To George Washington from Richard Dobbs Spaight, 10 March 1795
From Richard Dobbs Spaight
No. Carolina Newbern March 10th 1795
Sir,
I have the Honor to enclose to you an Authenticated Copy of an Act of the General Assembly of this State entitled “An Act ratifying an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America” also an Act entitled “An Act for Ceding to the United States the Jurisdiction of certain Lands on Shell Castle Island in the harbour of Ocacock.”1 I am &c.
R. D. Spaight
LB, Nc-Ar: Governors’ Letterbooks.
1. The enclosed copies have not been identified, but for the acts, see Laws of North-Carolina. At a General Assembly, begun and held at the City of Raleigh, on the thirtieth Day of December, in the Year of our Lord One thousand seven hundred and ninety-four, and in the Nineteenth Year of the Independence of the said State: Being the First Session of the said Assembly (Halifax, N.C.; [1795]), 4–5. GW enclosed copies of both acts with his second message to Congress of 29 Jan. 1796 (DNA: RG 46, entry 47). The legislature had ratified the Eleventh Amendment; the lands on Shell Castle Island were ceded “for the purpose of erecting a lighted beacon thereon.”