From George Washington to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 25 May 1796
To the United States Senate and House of Representatives
United States May the 25th 1796.
Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives,
The Measures, now in operation for taking possession of the posts of Detroit and Michilimackinac, render it proper, that provision should be made for extending to those places and any others alike circumstanced the civil authority of the north western territory. To do this will require an expence, to defray which the ordinary salaries of the Governor and Secretary of that territory appear to be incompetent. The forming of a new County or new Counties1 and the appointment of the various Officers, which the just exercise of Government must require, will oblige the Governor & Secretary to visit those places and to spend considerable time in making the arrangements necessary for introducing and establishing the Government of the United States. Congress will consider what provision will in this case be proper.2
G: Washington.
Copy, DLC:GW; copy, DNA: RG 233, entry 26, Journals; copy, Sotheby’s, Fine Manuscript and Printed Americana (sale 6618, 7 Nov. 1994), 158.
1. The copy in RG 233 renders the preceding five words as “new country, or new countries.”
2. The House of Representatives received the message on this date and referred it to a committee of three. An order discharged the committee on 1 June, and no action was taken regarding “an additional allowance to the governor and secretary” of the Northwest Territory in this Congress ( 8:485–86, 533).