rtions which could be commanded. The other parts of the work, which
might all have been completed in time, were necessarily retarded by the
insufficient progress of the stonework.

TH. JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 5, 1807.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to each House of Congress a copy of the laws of the Territory
of Michigan passed by the governor and judges of the Territory during
the year 1805.

TH. JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 22, 1807.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

Agreeably to the request of the House of Representatives communicated
in their resolution of the 16th instant, I proceed to state, under the
reserve therein expressed, information received touching an illegal
combination of private individuals against the peace and safety of the
Union, and a military expedition planned by them against the territories
of a power in amity with the United States, with the measures I have
pursued for suppressing the same.

I had for some time been in the constant expectation of receiving
such further information as would have enabled me to lay before the
Legislature the termination as well as the beginning and progress of
this scene of depravity so far as it has been acted on the Ohio and its
waters. From this the state of safety of the lower country might have
been estimated on probable grounds, and the delay was indulged the
rather because no circumstance had yet made it necessary to call in the
aid of the legislative functions. Information now recently communicated
has brought us nearly to the period contemplated. The mass of what I
have received in the course of these transactions is voluminous, but
little has been given under the sanction of an oath so as to constitute
formal and legal evidence. It is chiefly in the form of letters, often
containing such a mixture of rumors, conjectures, and suspicions
as renders it difficult to sift out the real facts and unadvisable
to hazard more than general outlines, strengthened by concurrent
information or the particular credibility of the relator. In this state
of the evidence, delivered sometimes, too, under the restriction of
private confidence, neither safety nor justice will permit the exposing
names, except that of the principal actor, whose guilt is placed beyond
question.

Some time in the latter part of September I received intimations that
designs were in agitation in the Western