Virginia Argus

THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY
To the Senate and House of Commons of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina.

I have received, fellow-citizens, your Memorial of the 29th ult. representing the exposure of your state to danger on its sea board, and requesting to be informed whether measures will be immediately taken by the National Government for its protection.

The anxiety which you manifest for the security of the State under your particular care, cannot but be commended, and it would be highly agreeable to make a communication that would remove an occasion for it.

The Legislature of North Carolina is too enlightened and too just not to be sensible that the protection to be extended by the General Government over the Union, must be proportioned to the aggregate means applicable thereto; and that in distributing these regard must be had to the comparative practicability and probability of attempts on particular states and places. Against occasional attempts, where there are so many points accessible by water, from an enemy having on that element a force so extensive and so readily concentrated, an absolute protection of every one is not possible. Considering the states as parts of one whole, the best defence of the whole must be kept in view, by the authority to which that is entrusted; and it fortunately happens that the security and interest of particular parts will often be comprehended in the effect produced by means more immediately applied to the protection of other parts.

These observations are not intended to preclude a due consideration of the particular case, stated in your memorial. They appeal only to the candor with which you will be sure to review the measures of the Executive in relation to the general and particular defence of our country, and to the confidence claimed by the impartiality which has directed them.

With a view to the more convenient superintendence and protection of every part of the U. S. they have been partitioned into military districts. The officer allotted to that which includes the state of N. Carolina, will be instructed, as soon as practicable, to visit & examine the situation of the exposed parts of the state, with a view to improvements which may be properly made in works of defence. He was about to make such a visit when he was lately called away to a more urgent, but temporary service. In the mean time, a Col. of Engineers had been sent to examine the ports, and to make report on the subject of them.

The Secretary of the Navy has not been inattentive to the means of defence depending on his department, which were thought best adapted to the waters of North Carolina; and to the gun boats already allotted, the equipment of which has not been intermitted, a like number of armed boats of another modification will be added as soon as they can be made ready for service.

In making this communication it will of course not be understood as superseding any auxiliary provisions which the State of N. Carolina may think proper to make on its own account, as has been done by some other states, in order to a more complete and particular security than it may be in the power of the general government to extend to every exposed situation throughout the frontier of the United States.

Be pleased, fellow citizens, to accept assurances of my high respect and my best wishes.

JAMES MADISON.
Washington, Dec. 11, 1813.