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Docketed: "Orders from Com. Conover, July 19th, '57, enclosing a letter from Mr. Cass to Mr. Toucey."

Following the Slave Importation Act of 1807, which declared further importation of slaves into the United States to be illegal, the U.S. navy waged a generally unsuccessful campaign to interdict slaving vessels off the west coast of Africa.

The recipient of this letter, Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy from March, 1857 to March, 1861, was pro-slavery and no great foe of the slave trade, despitre of his charge to suppress it. Cass lost the presidential election of 1848 largely because of his support for popular sovereignty in the struggle to determine whether new U.S. territories would be slave or free. In this letter he passes along information from a dispatch written by a U.S. commerical agent on the African coast: "It is said that five vessels have lately left with slaves. The Congo River and its Neighborhood have been the headquarters, and American gold is now quite plenty there, having been brought in vessels which clear from New York."

Apparently this copy of Cass' letter to Toucey was carried to Commodore Conover, and subsequently sent by him to another vessel in his squadron. Conover enjoyed a long and distinguished naval career, commanding the African Squadron, retiring with the newly-created rank of Commodore.