TJ appears to have started compiling this list about topics drawn from State Department correspondence, which is similar to the list he wrote on 5 Oct. regarding issues raised by letters recently received at the War Department, soon after his return to Washington. He received on 21 Sep. Tobias Lear’s dispatches from Tripoli, in which Lear wrote of Danish consul Nicholas C. Nissen’s role as an intermediary during treaty negotiations and his aid to William Bainbridge, the highest-ranking U.S. captive at Tripoli (Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962– : Sec. of State Ser., Pres. Ser., Ret. Ser. description ends , 10:17-18; Jacob Wagner to TJ, 17 Sep.). Although it is not known when TJ received information from the State Department on the Baron de Bastrop, who also came up in the War Department correspondence, the reference to his monopoly likely related to Bastrop’s appeal for relief from Congress for the loss of his Spanish-granted fur-trading concession (Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962– : Sec. of State Ser., Pres. Ser., Ret. Ser. description ends , 9:172; Vol. 43:561–4). TJ could not have created the list before 3 Oct., the day he arrived back in Washington, when the State Department received William Hull’s dispatch of 11 Sep. requesting that, to facilitate the reconstruction of Detroit, the federal government suspend orders barring people from removing timber from nearby lands not formally ceded by Native Americans (Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962– : Sec. of State Ser., Pres. Ser., Ret. Ser. description ends , 10:317-18). On 10 Sep., the State Department received William C. C. Claiborne’s letter of 4 Aug. to Madison, in which he enclosed decrees of the New Orleans city council, one of which urged the housing of the public Guards in the guardhouse then occupied by some U.S. troops. Two other decrees urged Claiborne to approve the tearing down of the old customhouse and the fortifications and batteries surrounding the city. In a response to Mayor John Watkins, which he also enclosed, Claiborne wrote that because the buildings had been “delivered” to him as “national property,” he might lack authority to destroy them. He suggested that the council wait for permission about the customhouse, but because of the threat to public health posed by stagnant water he would consent to the leveling of the old fortifications, save two occupied by federal troops, so as to enable the filling in of ditches around them (same, 168-9; Rowland, Claiborne Letter Books description begins Dunbar Rowland, ed., The Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801–1816, Jackson, Miss., 1917, 6 vols. description ends , 3:143-4). Erving’s lre: as the London-based agent for claims by U.S. seamen, George W. Erving sent numerous communications to the State Department regarding impressed sailors. His letter of 20 Apr., enclosed in Madison’s letter of 22 July to TJ, reported on the detaining of American ships at sea and the “unjustifiable means for procuring our men which are not unfrequently resorted to by the British Officers.” More recently, the State Department had received Erving’s final statement of transactions taken on behalf of U.S. seamen (Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962– : Sec. of State Ser., Pres. Ser., Ret. Ser. description ends , 9:264-6, 448-9). For the selling of public lands in West Florida, see Madison to TJ, 30 Sep.

TJ may have considered the list a basis for discussions with Madison or with all the department heads. Either goal would have been frustrated by the extended absences from Washington of Madison and Robert Smith. Perhaps reflecting this frustration, TJ appears to have begun using these compiled notes with different intentions in mind. The entry for Spain included multiple subentries, with the subjects of the first two echoing part of TJ’s letter to Madison of 11 Oct. Most of the topics in the next four subentries TJ had discussed in his letter of 16 Sep. to the secretary of state. In this list he now went so far as to propose some names for the commissioners (Commrs.) mentioned more generically in that letter. TJ’s idea to empower John Armstrong to settle matters with Spain emerged once it became clear that renewed war between Great Britain and France was imminent. In letters of 23 Oct. to Madison and 24 Oct. to Robert Smith, he outlined the strategy of using the purchase of Florida as the principal means by which the United States might achieve such a settlement. That strategy became the basis for a proposed treaty with Spain, which was discussed during cabinet meetings in November (see notes on meetings at 12 and 19 Nov. and Proposal for a Treaty with Spain, 19 Nov.).

Under the entry for England, TJ seems to have been sketching out ideas, such as a tax on violators of U.S. neutrality as a means of recompensing victims, that made it into a draft of his 1805 annual message, though not the final version. Similarly, he included proposals for upgrading U.S. naval capacity, some of which would be paid for by a projected budget surplus (see Robert Smith to TJ, 10 Sep.; Annual Message to Congress, 3 Dec.).

It is uncertain when the administration began receiving reports on tensions with Tunis, but it may not have been until early November, when the U.S. frigate Congress, carrying on board the Tunisian ambassador, sailed into American waters (Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962– : Sec. of State Ser., Pres. Ser., Ret. Ser. description ends , 10:501; Hammuda Pasha, Bey of Tunis, to TJ, 17 July and 31 Aug.).