Mr. Jay has my directions to lay
before you at such time as you may think proper to assign.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

NEW YORK, _August 6, 1789_.

_Gentlemen of the Senate_:

My nomination of Benjamin Fishbourn for the place of naval officer
of the port of Savannah not having met with your concurrence, I now
nominate Lachlan McIntosh for that office.

Whatever may have been the reasons which induced your dissent, I am
persuaded they were such as you deemed sufficient. Permit me to submit
to your consideration whether on occasions where the propriety of
nominations appear questionable to you it would not be expedient to
communicate that circumstance to me, and thereby avail yourselves of the
information which led me to make them, and which I would with pleasure
lay before you. Probably my reasons for nominating Mr. Fishbourn may
tend to show that such a mode of proceeding in such cases might be
useful. I will therefore detail them.

First. While Colonel Fishbourn was an officer in actual service and
chiefly under my own eye, his conduct appeared to me irreproachable; nor
did I ever hear anything injurious to his reputation as an officer or a
gentleman. At the storm of Stony Point his behavior was represented to
have been active and brave, and he was charged by his general to bring
the account of that success to the headquarters of the Army.

Secondly. Since his residence in Georgia he has been repeatedly elected
to the assembly as a representative of the county of Chatham, in which
the port of Savannah is situated, and sometimes of the counties of Glynn
and Camden; he has been chosen a member of the executive council of the
State and has lately been president of the same; he has been elected by
the officers of the militia in the county of Chatham lieutenant-colonel
of the militia in that district, and on a very recent occasion, to wit,
in the month of May last, he has been appointed by the council (on the
suspension of the late collector) to an office in the port of Savannah
nearly similar to that for which I nominated him, which office he
actually holds at this time. To these reasons for nominating Mr.
Fishbourn I might add that I received private letters of recommendation
and oral testimonials in his favor from some of the most respectable
characters in that State; but as they were secondary considerations
with me, I do not think it necessary to communicate them to you.

It appeared, therefore, to me that Mr. F