MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 102:17525); entirely in TJ’s hand; on same sheet as Notes on Conversation with Tench Coxe, [25 Apr. 1798], being the final memorandum of notes on that page.

Near the end of March, before the occasion arose to nominate John Steele as secretary of Mississippi Territory, Adams had appointed him to a three-person commission to negotiate an acquisition of land from the Cherokee Nation. On 3 May the president nominated twenty-seven-year-old Joseph Hopkinson, a Philadelphia attorney and the son of Francis Hopkinson, to supervise a treaty for the sale of land from the Oneida tribe to the state of New York (ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1832–61, 38 vols. description ends , Indian Affairs, 1:636, 639–40; ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York and Oxford, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ).

Opinions on Hopkinson’s song, “Hail Columbia,” which was introduced in Philadelphia on 25 Apr., split along party lines. As a favor to an actor friend Hopkinson had penned lyrics to go with the president’s March, a melody already popular with Federalists. William Cobbett’s Porcupine’s Gazette praised the new song even before its premiere, and soon printed the lyrics. The Aurora, on the other hand, declared that the work “contained, amidst the most ridiculous bombast, the vilest adulation to the Anglo-Monarchical Party.” The song was an instant hit at its inaugural performance before a boisterous crowd in the New Theatre on Chestnut Street (Porcupine’s Gazette, 24, 28 Apr. 1798; Aurora, 27 Apr. 1798; Burton Alva Konkle, Joseph Hopkinson, 1770–1842: Jurist, Scholar, Inspirer of the Arts [Philadelphia, 1931], 73–84).