Thomas Jefferson Papers

From Thomas Jefferson to the House of Representatives, 15 March 1804

To the House of Representatives

To the House of Representatives
of the United States
.

Agreeably to the request of the Senate and House of Representatives delivered me by their joint committee of inrolled bills, I now return1 the inrolled bill, intituled ‘An act for the relief of the captors of the Moorish armed ships Meshouda & Mirboha’ to the House of Representatives in which it originated.

Th: Jefferson

Mar. 15. 1804.

RC (DNA: RG 233, PM, 8th Cong., 1st sess.); endorsed by a clerk. PoC (DLC). RC (DNA: RG 46, LPPM, 8th Cong., 1st sess.); addressed to the Senate; endorsed by a clerk. PoC (DLC). Notation in SJL: “returning incorrect roll of a bill.”

return the inrolled bill: on 12 Mch., the House of Representatives passed a resolution instructing the Joint Committee for Enrolled Bills to inform the president of a variance between the engrossed and enrolled versions of a bill authorizing compensation for the captors of the Moroccan cruisers Meshouda and Mirboka and to request that he return the enrolled bill to the House for correction. TJ had originally signed the bill on 24 Feb. The corrected version was enacted into law on 19 Mch. (JHR description begins Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1826, 9 vols. description ends , 4:600, 641, 650; JS description begins Journal of the Senate of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1820-21, 5 vols. description ends , 3:364, 374, 378; U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855-56, 8 vols. description ends , 6:54). For the capture and subsequent return of the Moroccan cruisers, see Vol. 41:282-3n, 490, 491-2n, 508-10, 672-4; Vol. 42:82-4.

1In the Senate version, “I have returned.”

Index Entries