Thomas Jefferson Papers

To Thomas Jefferson from Henry Lee, 28 June 1793

From Henry Lee

Richmond June 28th. 1793.

Sir

I beg leave to transmit to you the enclosed copy of a letter from Colonel Newton.

The President will if he thinks proper direct measures to avert the apprehended evil.

To the general Government I conceive belongs the right to act on the subject.

The law in this Commonwealth relative thereto contemplates the Agency of the officers of the Customs who are now responsible only to the General Government and therefore could not be used by state Authority, if the same was constitutionally admissible. I have the honor to be Sir with perfect respect your ob: Ser.

Henry Lee

RC (DLC); in a clerk’s hand except for complimentary close and signature; endorsed by TJ as received 5 July 1793 and so recorded in SJL. FC (Vi: Executive Letter Book). Enclosure: Thomas Newton, Jr., to Lee, Norfolk, 16 June 1793, reporting that a form of plague has broken out in the Windward Islands; quoting in full the 8 June 1793 proclamation of South Carolina Governor William Moultrie just received from Charleston stating that he has credible information to this effect and, to prevent the pestilence from being introduced into the state, enjoining all pilots boarding vessels coming from Grenada and the other islands to remain below deck for examination with their crews by physicians of the port; advising that he has other but less reliable accounts of the same purport; and relating that the British fleet was in Barbardos on 28 May but had not attacked Martinique (Tr in DLC). Enclosed in second Memorandum to George Washington, [11 July 1793], and Tobias Lear to TJ, 15 July 1793.

For the 1783 law in this commonwealth relative to quarantine, see Hening, description begins William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, Richmond, 1809–23, 13 vols. description ends xi, 329–31.

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