Instruction to Secretary for Foreign Affairs, [20 August] 1782
Instruction to Secretary for Foreign Affairs
MS (NA: PCC, No. 20, I, 87). In JM’s hand.
Editorial Note
The debate on 15 August had been occasioned by the report of a committee of which JM was chairman (Comments on Instructions to Peace Commissioners, 8 August, and n. 9; Report on Instructions to Peace Commissioners, 15 August, and n. 1; Comments on Instructions to Peace Commissioners, 15 August 1782, and ed. n., and n. 1). The report had recommended that the secretary for foreign affairs “perfect & transmit” to the peace commissioners “the materials” which another committee had prepared. This earlier committee, when appointed on 22 January 1782, had comprised Edmund Randolph as chairman and Daniel Carroll and Joseph Montgomery as the other members. Before leaving Congress about 9 May, Carroll had been unable to complete a critical commentary upon the “Facts and Observations” which Randolph had prepared prior to his departure for Virginia on 18 March. Carroll had asked Montgomery not to submit the committee’s report until he could finish his “remarks and observations” on what Randolph had written (, IV, 4, headnote and ed. n.; 17, n. 30; , VI, xlv, liii; p. 108).
JM was added to the committee on 5 August, when it was reconstituted and enlarged by Congress (JM to Randolph, 5–6 August 1782, n. 13). The recommendation and debate of 15 August obliged the committee to submit its report the next day without waiting longer for Carroll’s return (28 August). The principal contents of this report were JM’s recommendations of 7 January 1782 and Randolph’s “Facts and Observations,” unaccompanied by Carroll’s unfinished demurrer (, IV, 7–13; Comments on Randolph’s “Facts and Observations,” 16 August 1782, ed. n., and n. 2). Perhaps between the sixteenth and twentieth, but probably on the twentieth, when the debate on the report was resumed, JM amended its recommendation, as given below.
[20 August 1782]
The Committee to whom was referred the Report of a Committee to whom was referred the Instruction to the Delegates of Massachussetts Bay, have collected the facts & observations herwith reported to Congress, which they recommend to be referred to the Secy. for Foreign affairs to be by him digested, completed & transmitted to the Ministers Plenipotentiary for Negociating Peace,1 for their information & use.2
2. The report which had been submitted to Congress and debated on 15 August was not spread on the journal until five days later (, XXIII, 471–521). Although the opening of the report as printed is repetitious, because it includes the original recommendation of 15 August, immediately followed by JM’s proposal, Charles Thomson’s notes on the proceedings of 20 August permit little doubt that JM’s amendment was designed to be a substitute for the final, rather than the second, paragraph of the Carroll committee’s report (, XXIII, 471; p. 142).
After much more discussion, with JM apparently silent and Witherspoon taking the lead in replying to a renewed attack by Lee and Bland on portions of Randolph’s “Facts and Observations” (Comments on Randolph’s “Facts and Observations,” 16 August 1782, and ed. n., and n. 2), especially in view of JM’s recommendation that this essay should be referred to the negotiators “for their information and use,” John Rutledge’s motion to postpone further consideration of the report failed to carry by a vote of six states, including Virginia, in favor to four opposed. Thereupon Congress adopted by a unanimous vote Witherspoon’s motion to refer the report to a new committee. Rutledge was named its chairman, and Duane, Witherspoon, Howell, and Montgomery, its other members ( pp. 142–45; , XXIII, 523–24, 524 n.). Apparently this committee never reported. For JM’s comments on the debates of 15, 16, 17, and 20 August, see his letters to Randolph of 20 and 27 August 1782.