1. For this date, see James McHenry to GW, 10 June, n.1.

2. GW is referring to James Cole Mountflorence’s letter to Thomas Blount dated 8 March, printed as an enclosure with McHenry to GW, 10 June. Pickering wrote Secretary of War James McHenry on 10 June: “I inclose your letter to the President covering that of Montflorence, whose handwriting we have in this office. He is the Chancellor to Mr Skipwith, the Consul Genl of the U.S. at Paris! & one of the clerks thinks he once acted as secretary to Mr Monroe! or was employed in copying his letters, some of which came to this office. So no doubt the anonymous letters have been written in concert. … The President wishes you to dine with him to-morrow (Saturday) at 3 o’clock. Capt. O’Brien is to dine with him” (MiU-C: James McHenry Papers). Fulwar Skipwith apparently considered serving as James Monroe’s secretary at the beginning of his tenure as U.S. minister to France (see Aaron Burr to Monroe, 5 June 1794, in Papers of James Monroe, description begins Daniel Preston et al., eds. The Papers of James Monroe. 5 vols. to date. Westport, Conn., and Santa Barbara, Calif., 2003–. description ends 3:5).

3. When Pickering responded on 10 June to an unidentified letter from Spanish chargé Josef Ignacio de Viar dated 6 June, he promised “due inquiry” into a complaint about Capt. Zebulon Pike, who commanded at Fort Massac. Pickering then continued: “In the mean time Sir, I will observe to you, that Captain Pike sustains the reputation of a judicious and prudent officer, of a disposition to conciliate, not to insult, but who at the same time knows how to do his duty.

“I will also observe, that Fort Massac was established to guard the passage of the Ohio, and consequently that Captn Pike must have had orders to be vigilant, and suffer no vessels to pass, at least no armed vessels, until they had given an account of themselves.” Seeing a vessel “ascending the Ohio on the opposite shore, indicating an intention to pass Fort Massac unnoticed,” Pike required “in the usual military stile, that the armed vessel should approach his Fort and show that she was a friend, in pursuit of a lawful business. For although a flag of truce is to protect the bearer yet it is only to protect when it approaches, in the most direct and proper manner, the nearest guard or post. This is a plain military rule, hardly to be dispensed with, and when there is the appearance of a design to evade it, the officer commanding the guard or post would be culpable in the extreme if he did not stop the flag” (DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters).