1. Pickering referred to Gen. Anthony Wayne’s letter to him of 15 May (see Knopf, Wayne, description begins Richard C. Knopf, ed. Anthony Wayne, a Name in Arms: Soldier, Diplomat, Defender of Expansion Westward of a Nation; The Wayne-Knox-Pickering-McHenry Correspondence. Pittsburgh, 1960. description ends 415–19). The secretary sent an initial response on 27 June in which he informed Wayne that GW had “ridden abroad” and had taken the general’s communication with him. Pickering then sent a detailed answer on 29 June (all in PHi: Wayne Papers). The secretary wrote a third letter to Wayne on 30 June concerning additional information about the Jay Treaty, which may have been the one mentioned to GW. A draft of that letter has not been found. In the ALS of the 30 June letter, Pickering expressed his regret that he could not send a copy of the treaty to Wayne. The Senate, he explained, had given its “consent and advice to the President, to ratify the treaty, on condition” of a suspension of that part of Article XII concerning trade with the British West Indies and for GW to open further negotiations on that trade. “It seems probable,” Pickering wrote, that “the British court will make no difficulty in agreeing to the suspension requested. In the mean time … the treaty cannot be put in operation; and the Senate have not thought fit to have it published. Some of the members, however, who were opposed to the ratification, are freely handing it about, and probably it will soon be in the news-papers, where a sketch has already appeared; as you will see by the inclosed, but whether correct or otherwise I cannot say.”

Pickering then discussed promotions in the fifth sublegion. He also notified Wayne that when Congress adjourned again in December, and “should the president so direct,” Pickering desired to present Congress “an accurate state of the legion.” He instructed Wayne “to order the necessary returns, exhibiting beside what is usual, the periods at which all the enlistments of the non-commissioned officers and soldiers will expire.” Before closing, Pickering informed Wayne that dispatches from William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, had arrived. They contained a letter from John McKee of 27 May, of which Pickering enclosed an extract “indicating the return of the Cherokees who for some time have resided among the Indians northward of the Ohio” (PHi: Wayne Papers; see also Knopf, Wayne, description begins Richard C. Knopf, ed. Anthony Wayne, a Name in Arms: Soldier, Diplomat, Defender of Expansion Westward of a Nation; The Wayne-Knox-Pickering-McHenry Correspondence. Pittsburgh, 1960. description ends 435–36).

2. The LB copy has “afternoon.”