From George Washington to the U.S. Senate, 26 February 1796
To the United States Senate
United States February 26th 1796
Gentlemen of the Senate
I send herewith the Treaty concluded on the 27th of October last between the United States and Spain, by their respective Plenipotentiaries.1
The communications to the Senate referred to in my message of the 16th of December 1793, contain the instructions to the Commissioners of the United States, Messrs Carmichael & Short, and various details relative to the negociations with Spain. Herewith I transmit copies of the documents authorizing Mr Pinckney, the Envoy Extraordinary from the United States to the Court of Spain, to conclude the Negociation, agreeably to the original instructions above mentioned; and to adjust the claims of the United States for the Spoliations committed by the armed vessels of his Catholic Majesty on the commerce of our Citizens.2
The numerous papers exhibiting the progress of the negociation, under the conduct of Mr Pinckney, being in the French and Spanish languages, will be communicated to the Senate as soon as the translations which appear necessary shall be completed.3
Go: Washington
LS, DNA: RG 46, entry 53; copy, DNA: RG 59, Reports of the Secretary of State to the President and Congress; copy, DLC:GW.
1. A copy of the Treaty of San Lorenzo, certified as a “true copy” by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, is filed with this letter in DNA: RG 46 (see also ASP, Foreign Relations, 1:546–49).
2. These documents, dated 24 Nov. 1794, are filed with this letter in DNA: RG 46 (see also ASP, Foreign Relations, 1:533–34).
3. GW transmitted the remaining papers to the Senate with a brief message of 29 Feb. (copy, DLC:GW). The documents, however, are filed with this letter in DNA: RG 46 (see also ASP, Foreign Relations, 1:534–46). They include instructions from Edmund Randolph to Pinckney dated 3, 8, and 28 Nov. 1794; Pinckney’s dispatches to the state department of 21 July, 11 Aug., and 1 and 28 Oct. 1795; Pinckney’s letters to the Spanish minister for foreign affairs of 10 and 29 July, 6, 10, 29, and 30 Aug., 3, 13, and 20 Sept., and 5, 9, 11, 16, 20, 23, and 24 Oct. 1795; the minister’s letters to Pinckney of 14 and 29 Aug., 15 and 23 Sept., and 7, 12, 18, 20, 22, and 28 Oct. 1795; the memoir submitted with Pinckey’s letter to the minister of 10 Aug. 1795; Pinckney’s notes on a convention proposed by the minister, 25 Sept. 1795; and Pinckney’s analysis of the treaty.