| Journal of Research: Nov. 27 - Dec. 3, 2000 [17.5]
2000/12/3 1000-1415 Finished combing the Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Vols. 7-9 only), having looked in the index under the following entries: Mount Vernon, Potomac, Potomac Navigation Project, Maryland, Virginia, Navigation, George Mason, Alexander Henderson, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Samuel Chase, and Thomas Stone. Nothing was found under Tidewater or Boundary. I will not skim through the individual documents in these three volumes (as I did with Mason's papers) unless directed to do so.
2000/12/2 1000-1615 Began working through Boyd's Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Vols. 7 thru 9: March 1784 thru June 1786). Fortunately, the index for these volumes appears to be much more complete than was the index for the Mason Papers, so I should be able to avoid the letter-by-letter skimming that was needed with Mason. (The index is not perfect, though, the mention of the Potomac from Vol. 7, p. 280, was not indexed, for example.)
Some points to note so far: Madison mentioned at least three times (see his letters of 25 April 1784, 9 January 1785, and 27 April 1785) that the Virginia-Maryland commission would be, or had been, concerned with that part of the Potomac BELOW the falls. Furthermore, in his 9 January 1785 letter, he cleared up a question I had: If the Compact of 1785 dealt only with tidewater Potomac, why did the commissioners include with it a communique to Pennsylvania advocating tri-state cooperation in the region beyond the headwaters of the Potomac? The reason was that the communique had been intended to be included with an earlier agreement between Maryland and Virginia to open up to navigation the upper reaches of the Potomac. But, through an accident of timing only, the communique was not passed by the Virginia Assembly until too late to be sent with George Washington (who negotiated the earlier agreement). So the message to Pennsylvania was left for the Mount Vernon commissioners to pass on, even though it wasn't directly connected with their enterprise.
2000/12/1 1200-1445 Finished reading Mason. He had very little to say about the Potomac after 1788, except in passing within remarks about the planned federal district and bridges across the river.
2000/11/29 1600-1830 Read Mason 1787 and part of 1788. In the latter year, notice Mason's recollections of the 1785 Compact, in which he says "Maryland was very glad to get what she got by this compact." This entry was not mentioned in the index, another indication of the poor quality of the indexing for these three volumes.
2000/11/27 0945-1030 Spent some time downloading materials from Series 9 for Mary Jeske, my cable modem being faster than her dial-up. Then tried to see if I could use my OCR program to generate readable text from the GIF files I had downloaded. Failed for at least this one source: its pages weren't clear enough of extraneous marks. 1700-1800 Started reading Mason papers for 1787. Don't expect to find much, if anything, on the Potomac, because Mason was fully involved with the Constitutional Convention in Philly for much of the year. It's difficult not to slow down and read carefully Mason's opinions about electing or impeaching presidents, given our own recent history! |
