[Duplicate] War Department 23^d May 1799. Sir/ I am directed by the President of the United States to address your Excellency on the following subject — It has been lately observed in this vicinity, which remind the interposition of the general Government, and as similar cases may arise in other places, it is necessary that some uniform, adequate and prompt remedy should be provided and operate throughout the United States — An annual upon your great powers engaged in the present war captured a Merchantman lying in the Bay of Panama and some country under the protection of the United States. Both duty and honor required that the Government should cause the captured Vessel to be released, which the Minister residing here of the power whose Vessel committed the aggression, has very readily undertaken to have done. But as this remedy may not be adequate to every case and especially to distant ones, some other is to be resorted to of more universal application — The capture of Vessels being generally the overt symptom of an attack or contest and that by an armed and foreign force is in its nature, if committed within our territory, a military aggression and to be repressed by the military force of the Nation — the founding powers of the Union is to Militia Grant this is very reluctant bound to resist every violation of its territorial protection — But your Excellency therefore is the duty of the Militia of the State of New Hampshire, [the jurisdiction] of the United States confutes the doing into persons in all cases of hostility committed between in belligerent parties within the protection of your State, desiring that you cause or placed with the seal of your Militia, to detain the parties first aggressing until you until communicate the case to the President, with the evidence in writing which may establish the facts for his ultimate decision thereon — And you may be assured of receiving with all the dispatch in [remainder of page largely illegible/inverted] [illegible lines — page appears partially inverted] [Duplicate] War Department [undecipherable] 1799