Cabinet Opinion on the Conyngham and the Pilgrim, 27 March 1794
Cabinet Opinion on the Conyngham and the Pilgrim
[Philadelphia, 27 March 1794]
At a meeting of the heads of departments and Attorney general. March 27. 1794.
The Secretary of War, the attorney general and the Secretary of State advise, that the Conyngham be not delivered up to the British owners; the secretary of the treasury dissenting.
The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of war, and the attorney general advise, that the Pilgrim be delivered up to the British owners; the Secretary of State dissenting.1
Alexandr Hamilton
H. Knox
Wm. Bradford.
Edm: Randolph.
DS (in Edmund Randolph’s writing), DLC:GW.
The British brigs Conyngham and Pilgrim were captured in October 1793 by the French privateer Sans Culottes de Marseilles and brought into the port of Baltimore ( , 612–13). The British claimed that both vessels had been captured within three miles of the U.S. coastline and thus were not subject to condemnation and sale according to the policy set by the United States. For the establishment of this policy, see Record of Cabinet Opinions, 22 Nov. 1793; for its application to these two cases, see Thomas Sim Lee to GW, 18 Oct. 1793, and notes 1 and 3 to that document; Thomas Jefferson to GW, 16 Nov. 1793, and notes 1, 2, and 9 to that document; and Alexander Campbell to Edmund Randolph, 6 Feb. 1794 (DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; see also , 16:202–3).
1. Randolph wrote to British minister George Hammond on 5 April: “The President of the United States having taken into consideration the cases of the Brigs Pilgrim and Conyngham; has instructed the Secretary of war to cause the former to be restored to her former British owners. The latter, not being proved to have been taken within the protection of our coasts, will no longer be detained from the Captors” (DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters).