Notes on Treaties and Neutrality, [29–30 July 1793]
Notes on Treaties and Neutrality
[29–30 July 1793]
| 17.F. | Enemy vessels having made2 prizes shall have no shelter. If forced by weather, to retire as soon as possible.3 |
| 18.F. 16.D. 9.P. | shipwrecked vessels shall have all friendly assistance.—P. expressly to repair. |
| 19.F. 17.D. 18.P. | ships public and of war or private and of merchants forced through stress of weather, pursuit of pirates, or enemies or any other urgent necessity permitted to provide themselves with all things needful for reparation of their ships.—P. extends this to all4 vessels. |
| 22.F. | enemies not to fit their privateers, to sell what they have taken, or to exchange ships or merchandize. |
| 22.D. 19.P. | salvo of art. 9. 10. 17. 22. of treaty with France.—P. salvo of 17th. |
‘but it is not meant that these rules shall contravene, as of right they cannot, the provisions of the treaties of the US, and particularly the 17th. 18th. 19th. and 22d. articles of that with France, the 16th. 17th. and 22d. of that with the UN. and the 9th. 18th. and 19th. of that with Prussia.’
MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 91: 15616); entirely in TJ’s hand; undated, but probably set down on 29 or 30 July 1793, with summary statement written on latter date and one word of the heading added at a later date (see note 1 below). MS (DLC: Alexander Hamilton Papers); entirely in TJ’s hand; undated; consists of final summary statement only. Recorded in SJPL under 1 Aug. 1793: “homologous articles of treaties.”
TJ evidently wrote these notes in two stages between 29 July 1793, when the Cabinet decided that an investigation was needed of the relationship between existing American treaty obligations and a proposed set of neutrality rules on equipping belligerent vessels in American ports, and 30 July 1793, when the Cabinet considered a preliminary statement of these obligations drafted while it met by Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Randolph (Notes of Cabinet Meeting on Neutrality, 29, 30 July 1793; , 210). The different ink of the summary statement and the extra space above it suggest that TJ set down the list of treaty obligations before the Cabinet met on 30 July and added the statement in response to the document Hamilton and Randolph prepared during that meeting, later making a copy of the latter for Hamilton’s use. For the articles cited by TJ from the treaties of amity and commerce with France, the Netherlands, and Prussia, see , ii, 16–18, 19–20, 73–4, 78, 168, 174–5.
1. Word interlined in a different ink at a later date in place of “Commensurate.”
2. Preceding two words interlined in place of “with their.”
3. Sentence added.
4. TJ here canceled “articles.”