A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents | Page 5

1801.
The Honorable the PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE.

SIR: The circumstances under which we find ourselves at this place
rendering inconvenient the mode heretofore practiced of making by
personal address the first communications between the legislative and
executive branches, I have adopted that by message, as used on all
subsequent occasions through the session. In doing this I have had
principal regard to the convenience of the Legislature, to the economy
of their time, to their relief from the embarrassment of immediate
answers on subjects not yet fully before them, and to the benefits
thence resulting to the public affairs. Trusting that a procedure founded
in these motives will meet their approbation, I beg leave through you,
sir, to communicate the inclosed message, with the documents
accompanying it, to the honorable the Senate, and pray you to accept
for yourself and them the homage of my high respect and
consideration.
TH. JEFFERSON.

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE.
DECEMBER 8, 1801.
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:
It is a circumstance of sincere gratification to me that on meeting the
great council of our nation I am able to announce to them on grounds of
reasonable certainty that the wars and troubles which have for so many
years afflicted our sister nations have at length come to an end, and that
the communications of peace and commerce are once more opening
among them. Whilst we devoutly return thanks to the beneficent Being
who has been pleased to breathe into them the spirit of conciliation and
forgiveness, we are bound with peculiar gratitude to be thankful to Him
that our own peace has been preserved through so perilous a season,
and ourselves permitted quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice
and improve those arts which tend to increase our comforts. The
assurances, indeed, of friendly disposition received from all the powers
with whom we have principal relations had inspired a confidence that

our peace with them would not have been disturbed. But a cessation of
irregularities which had affected the commerce of neutral nations and
of the irritations and injuries produced by them can not but add to this
confidence, and strengthens at the same time the hope that wrongs
committed on unoffending friends under a pressure of circumstances
will now be reviewed with candor, and will be considered as founding
just claims of retribution for the past and new assurance for the future.
Among our Indian neighbors also a spirit of peace and friendship
generally prevails, and I am happy to inform yon that the continued
efforts to introduce among them the implements and the practice of
husbandry and of the household arts have not been without success;
that they are becoming more and more sensible of the superiority of
this dependence for clothing and subsistence over the precarious
resources of hunting and fishing, and already we are able to announce
that instead of that constant diminution of their numbers produced by
their wars and their wants, some of them begin to experience an
increase of population.
To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one
only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary
States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in
compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war on our failure to
comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one
answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean, with
assurances to that power of our sincere desire to remain in peace, but
with orders to protect our commerce against the threatened attack. The
measure was seasonable and salutary. The Bey had already declared
war. His cruisers were out. Two had arrived at Gibraltar.
Our commerce in the Mediterranean was blockaded and that of the
Atlantic in peril. The arrival of our squadron dispelled the danger. One
of the Tripolitan cruisers having fallen in with and engaged the small
schooner Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant Sterret, which had
gone as a tender to our larger vessels, was captured, after a heavy
slaughter of her men, without the loss of a single one on our part. The
bravery exhibited by our citizens on that element will, I trust, be a

testimony to the world that it is not the want of that virtue which makes
us seek their peace, but a conscientious desire to direct the energies of
our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not to its
destruction. Unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of
Congress, to go beyond the line of defense, the vessel, being disabled
from committing further hostilities, was liberated with its crew. The
Legislature will doubtless consider whether, by authorizing measures
of offense also, they will place our force on an equal footing with that
of