To George Washington from Timothy Pickering, 27 January 1797
From Timothy Pickering
Department of State Jany 27. 1797.
The Secretary of State has the honor to lay before the President of the U. States the letters received this day from Mr King,1 & the Commissioners of the U.S. in London.2
Also the draught of a message to the Senate containing nominations of three persons to be inspectors in No. Carolina. At the last Session they were commissioned, one as Collector and the other two as Surveyors, for the respective ports mentioned: but the Senate were out of session before it was discovered that the gentlemen were not appointed Inspectors. To remedy this omission the nomination is now submitted.3
T. Pickering
ALS, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters. No reply to Pickering from GW has been found.
1. The letters that Pickering received on this date from Rufus King, U.S. minister to Great Britain, were those dated 10 and 16 Oct. 1796. In a letter to King of 15 Feb. 1797, Pickering acknowledged those letters and indicated that they were “the last that have come to hand” (DNA: RG 59, Diplomatic and Consular Instructions, 1791–1801). King’s letters to Pickering of 10 and 16 Oct. 1796 have not been identified.
2. The letters to Pickering from Christopher Gore and William Pinkney, the U.S. commissioners in London appointed under Article VII of the Jay Treaty to adjust claims of American merchants, have not been identified. Gore and Pinkney had written Pickering on 27 Aug. 1796 about their meeting that month with the British members of the commission (see Pickering to GW, 15 Oct. 1796, and n.2). They again wrote Pickering on 16 Dec. 1796 about issues pertaining to the commission’s jurisdiction over decrees of the British High Court of Appeals in prize cases. Gore and Pinkney advised Pickering “that their opinions on the power of the board to determine its own jurisdiction had been written, and would be presented to the British commissioners for their perusal” (, 1:324). For more on the commission’s difficulties concerning jurisdictional issues, see King to GW, 6 Feb., and n.4.
3. Pickering’s draft has not been identified, but it must have been a draft of GW’s message to the U.S. Senate of this date (see GW to the U.S. Senate, this date, and the source note to that document). In February 1795, Enoch Sawyer had been appointed customs collector for the district of Camden, N.C., and at that same time, GW had nominated Frederick Sawyer and Levi Blount as surveyors for ports in North Carolina (see GW to the U.S. Senate, 2 Feb. 1795 [second letter]).