14. The whole army of the United States was disbanded at the close of the war. A few guards only were engaged for their magazines. Lately they have enlisted some two or three regiments to garrison the posts along the Northern boundary of the United States.
16. The United States do not own, at present, a single vessel of war; nor has Congress entered into any resolution on that subject.
17. I conjecture there are six hundred and fifty thousand negroes in the five southernmost States, and not fifty thousand in the rest. In most of these latter, effectual measures have been taken for their future emancipation. In the former, nothing is done towards that. The disposition to emancipate them is strongest in Virginia. Those who desire it, form, as yet, the minority of the whole State, but it bears a respectable portion to the whole in numbers and weight of character, and it is continually recruiting by the addition of nearly the whole of the young men as fast as they come into public life. I flatter myself it will take place there at some period of time not very distant. In Maryland and North Carolina a very few are disposed to emancipate. In South Carolina and Georgia, not the smallest symptom of it, but, on the contrary, these two States, and North Carolina, continue importations of negroes. These have been long prohibited in all the other States.
18. In Virginia, where a great proportion of the legislature consider the constitution but as other acts of legislation, laws have been frequently passed which controlled its effects. I have not heard that in the other States they have ever infringed their constitution, and I suppose they have not done it, as the Judges would consider any law as void which was contrary to the constitution. Pennsylvania is divided into two parties very nearly equal, the one desiring to change the constitution, the other opposing a change. In Virginia there is a part of the State which considers the act for organizing their government as a constitution, and are content to let it remain; there is another part which considers it only as an ordinary act of the legislature, who, therefore, wish to form a real constitution, correcting some defects which have been observed in the act now in force. Most of the young people as they come into office arrange themselves on this side, and I think they will prevail ere long. But there are no heats on this account. I do not know that any of the other States propose to change their constitution.