While various questions and anomalies occurred in regard to New York and Connecticut, these are trivial in comparison to the situations of other states. However, they are worth examining, if only to show how the path of communication between State and State Department varied. In most cases, the transmittals sent by the States were, in form, a very formal letter announcing the status of ratification by that State accompanied by a certified copy of the state's actual Resolution passed in that state. The exact form of these letters, Resolutions, and the signatures of certification contained in them varied considerably. In some cases, the state legislature found unanimously in favor of ratification, and saw fit to say so right in the language of the resolution itself. This was the case in Georgia. Most often, a copy of the proposing resolution from Congress was also included, serving to remove any doubt as to whether the amendment as passed by the state varied in any way whatsoever from the original sent to them from Congress. Consequently, this was never an issue.000

New York and Connecticut both personalized and detailed their transmittals with some additional information. For example, New York's transmittal was delivered from Governor Tompkins directly to President Monroe. The exact text follows:

Connecticut's belated response is also a rather pointed example of the State Department having actually lost track of its own records:

The first entry is an April, 1813 letter from Connecticut's Secretary of State John Cotton Smith to James Monroe, then the United States Secretary of State. The letter references the previous month's letter from then-Secretary of State Monroe inquiring about the status of the 13^th Amendment. Smith states that no decision has been made, but that the matter will be forwarded to the Legislature for action in the new session starting in May. This letter is followed by a Resolution made in mid-May rejecting the amendment. The Resolution is signed, sealed, and certified by Thomas Day, Secretary.

Then we have yet another copy of the very same Resolution. This second copy is followed by a January 22, 1818 letter from the same Connecticut Secretary Thomas Day (described above) to later Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. (James Monroe had since been elected President.) The letter says it is written "By direction of His Excellency Governor Wolcott" mentioning the foregoing copy of the Resolution as an exemplification.⁷

We will probably never know exactly how or why the State Department lost track of that certification for 5 years. There is only one note from the State Department at the end of all 4 documents, recording that Connecticut does not ratify. Having been both the sender of the inquiry and the designated recipient of the answer, Monroe himself, somehow, still did not yet know Connecticut's status in late 1817.⁸ The fact that Connecticut's decision was made during the War of 1812 may mean that communication was somehow interrupted, or that the State Department itself was still in a state of disarray from which it hdd not fully recovered by 1818. (Toward the end of the War of 1812 because of the British threat, "Secretary of State, James Monroe, ordered his department records loaded onto carts and rushed across the Potomac. While the torch was being put to Washington's public buildings, the Declaration was safely stored in a private home in

Leesburgh, Virginia.")⁹ It is not clear whether Connecticut's original response was located again later by the State Department, or whether Connecticut's second response simply enclosed another copy of the original.0

Delaware saw fit to ratify the 13^th Amendment on February 1 of 1811. However, there is no record that anyone in Washington was informed, until Delaware's Secretary of State sent a transmittal dated August 29, 1814. That ransmittal mentions an inquiry from Secretary Monroe as having been dated a month prior. Presumably, the War of 1812 caused the delay in response, though the war did not officially end until December of 1814.

When we examine Tennessee's Resolution, we find that this Resolution actually applies to 4 separately proposed amendments. There is 1 amendment proposed by Massachusetts banning extended embargoes, 1 proposed by Virginia allowing the state legislators to vote on removal of their Senators from office, 1 from Pennsylvania which would have formed a tribunal over and above the Supreme Court to mediate intrastate disputes, and the Congressionally-proposed 13^th Amendment regarding titles of nobility. The single Resolution by Tennessee rejects all of the State-proposed amendments, one by one, but ratifies the 13^th Amendment.¹⁰ 0

Interestingly, the State Department's History takes no other notice whatsoever of State-proposed amendments in motion during those years. This appears to be the only case in which any state felt it necessary or expedient to even bother with informing the State Department as to its actions in that regard. We find no other record of this kind - almost as if the State Department would blithely ignore State-proposed amendments until such time as 3/4 of the States by some means or other announced all at once that such an amendment was the law. In any case, not one of the several State-proposed amendments ever came close to ratification, so the point is moot - except that there is apparently no known mechanism by which the States could or would ordinarily inform the State Department of their exercise of that constitutional right. This is a peculiar thing, in that while the several States certainly do, and always have, communicated back and forth, the federal government is charged with acting as their agent - an agency of which neither party apparently takes notice in this (rarely necessary) regard. While the proposed amendments were in motion, we find in the legislative journals of the states themselves that the states did notice one another formally and regularly through their governors' offices.^{11,12,13,14,15,16,17}  We will only point out repeated findings that State-proposed amendments generally do not find their way into any but the most detailed history books. It appears that the usual course of research is to rely again and again on State Department records, which are woefully ignorant of these important matters.

Pennsylvania presents an interesting study of the sometimes-circuitous routes a Resolution of ratification might take in finding its way into the State Department. There is a copy of a transmittal from Governor Snyder addressed to President James Madison. Then there is another transmittal addressed to the Speaker of the Senate from Governor Snyder. Then, there is yet another transmittal from The Honorable George Clinton to the President of the Senate, forwarding the last one and noting that it was sent to him in New York after he had left the Senate. This last is forwarded to "Robert Smith Esquire Secy of State". Belatedly, this resolution finds its way to the Department of State. (see Table of Notifications)

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Far more serious matters are apparent when we examine what happened with South Carolina and Virginia. This is clear, both when we examine what happened to and within each state individually, and when we examine their legislative status in relation to one another. This is an absolutely imperative examination, because it was known by 1818 that these were the two last possible states capable of ratifying the amendment.¹⁸ If either state ratified, then the amendment met the requisite 3/4 of the states in the union at the time of the congressional resolution. The amendment would pass instantly into law for the entire nation, regardless of the other's opinion. This might have been a highly charged situation if the amendment were hotly contested in any way, but such was not the case. The States had already begun publishing the 13th Amendment along with their internal publications of the Constitution, Pennsylvania being the first known to have done so in 1818 (see Table of Publications). For nearly 40 years, the general public had already been peacefully abiding by the base law contained in the Constitution. The federal government, in the forms of Congress, the Presidency, and the State Department were so unenamored of any further debate that they did not, by their own records, even know the exact legislative status of the amendment for years on end.

We must note here, though, that further public debate involving any federal officers would have been entirely uncouth - the federal servants had respectfully retired at some distance to allow the States to make their individual decisions, as was their Constitutional right to do (US Const., art. v). Not ignoring the matter, but with a dutiful and businesslike approach, the federal government merely tried to ascertain what had factually and legislatively happened to that law.

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