From George Washington to Timothy Pickering, 28 September 1796
To Timothy Pickering
Mount Vernon 28th Septr 179[6]
Sir,
Your letters of the 17th 20th & 20th instant, have been received.1
Enclosed you have a Warrant on the Secretary of the Treasury for two thousand dollars for contingent purposes, agreeably to your request.2
’Tis well to learn from Mr Monroe’s own pen, “that he trusted the French Councils relative to us were fixed, & that he should hear nothing more from the Directory on the subject he had frequently touched upon in his former letters.” If his conjectures are right, it will not be difficult to account for the cause.3
It affords much satisfaction that Judge Benson has accepted the Office of third Commissioner for deciding on the true St Croix.4
As no fit character occurs to me to supply the place of Mr Marsh as District Attorney, I request that you will get what information you can, on this head, & transmit it to me.5
Go: Washington
Copy, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; LB, DNA: RG 59, GW’s Correspondence with His Secretaries of State. The copy is docketed by GW. According to a transcript of this document, certified as “A true copy” by Octavius Pickering in 1866, Timothy Pickering docketed this letter: “recd Oct. 1” (MHi: Pickering Papers).
1. Pickering’s letter to GW of 17 Sept. is found at n.2 to Pickering’s first letter to GW of 20 September.
2. GW wrote Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., from Mount Vernon on this date: “Pay to Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State, Two thousand Dollars out of the Sum appropriated to defray the Contingent Charges of Government, to be applied by him to that use” (DS [retained copy], DLC:GW). Warrant 6548 for that purpose was issued on 1 Oct. (see GW to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 15 Feb. 1797, and n.1 to that document).
3. GW paraphrased a section of the letter of 12 June from James Monroe, then U.S. minister to France, to Pickering, which Pickering enclosed in his first letter to GW of 20 Sept. (see n.1 to that document). Monroe’s 12 June letter touched on issues pertaining to the resignation and recall of French minister Pierre-Auguste Adet, and the French Directory’s decree of 10 May 1796 that forced the departure from Paris of all foreigners, except those belonging to the diplomatic corps, who had not resided there prior to 14 July 1789.
4. For the appointment of Egbert Benson and the two other commissioners required under Article V of the 1794 Jay Treaty to settle the Saint Croix River boundary dispute, see Pickering to GW, 20 May 1796 (second letter), and n.6; GW’s first letter to the U.S. Senate, same date; GW to Henry Knox, 4 April 1796; Pickering to GW (second letter), 20 Sept. 1796; and GW to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 7 Dec., and n.7.
5. For the resignation of Amos Marsh as the federal district attorney for Vermont, see Pickering’s second letter to GW of 20 September. Pickering sent GW a recommendation for Marsh’s replacement on 28 Dec., and GW nominated Charles Marsh to the post two days later (see GW to the U.S. Senate, 30 Dec., and n.1 to that document).