From Thomas Jefferson to the Senate and the House of Representatives, 7 March 1804
To the Senate and the House of Representatives
To the Senate and
House of Representatives of the US.
I communicate to Congress an Extract of a letter from Governor Claiborne to the Secretary of state, with one which it covered, for their information as to the present state of the subject to which they relate.
Th: Jefferson
Mar. 7. 1804.
RC (DNA: RG 46, LPPM, 8th Cong., 1st sess.); endorsed by a Senate clerk. RC (DNA: RG 233, PM, 8th Cong., 1st sess.); endorsed by a House clerk. Recorded in SJL with notation “extract. Claiborne’s lre on importn slaves.” Enclosures: (1) Extract of a letter from William C. C. Claiborne to Madison, dated New Orleans, 31 Jan. 1804, reporting the recent arrival of a vessel containing “fifty African Negroes for Sale”; Claiborne immediately applied to the city’s former Spanish contador, Gilbert Leonard, for information on Spanish laws and customs regarding the African slave trade; Claiborne encloses Leonard’s reply and states that Spain had permitted the importation of slaves to Louisiana; doubting his authority to forbid the sale, Claiborne has left the importer “to pursue his own wishes” (Trs in same). (2) Leonard to Claiborne, dated New Orleans, 25 Jan. 1804, replying to Claiborne’s query regarding the importation of slaves to Louisiana; he states that an order by Carlos IV, dated Aranjuez, 24 Jan. 1793, expressly removed the prohibition of the slave trade, and the decree was subsequently promulgated by Don Ramón de López y Angulo, the former intendant of New Orleans, on 29 Nov. 1800; since the retrocession of Louisiana by Spain to France, “but pending the existence and the exercise of the Spanish authorities,” three French vessels, carrying a total of 463 Africans, have arrived at New Orleans; all of the slaves were consigned to Jean François Merieult; Leonard adds that although the royal edict confined the trade to Spanish vessels with Spanish captains, authorities in Louisiana after the retrocession extended the privilege to the French as well; if the United States decides to alter Spanish policy regarding the slave trade, Leonard recommends that the changes “should be promulgated a reasonable time anterior to the interdiction of such commercial expeditions as may have been projected under and permitted by the Government of France or Spain” prior to the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States (RC in DNA: RG 59, TP, Orleans; Tr in DNA: RG 233, PM).
Lewis Harvie presented TJ’s message, with its enclosures, to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 8 Mch. After reading them, both houses ordered the papers to lie on the table (, 3:371; , 4:629). They were subsequently published as Message from the President of the United States, Communicating to Congress, An Extract of a Letter from Governor Claiborne to the Secretary of State … 8th March, 1804 (Washington, D.C., 1804).