whether this would produce a due equality: see, at 15 Dec., the third paragraph of the text of the annual message.

The section on foreign seamen deserting did not appear in the finished message. In the draft version, TJ may have suggested a need for legislation concerning the extradition of deserters from foreign warships. This was a politically volatile matter, for some deserted seamen, wanted by the British government for capital offenses, claimed to be American citizens and victims of impressment by the Royal Navy. In the much-publicized cases of Jonathan Robbins at Charleston and Hugh Jones at Norfolk, mariners accused of mutiny were extradited from the United States and taken to Jamaica for execution. In early 1801, a Virginia law passed in response to Jones’s extradition made it a felony to deliver up “to be transported beyond sea,” or elsewhere outside the United States, anyone entitled to the protection of the state’s laws. The penalty upon conviction would be imprisonment for a term of one to ten years. The act went on to declare that if the person who was transported outside the United States should be “tried and condemned by any court, either civil or military, for any criminal offence pretended to have been committed by such person at any place whatsoever,” and was then “actually executed under the authority of the court passing sentence upon him,” then whoever had turned that person over to foreign authorities could be “adjudged a felon, and suffer death in like manner as aiders, abettors and counsellors of murder in the first degree” under the state’s penal laws. British chargé d’affaires Edward Thornton declared that the law violated the Jay Treaty, which required the extradition of people accused of murder or forgery. Thornton filed a protest in mid-October 1802, only a few weeks before TJ began to draft the annual message, after William Davies, the collector of customs at Norfolk, cited the Virginia statute as the reason why he could not turn over a deserter from a British ship who had joined the crew of a U.S. revenue cutter. Madison sent a circular to U.S. district attorneys on 19 Oct., asking on the president’s behalf if laws in their states made any provision for the return of deserted seamen to the countries that claimed them. Writing to Thornton on 9 Nov., Madison stated that the law of nations did not require the delivering up of deserted sailors from ships of war and that the United States and Great Britain had not in the Jay Treaty extended the right of extradition to such cases. “It follows that the effect of applications in such cases must depend on the local laws existing on each side,” Madison wrote, and he suggested that in Britain the law would “immediately interpose its defence against a compulsive recovery of deserters.” In some American states the law was “probably similar” to that of Britain, and in other states “it is understood that the recovery of seamen deserting from foreign vessels can be effected by legal process.” In conclusion, Madison wrote, “the President cannot interpose the orders which are wished; however sensible he may be of the beneficial influence which friendly and reciprocal restorations of seamen could not fail to have on the commerce and confidence which he wishes to see cherished between the two nations” (Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962–, 33 vols. Sec. of State Ser., 1986–, 9 vols. Pres. Ser., 1984–, 6 vols. Ret. Ser., 2009–, 1 vol. description ends , Sec. of State Ser., 4:27–8, 32–3, 104–5; Acts Passed at a General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Richmond, on Monday the First Day of December One Thousand Eight Hundred [Richmond, 1801], 39; Vol. 31:180, 181–2n; Vol. 34:163–4, 206).

case of capn. barré: under Article 9 of the 1788 consular convention between the United States and France and a 1792 act to implement it, a consul or vice consul could obtain the arrest of deserters from his country’s ships, and federal courts were to give “all aid and assistance” necessary. In 1794, Jean Baptiste Henri Barré, the captain of the French corvette La Perdrix, deserted his ship in an American port, and a French vice consul asked John Laurance, who was then the U.S. district judge for New York, to issue a warrant for his arrest. The judge, declaring that the language of the convention required French officials to produce the original ship’s roll as proof that Barré was a deserter, refused to give the warrant. Edmund Randolph, the secretary of state, asked Attorney General William Bradford to seek a writ of mandamus in the Supreme Court to overturn Laurance’s decision. When the case was argued in the February 1795 term, the Supreme Court ruled that it did not have authority to issue a writ of mandamus, and Laurance’s ruling was left to stand. In 1800, in debates in the House of Representatives following the Robbins episode, Gallatin cited Barré’s case as an instance in which the executive branch left questions about the extradition of deserters to the courts (Parry, Consolidated Treaty Series description begins Clive Parry, ed., The Consolidated Treaty Series, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1969-81, 231 vols. description ends , 50:398–9; DHSC description begins Maeva Marcus and others, eds., The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, New York, 1985-2007, 8 vols. description ends , 6:522–6; Alexander J. Dallas, Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the Several Courts of the United States, and of Pennsylvania, Held at the Seat of the Federal Government, 3 vols. [Philadelphia, 1799], 3:42–54; 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 , 1:254–7).

Orders from Samuel Smith as acting secretary of the navy to Captain Richard Dale on 20 May 1801 were what Gallatin recalled as instructions given in may or june 1801. The orders, which were the result of a cabinet meeting of 15 May, empowered Dale to respond aggressively should he find that any of the Barbary Coast states were engaged in war against the United States (Vol. 34:114–15). different construction: with reference to the engagement between the Enterprize and a Tripolitan ship, TJ in his December 1801 annual message said that the navy was “unauthorised by the constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defence.” In February 1802, Robert Smith instructed the Mediterranean squadron to deposit the crews of captured Tripolitan ships “on the Barbary shore, or at any other convenient place, so as not to subject the U.S. to the expence of maintaining them” (NDBW description begins Dudley W. Knox, ed., Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, Washington, D.C., 1939-44, 6 vols., and Register of Officer Personnel and Ships’ Data, 1801-1807, Washington, D.C., 1945 description ends , 2:56; Vol. 36:59). For instructions to the navy in relation to morocco, see Robert Smith to TJ, 16, 27 Aug. (first letter), 1 Sep.

strike out the word “singular”: the passage that Gallatin sought to modify in the section on the dry dock does not appear in the final version of the message.

omitting the words “thought to come &a.”: the phrase does not appear in the finished message.

For the articles of agreement between the United States and the state of Georgia concerning western lands, see Vol. 37:300–1, 343–5.

TJ took out the section on missouri and the proposed expedition.

The Philadelphia publisher and bookseller Francis Nichols offered for sale George vancouver’s A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World; in Which the Coast of North-West America Has Been Carefully Examined and Accurately Surveyed, 6 vols. (London, 1801), the published record of the British naval expedition commanded by Vancouver from 1790 to 1795 (Philadelphia Gazette, 19 Nov.; H. Glenn Brown and Maude O. Brown, A Directory of the Book-Arts and Book Trade in Philadelphia to 1820: Including Painters and Engravers [New York, 1950], 89; DNB description begins H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, In Association with The British Academy, From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, Oxford, 2004, 60 vols. description ends ).

saying, after the word “war”: see the section on Louisiana in the message at 15 Dec. for TJ’s incorporation of Gallatin’s suggestion.

TJ did not excise the reference to the wabash salt spring and did not, in the final state of the message, mention the law pertaining to trading houses or the admission of Ohio as a new state. Regarding the approaching expiration of the law on trading houses, see TJ to the Senate and the House of Representatives, 18 Jan. (first message).

expences contemplated: see the section on finances in the message for TJ’s incorporation of Gallatin’s suggested wording.

propriety of repeating this year this admonition: in his first annual message in 1801, TJ noted that “the great mass of public offices” could only be reduced through legislation (Vol. 36:60–1).

In the finished message, TJ omitted the subject of discontinued offices.

In the section on internal taxes, TJ evidently removed the clause “We have had no occasion” and substituted Gallatin’s phrasing, “it has not yet been thought necessary.”

law of last session: the “Act making provision for the redemption of the whole of the Public Debt of the United States,” passed 29 Apr. (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 , 2:167–70; Vol. 37:158–9n). What Gallatin characterized as misrepresentation of the statute by Federalists focused on three of its provisions: one that allowed borrowing to cover payments due in Holland from 1803 to 1806, at five percent annual interest and five percent in charges, in which case a sum equal to what was deferred on the European debt would be applied to “the present debt of the United States”; a provision that authorized the use of the Bank of the United States, or another institution or an individual, as agent for the payment of the overseas debt, for a commission of one fourth of one percent, which critics said would amount to $5,000 per year; and authorization for the employment of an agent in Europe, with compensation of up to $3,000 per annum (New-York Evening Post, 6 May; Boston Gazette, 27 May). In a paragraph published on 11 Oct. under the title “Genevan Financiering,” the editors of the Trenton Federalist commented: “Thus it appears that our present rulers, so far from relieving us from debt, mean only to change our creditors, by providing that Government might at a great expense ‘Borrow from Peter to pay Paul.’ ” For TJ’s handling of this issue in the finished message, see, in the text at 15 Dec., the section on internal taxes and reloans.

TJ removed all reference to a statement to come from the commissioners of the sinking fund.

specific authority: the act for military appropriations for 1803, approved 3 Mch., allocated up to $20,000 for defraying expenses of treaties with Indians. The sum would include “any unexpended balance of former appropriations for the same object” (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 , 2:227–8).

It is not known if TJ made any alteration to the first paragraph of the message in accordance with Gallatin’s suggestions.