To Thomas Jefferson from James Madison, 10 January 1796
From James Madison
Philadelphia, January 10, 1796.
Dear Sir
The House of Representatives have been latterly occupied with a pretty curious affair. Certain Traders and others, of Detroit, entered into a contract with certain individuals of the United States, for obtaining the peninsula formed by Lakes Huron and Michigan, and containing 20 or 30 millions of acres of valuable land. The traders, by means of their influence over the Indians, were to extinguish the Indian Title; and the other party, by means of their influence, and that of their connexions, with Congress, to extinguish the title of the United States. The Country was to be divided into shares, of which the greater part was to be disposed of by the party who had to deal with Congress. The reason of this, obvious enough in itself, has been sufficiently established by proof. Ever since the session commenced, two of the partners deputed to work the project through Congress have been employed with great industry, opening themselves in different degrees and forms, to different members, according to circumstances. Some of the members, who scented the criminality of the object, waited for a full disclosure. Others, through an eagerness of some sort or other, ran with the tale first to the President, and then into the House of Representatives, without concerting or considering a single step that ought to follow. In consequence of the information to the President, and a representation to the District Judge of the United States, a warrant issued, and the offenders were taken into custody by the Marshal. The House could not be prevailed on to take a single day to consider the subject, and a warrant issued from the Speaker, also, by virtue of which the Prisoners were transferred to the Sergeant-at-arms. For the proceedings which have ensued, I must refer you to the newspapers. They ended in the discharge of one of the men, and in the reprimand of the other at the bar, and remanding him to Gaol, where he now lies. In the arguments of the Counsel, and in the debates in the House, the want of jurisdiction in such a case over persons not members of the body was insisted on, but was overruled by a very great majority. There cannot be the least doubt, either of the turpitude of the charge, or the guilt of the accused; but it will be difficult, I believe, to deduce the privilege from the Constitution, or to limit it in practice, or even to find a precedent for it in the arbitrary claims of the British House of Commons. What an engine may such a privilege become, in the hands of a body once corrupted, for protecting its corruptions against public animadversion, under the pretext of maintaining its dignity and preserving the necessary confidence of the public! You will observe that a part of the charge consisted of the slanderous assertion that a majority of the Senate, and nearly a majority of the other House, had embarked in the job for turning a public measure to their private emolument. Apply the principle to other transactions, and the strictures which the press has made on them, and the extent of its mischief will be seen at once. There is much room to suspect that more important characters, both on the British and American sides of this affair, were behind the ostensible parties to it.
The Treaty has not yet been touched. I understand from Mr. Giles that the delay has been explained by him to you. A copy of the British ratification arrived lately, and it was hoped a communication of it would have followed. The Executive decided otherwise; and to appease the restlessness of the House of Representatives, Pickering laid the papers before the Speaker, to satisfy him, and enable him to explain the matter to others individually. This mode of proceeding does not augment the respect which a more direct and less reserved stile of conduct would inspire, especially as the papers were sufficiently authentic for any use the House of Representatives would be likely to make of them. It is now said that the original is arrived by a British Packet just announced from New York. Having been kept within doors by the badness of the day, I have not ascertained the truth of the account.
I have letters from Col. Monroe of the 23 and 24 of Octr. His picture of the affairs of France, particularly of the prospect exhibited in the approaching establishment of the Constitution, is very favorable. This, as far as we know, has had an easy birth, and wears a promising countenance. He had not learnt with certainty the ratification of the Treaty by the President, but wrote under the belief of it. His regrets, and his apprehensions, were as strong as might be expected. I have a letter from T. Paine, which breathes the same sentiments, and contains some keen observations on the administration of the Government here. It appears that the neglect to claim him as an American Citizen when confined by Robespierre, or even to interfere in any way whatever in his favor, has filled him with an indelible rancour against the President, to whom it appears he has written on the subject. His letter to me is in the stile of a dying one, and we hear that he is since dead, of the abscess in his side, brought on by his imprisonment. His letter desires that he may be remembered to you.
I inclose a copy of the proceedings relating to the presentation of the French flag. What think you of the President’s Jacobinical speech to Adèt?
Randolph’s vindication has just undergone the lash of the Author of the “Bone to gnaw.” It is handled with much satirical scurrility, not without strictures of sufficient ingenuity and plausibility to aid the plan of running him down. By Mr. Carr, who is now here, we will endeavor to contrive you a copy.
MS not found; reprinted from ii, 70–73. Recorded in SJL as received 23 Jan. 1796. Enclosure: see note below.
The curious affair which engaged the attention of the House of Representatives between 28 Dec. 1795 and 13 Jan. 1796 involved John Askin and six other Detroit residents, all British merchants, who entered into an agreement with Ebenezer Allen and Charles Whitney of Vermont, and Robert Randall of Philadelphia, to gain control of 18 to 20 million acres of land in what is now the lower Peninsula of Michigan and northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The territory was to be divided into forty-one equal shares, five for the Detroit contingent, who would use their influence to extinguish the “right of the Native Indians,” and thirty-six for the three Americans to gain preemption rights from the United States. Randall and Whitney, who were deputed to work the project through congress, approached House members with offers of shares or money in return for support of the project. The South Carolina congressman William Loughton Smith ran with the tale to the President on 24 Dec. 1795 and, with information provided by William Vans Murray of Maryland, William B. Giles of Virginia, and Daniel Buck of Vermont, the matter was brought into the house of representatives on 28 Dec. 1795. The President had a warrant issued for Randall’s apprehension and the House issued the same for Whitney. Both were taken into custody and brought before the bar of the House on 29 Dec. 1795 on charges of contempt and breach of privileges. Whitney, who immediately pleaded “not guilty” and answered questions brought by the House, was held in custody until 7 Jan. 1796, when the House voted 52–30 to discharge him. Randall, meanwhile, requested time to prepare his answer and to obtain counsel for the trial, which began on 4 Jan. 1796, with the prominent Philadelphia attorneys Edward Tilghman, Jr., and William Lewis representing him. Two days later, by a vote of 78 to 17, the House found Randall guilty. He was given a reprimand by the Speaker and continued to be held in custody until 13 Jan., when he was discharged upon payment of fees (Milo M. Quaife, ed., The John Askin Papers, 2 vols. [Detroit, 1928–31], i, 568–72; , ii, 389–94, 397–401, 405–7, 414; v, 166–70, 200–6; xvi, 175n).
Letters from Col. Monroe: James Monroe to Madison, 23 and 24 Oct. 1795, in xvi, 105–13. Letter from T. Paine: Thomas Paine to Madison, 24 Sep. 1795, which closed with the postscript “Remember me to Mr. Jefferson” (same, 89–93). Paine expressed his rancour against the president in letters to Washington of 22 Feb. and 20 Sep. 1795, the first of which was not sent. Both were included in the pamphlet containing Paine’s letter to Washington of 30 July 1796, published by Benjamin Franklin Bache as Letter to George Washington, President of the United States of America, on Affairs Public and Private. By Thomas Paine, Author of the Works Entitled, Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, &c. (Philadelphia, 1796). See No. 3189.
The copy of the proceedings enclosed by Madison—In the House of Representatives of the United States, Monday, the 4th of January, 1796 (Philadelphia, 1796), No. 31365—included documents relating to the presentation of the French flag to Congress and was printed in a thousand copies by order of the House. The decorative silk flag had been sent to the United States by the French government as a reciprocal gesture for the presentation of the American flag to the National Convention, where by order of that body it was displayed next to the French colors, in an emotional ceremony on 11 Sep. 1794 not long after James Monroe’s arrival in Paris as minister to France. Pierre Auguste Adet, the French minister to the United States, presented the French republican standard to the President with an address during the celebrations of the New Year on 1 Jan. 1796. The president’s Jacobinical speech, printed in the pamphlet, declared in reply: “I rejoice that liberty, which you have so long embraced with enthusiasm,—liberty, of which you have been the invincible defenders, now finds an asylum in the bosom of a regularly organized government;—a government, which, being formed to secure the happiness of the French people, corresponds with the ardent wishes of my heart, while it gratifies the pride of every citizen of the United States, by its resemblance to their own” (same, 6). To Adet’s bitter disappointment, however, Washington merely directed that the flag be deposited in the archives of the United States ( v, 195–200; 119–21; Madison to Monroe, 26 Jan. 1796, xvi, 204; Bernard Mayo, “Joshua Barney and the French Revolution,” Maryland Historical Magazine, xxxvi [1941], 359–60; for the politics behind this episode, see vii, 337–8).
Bone to Gnaw: [William Cobbett], A Bone to Gnaw, for the Democrats; or, Observations on a Pamphlet, Entitled, “The Political Progress of Britain” (Philadelphia, 1795). See No. 28431. This pamphlet started as a counterattack on the initial publication in the United States of James T. Callender’s anti-British work, as listed in Cobbett’s title, but went on to denounce the “Crusade against Royalty” in America. Using his pen name “Peter Porcupine,” Cobbett wrote another pamphlet entitled A New-Year’s Gift to the Democrats; or Observations on a Pamphlet, Entitled, “A Vindication of Mr. Randolph’s Resignation” (Philadelphia, 1796). See No. 30215.