Benjamin Franklin Papers
Documents filtered by: Recipient="American Commissioners" AND Period="Confederation Period"
sorted by: editorial placement
Permanent link for this document:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-43-02-0268

John Jay to the American Commissioners, 14 January 1785

John Jay to the American Commissioners

LS and two copies:4 National Archives

Office for Foreign Affairs New York
14th. January 1785

Gentlemen,

On the 21st. Ultimo I accepted the Place of Secretary for foreign Affairs. All the foreign letters which had been received during the recess of Congress were then and are still in the hands of a Committee to whom they had been referred—none have since arrived.—5

The adjournment from Trenton to this Place necessarily occasioned delay in business—6 Congress yesterday made a House, and I expect that some of these more important measures will soon be matured. By the next opportunity I flatter myself with having the pleasure of writing to you more particularly. Judges are nominated and will doubtless be appointed to decide the interfering claims of Massachusetts and New York.7 Advices just received give reason to apprehend an attack of the Cheroquees on Kentucky, a settlement which encreases with a degree of rapidity scarcely credible.8 It is rumored but not ascertained that the Spaniards encourage them.—

I have the honor to be Gentlemen Your most Obt. & hum. servt.

John Jay

To the Honorable John Adams, Benjn. Franklin & Thos. Jefferson
Esqrs.

Notation:9 New York Janry. 14. 1785 from Mr Jay Secry of Foreign Affairs

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

4One of the copies is in Humphreys’ letterbook, where he noted that the letter “came to hand just at the time of making out the Dispatches for the March Packet.”

5The committee had already reported to Congress on Dec. 9, 1784. The most important of its recommendations was the appointment of a minister to Great Britain: JCC, XXVII, 674–7.

6On Dec. 23, 1784, Congress resolved to move to New York while “a federal town” was built on the banks of the Delaware river. Motions to remain in Trenton or to move to Philadelphia or Newport were defeated: JCC, XXVII, 699–704.

7In late 1783 Massachusetts asserted a claim under its charter of 1628 to lands in western New York. The following year Congress appointed a federal court, but could not find enough judges to form a quorum. The dispute was settled in late 1786 at a meeting at Hartford of representatives from the two states: H. James Henderson, Party Politics in the Continental Congress (New York, 1974), pp. 357–9.

8On Jan. 13 a etter from Arthur Campbell warning of an imminent Cherokee assault on the Kentucky settlements was read in Congress. Kentucky had 12,000 inhabitants in 1783 and 30,000 in 1784: JCC, XXVIII, 4; Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850 (3rd ed., Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2008), p. 30.

9In Humphreys’ hand.

Index Entries