1. JM forwarded copies and extracts of twenty-three letters exchanged between Joel Barlow and the duc de Bassano and between Barlow and the Department of State, beginning with Monroe’s instructions to the American minister on 26 July 1811 and concluding with Barlow’s 22 Apr. 1812 dispatch to Monroe (printed in ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States … (38 vols.; Washington, 1832–61). description ends , Foreign Relations, 3:509–21). On the same day that JM sent these documents to Congress, the National Intelligencer observed that the Hornet had returned from France “without fulfilling the wishes of the government, or furnishing any satisfactory evidence that the French government sincerely intends to do that justice to the United States which alone can place the relations of the two countries on an amicable footing.” “However it may have observed the revocation of its decrees, and thereby fulfilled its pledge, so far as its adversary could derive a pretext from them, against the U. States, its proceedings in respect to our just claims and expectations, on other important subjects, are altogether unsatisfactory.” The editorialist declined, however, to enlarge on these “vague remarks on the subject, or to anticipate the course which the National Councils may best judge adapted to it.”