Message to the New York State Assembly, 15 January 1796
Message to the New York State Assembly
New York 15 January 1796
Gentlemen
You have already been apprized that the Sum granted by the Act respecting infectious Distempers, proved incompetent to the Expences (of which an Account is preparing) occasioned by the late calamitous Sickness in this City. And also that the precautions taken in Albany against the introduction of it into that City caused Expenditures which yet remain to be provided for.1 To the end that the Legislature may have full Information on the latter Subject, I now lay before you the following Papers vizt.
No. 1. A Copy of a Letter from the Mayor of Albany to me.
2. A copy of my Answer to it.
3. A Copy of his Reply, together with the 12 Accounts mentioned in it.—
John Jay
CS, N (EJ: 00975). Enclosures: Abraham Yates to JJ, 2 Nov. 1795, not found; JJ to Yates, 17 Dec. 1795, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk 1 (EJ: 02981); and Yates’s reply, not found; , 2: 366–67.
1. The 1794 amendment to the 1784 quarantine law, signed by Clinton, provided for a Health Officer and necessary expenditures to protect Albany from “distempers.” See the editorial note “John Jay and the Yellow Fever Epidemics,” above.