184351Editorial Note: The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (Jefferson Papers)
For all the significance of the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson’s papers reveal little about their composition. This is due in part to his caution about what he revealed in his letters at the time he wrote the resolutions. Too, for the remainder of his life he showed little interest in avowing or explaining his original authorship of the document. He did not seem displeased with the changes...
184352Editorial Note: Jefferson’s Letter to William Short (Jefferson Papers)
On 26 Mch. 1800 Jefferson promised William Short “a long letter containing a comprehensive view” of Short’s affairs under his management. Although he began writing the detailed epistle on 13 Apr., he worked on it, and presumably on several of the enclosures that he sent with it, “at intervals” for almost a month. After dispatching the letter, Jefferson realized that he had neglected to make a...
184353Editorial Note: Jefferson’s Reports of Balloting in the House of Representatives (Jefferson Papers)
On 12 Feb. Jefferson sent copies of Thomas Paine’s Compact Maritime , newly printed from manuscripts received in January, to eleven of his friends in Virginia. He accompanied at least some, and presumably all, of the pamphlets with brief letters, written at 7:00 a.m. and updated in a postscript at 1:00 p.m. , in which he gave a succinct account of the progress of voting in the House of...
184354Editorial Note: First Inaugural Address (Jefferson Papers)
At noon on 4 Mch. 1801 in the Senate chamber of the Capitol, fifty-seven-year-old Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office as the nation’s third president. The occasion was, in Margaret Bayard Smith’s often quoted words, “one of the most interesting scenes, a free people can ever witness.” According to Aaron Burr, the “Day was serene & temperate—The Concourse of people immense—all passed off...
184355Editorial Note: Notes on Resolution of American Debts to British Creditors, 13 June 1801 (Jefferson Papers)
Article 6 of the Jay Treaty provided for a bilateral commission to settle Americans’ pre-Revolutionary War debts to British creditors, but disagreements between the two sides brought the panel’s work to a halt in 1799. John Adams hoped that procedural changes might allow the commission to continue its work. However, when Rufus King suggested that the British might accept a lump-sum settlement...
184356Editorial Note: Drafting the Annual Message to Congress (Jefferson Papers)
Article 2, Section 3, of the Constitution specifies that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union.” Washington and Adams performed the function by addressing Congress at the opening of the session in the fall. Adams gave his last such address on 22 Nov. 1800, soon after the convening of the second session of the Sixth Congress (Vol....
184357Editorial Note: Memorandum on the Seneca Annuity (Jefferson Papers)
In 1797, the Seneca Indians sold the last substantial tract of land held in the United States by any of the Six Nations Iroquois, approximately four million acres west of the Genesee River in western New York State. The negotiation at a place called Big Tree (now Geneseo, New York) was under the auspices of the United States government and overseen, nominally, by Jeremiah Wadsworth as U.S....
184358Editorial Note: Bill to Establish a Government for the Territory of Columbia (Jefferson Papers)
The Residence Act of 1790 gave Congress until 1800, when the government moved to the Federal City, to decide what form its exclusive jurisdiction over the seat of the federal government, as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, would take, or if the right would be exercised at all. In his 22 Nov. 1800 address to Congress, President Adams reminded the legislators “to consider whether the local...
184359Editorial Note: Annual Message to Congress (Jefferson Papers)
On Monday, 7 Dec. 1801, the opening day of the first regular session of the Seventh Congress, a joint committee consisting of Joseph Anderson and James Jackson of the Senate and Samuel Smith, Roger Griswold, and Thomas T. Davis of the House of Representatives called on the president to report that both houses were “ready to receive any communications.” Jefferson had already decided that his...
184360Editorial Note: Presentation of the “Mammoth Cheese” (Jefferson Papers)
On New Year’s Day, 1802, Jefferson stood in the doorway of the President’s House to receive a most unusual gift from the citizens of Cheshire, Massachusetts: an enormous wheel of cheese, measuring more than 4 feet in diameter and weighing an estimated 1,235 pounds. Derisively dubbed the “Mammoth Cheese” by the Federalist press, the giant Cheshire cheese had become a national celebrity by the...