RC (DLC); in a clerk’s hand, with signature and a minor correction by Coxe; at foot of text: “The Secretary of State”; endorsed by TJ as received 7 May 1793 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Coxe’s Circular to Collectors of the Customs, 7 May 1793, enclosing three copies of sea letters received from the Department of State and signed by the President and the Secretary of State that were to be issued to every vessel wholly and bona fide owned by United States citizens once the captain had sworn to that effect under oath on the certificate annexed to the sea letter; giving instructions for filling in the blanks on the English and Dutch copies of the sea letters; cautioning that sea letters, though issuable to foreign-built ships owned by American citizens on 15 May 1789 or actually acquired since then, were not to be given to vessels owned in any part, directly or indirectly, by foreigners and ordering the collectors to “take the most especial care to prevent deceptions and collusions in that respect”; advising that the French copy of the sea letters had been delayed but will probably be completed before this circular went out and will appear “on the back of the present form” to be filled in the same way; and giving directions for keeping records and submitting a quarterly return of sea letters issued (two printed forms in DLC; addressed respectively to James M. Lingan, collector for Georgetown, Maryland, and John Fitzgerald, collector for Alexandria, Virginia; with blanks for the day, the port, Coxe’s signature, and the collector’s name filled in by a clerk).

The short letter of last week was enclosed in Coxe to TJ, 4 May 1793. Alexander Hamilton issued a revised version of Coxe’s Instructions to the collectors in his own name around the middle of May, differing from the enclosed circular mainly in its inclusion of directions on how to fill in the French form of the ship passports (Syrett, Hamilton description begins Harold C. Syrett and others, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, New York, 1961–87, 27 vols. description ends , xiv, 442–7). Acts passed in September 1789 and December 1792 stipulated that foreign built ships acquired by United States citizens after the 15th. of May 1789 were not entitled to registry as American vessels, and were thus ineligible for the reduced customs duties which this designation carried with it (Annals description begins Annals of the Congress of the United States: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … Compiled from Authentic Materials, Washington, D.C., Gales & Seaton, 1834–56, 42 vols. All editions are undependable and pagination varies from one printing to another. The first two volumes of the set cited here have “Compiled … by Joseph Gales, Senior” on the title page and bear the caption “Gales & Seatons History” on verso and “of Debates in Congress” on recto pages. The remaining volumes bear the caption “History of Congress” on both recto and verso pages. Those using the first two volumes with the latter caption will need to employ the date of the debate or the indexes of debates and speakers. description ends , ii, 2217, iii, 1397). Coxe was concerned with setting up procedures for establishing that such unregistered vessels were bona fide American owned and accordingly entitled to receive sea letters.