Timothy Pickering

In the meantime, though, a Knoxville merchant, James Carey, provided evidence of this conspiracy to Army officials.

Secretary of War at the time, Timothy Pickering, who, by the way, hated Blount, took up the issue with President Adams.

Adams then forwarded the documents to the Senate with a note that he believed Blount's actions were criminal.

When Senator Blount walked into the Senate floor that day, Vice President Jefferson had the Senate clerk read the letter revealing the conspiracy with the British and ask Blount if he had anything to say about it.

Everything known about how the group actually organized its work comes from later personal recollection, chiefly Adams's own, rather than any contemporary committee record.

by John Adams' own later account, written decades afterward, first in his autobiography and again in an 1822 letter to a correspondent named Timothy Pickering.

The committee met briefly to settle on the general outline of what the document needed to accomplish, and then delegated the actual writing to a two-man subcommittee of Jefferson and Adams himself.

When that smaller pair sat down to divide the labor, Adam turned to Jefferson and told him flatly that he ought to be the one to write it.

Was he appointed by Ben Franklin? No, but that's a good guess.

He was actually recruited by the very fifth Postmaster General, Timothy Pickering, in 1793 to investigate a slew of mail thefts that had been taking place between New York and Hartford, Connecticut.

So even in those early days, there were people specifically tasked with investigating crimes against the mail?

Exactly.

Instead, only a few weeks after his inauguration, Adams issued a call for a special session.

He had his Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, issue that call on March 25th for members to arrive on May 15th.

They were coming to address the diplomatic crisis with France.

The day following Congress' session, President Adams addressed the joint session of Congress.