, and note 3). On the morning of 3 July the Spy reached Brest, and the first set of the ratifications to arrive in France was immediately sent to Paris, where it was received on the 8 th (Thomas Simpson to the Commissioners, 3 July, below; JA to James Lovell, 9 July, calendared below).

JA, who informed Arthur Lee of the newly arrived ratifications in a letter of [8 July] (MH-H: Lee Papers), apparently added one of the sets that arrived later to his personal files, for the Adams Papers contain ratified copies of the treaties signed and sealed by President Henry Laurens.

2. For the Commissioners’ response to Trumbull’s requests regarding the Spy, see their letters of J. D. Schweighauser and Trumbull (both below, that to Schweighauser quoted in note 1 there). On its return voyage the Spy was captured by a Jersey privateer (Robert Niles to Benjamin Franklin, 27 Oct., Cal. Franklin Papers, A.P.S. description begins I. Minis Hays, comp., Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1908; 5 vols. description ends , 1:522).