1. The deputy collector at Norfolk, Va., was Francis Stubbs Taylor, a distant relation of James Madison. His letter has not been identified, but it probably reported that the captain of the British navy frigate Prevoyante had refused to cooperate with an inquiry about impressed seamen aboard his ship. According to a newspaper account of the incident, the inquiry was initiated after receipt of a letter asserting that there were “upwards of” twenty impressed men aboard the vessel. The captain responded to the man sent to investigate “that he would not suffer any man to come on board his ship to make enquiries” and “that he had Americans on board, and in irons; and that he should keep them until they agreed to serve his majesty, in defiance of the president of the United States, or any authority!” (Greenleaf’s New York Journal, & Patriotic Register, 20 Sept. 1796).

Pickering’s first letter to Rufus King, U.S. minister to Great Britain, written on this date expostulates that if “the dignity of the British Government will not permit an inquiry on board their Ships for American seamen, their doom is fixed for the war: and thus the rights of an independent neutral nation are to be sacrificed to British dignity! Justice requires that such inquiries and examinations should be made, because the liberation of our seamen will otherwise be impossible. For the British Government then to make professions of respect to the rights of our Citizens, and willingness to release them, and yet deny the only means of ascertaining those rights, is an insulting tantalism. If such orders have been given to the British Commanders,” then sending U.S. agents to discuss impressment “will be fruitless; and the sooner we know it the better. But I would fain hope other things; and if the British Government have any regard to our rights, any respect for our nation, and place any value on our friendship, they will even facilitate to us the means of releiving our oppressed citizens. The subject of our impressed seamen makes a part of your instructions: but the President now renews his desire that their relief may engage your special attention” (DNA: RG 59, Diplomatic and Consular Instructions; see also Pickering to GW, 10 June, and n.1).