have left Fort Washington or by any any accident be prevented from communicating to you the Contents. — Having a perfect reliance on your prudence and judgment, I cannot doubt but your command will prove satisfactory to yourself and advantageous to the United States." N^o 3 Extract of a Letter from the Secretary of War to Captain Isaac Guion, dated War Office June 15. 1797 "Should this dispatch find you where I expect it will, at the Natchez, and the Spanish Garrison still in possession of the works at that place, you will be pleased to lose no time in communicating to the commanding Officer there, the enclosed copy of a message from the President of the United States to Congress, and to the Inhabitants of Natchez, its contents, that both may be fully possessed of the intentions of Government. You will also inform the Spanish Commandant, that you are instructed, to pay the strictest attention to the engagements the United States have written into by the Treaty with his Catholic Majesty, to permit the demolition of the works, to use your utmost endeavours to preserve a continuance of the pacific dispositions of the Indians within our limits towards the subjects of his Catholic Majesty or his Indians, and to prevent their commencing hostilities, of which there is no appearance against either, conformably to the fifth article of the said Treaty. That you flatter yourself after these candid assurances, that you will have the immediate pleasure to announce to the President, a full compliance with the treaty, on the part of the Commandaries of his Catholic Majesty's forces within the United States." [* 12 June 1797.]