Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow MESSAGE TO BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS; RELATIVE TO A FRENCH PRIVATEER. - The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811)

Return to Title Page for The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811)

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

MESSAGE TO BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS; RELATIVE TO A FRENCH PRIVATEER. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


MESSAGE TO BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS;

RELATIVE TO A FRENCH PRIVATEER.

5 February, 1798.

Gentlemen of the Senate, and
Gentlemen of the House of Representatives,

I have received a letter from his Excellency Charles Pinckney, Esquire, Governor of the State of South Carolina, dated on the twenty-second of October, 1797, inclosing a number of depositions of witnesses to several captures and outrages committed within and near the limits of the United States by a French privateer belonging to Cape François or Monte Christo, called the Vertitude or Fortitude, and commanded by a person of the name of Jordon or Jourdain, and particularly upon an English merchant ship, named the Oracabissa, which he first plundered, and then burned with the rest of her cargo of great value, within the territory of the United States, in the harbor of Charleston, on the seventeenth day of October last, copies of which letter and depositions, and also of several other depositions relative to the same subject, received from the collector of Charleston, are herewith communicated.

Whenever the channels of diplomatical communication between the United States and France shall be opened, I shall demand satisfaction for the insult and reparation for the injury.

I have transmitted these papers to Congress, not so much for the purpose of communicating an account of so daring a violation of the territory of the United States, as to show the propriety and necessity of enabling the executive authority of government to take measures for protecting the citizens of the United States, and such foreigners as have a right to enjoy their peace and the protection of their laws within their limits, in that as well as some other harbors, which are equally exposed.

John Adams.