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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 sixteenth instant, I proceed to state, under the reserve therrein 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 Ihave 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