To George Washington from Timothy Pickering, 4 December 1795
From Timothy Pickering
Department of State Decemr 4. 1795.
Sir
Some further demands against the Department of State have been presented relative to the expences of procuring documents from the British vice Admiralty Courts in the spoliation cases1
| amounting, with the former, to | Dollars 2163.80 |
| On the President’s first order2 I have received | 1000. |
| remain to be provided for | 1163.80 |
To which I must add the sum due to Captn George Smith (one of the early prisoners at Algiers) who was sent from thence by the Agents of Colo. Humphreys, with dispatches for the Government, and which he delivered last Spring at the office of State. His expences and compensation having been liquidated by the Secretary of the Treasury and myself, there appears due to him a balance of 1041.
| which the Secretary of the Treasury informs me must be discharged by the contingent fund. In the whole | 2204.80 |
I have therefore to request the President will be pleased to grant his order in my favor for two thousand five hundred dollars to discharge the abovementioned debts and further demands of the kind as they may be presented.3 I am very respectfully Sir &c.
Timothy Pickering
LB, DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters.
1. In late 1794 the United States, in response to complaints from merchants about British ship seizures, appointed a special agent to represent their interests in the admiralty courts of Great Britain, and the government agreed to absorb the expenses connected to those cases. Thomas FitzSimons was chairman of the Philadelphia merchants committee (see Edmund Randolph to GW, 23 Oct. 1794 [second letter], and n.1; and Randolph to GW, 1 Dec. 1794 [first letter], and n.1).
2. For the previous order, see Pickering’s second letter to GW of 14 Nov., n.2.
3. On 5 Dec., GW wrote to Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr.: “Pay to Timothy Pickering Esqr. Secretary of War, two thousand five hundred Dollars out of the fund appropriated for defraying the contingent charges of the Government of the United States; to be by him applyed to the objects mentioned in a communication to me of the 4th Instant” (LB, DLC:GW).