Additional Amendment”: What the 1816 North Carolina Manual—and Monroe’s 1814–1816 Papers—Tell Us About TONA

You uploaded two pages from Henry Potter’s A Justice of the Peace; A Guide to Sheriffs, Coroners, Clerks, Constables, and other Civil Officers (Raleigh: Joseph Gales, 1816). Potter—a sitting U.S. District Judge for North Carolina (as the title page itself declares)—included, in the book’s appendix, the Constitution of the United States, with the amendments thereto. Then, on a separate page, he prints what he labels an:

ADDITIONAL AMENDMENT.
The following Article of Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, is omitted in its proper place; hence the insertion here.

He then reproduces the exact Titles of Nobility Amendment (TONA) text and notes that it was “proposed at the Second Session of the Eleventh Congress.”

That one page—paired with the 1814–1816 State Department documents you’ve shared—forms a compact but powerful dossier for how U.S. officials understood and treated TONA in the immediate post-War-of-1812 period.

What the Potter (1816) Manual Shows

1. Officialdom treated TONA as belonging among the amendments.
   Potter’s framing—“omitted in its proper place”—only makes sense if he believed the article properly belonged with the other constitutional amendments. He is not presenting it as a mere bill before the states or a curiosity; he is repairing an omission.

2. This is not a fringe pamphlet.
   The book is a professional legal manual meant for civil officers (sheriffs, clerks, constables) and compiled by a federal judge. Its audience relied on it to know the law. If a U.S. district judge in 1816 thought the Constitution included an “additional amendment” with TONA’s text, that is direct evidence of how informed practitioners understood the Constitution at that time.

3. A printer’s and compiler’s judgment with legal stakes.
   Manuals like Potter’s were used in courtrooms and clerk’s offices. Printing TONA here wasn’t casual; it shaped everyday administration (oaths, conflicts, eligibility, and citizenship questions) for North Carolina’s civil officers.

How the 1814–1816 State Department Papers Fit

Your other three documents—each coming out of State while James Monroe was Secretary—trace an arc:

• January 12, 1814, Circular to the Foreign Ministers (Monroe).
  Announces Congress’s anti-foreign-office amendment and says it had been adopted by a “large majority of the states.” On that basis, the President deemed it improper to grant (and proper to revoke) exequaturs allowing U.S. citizens to serve as foreign consuls.
  Takeaway: The executive branch implemented TONA’s rule as policy.

• 

• May 11, 1815, Letter to M. de Kantzow (Monroe).
  Grants a narrowly tailored temporary exequatur to Sweden’s nominee while emphasizing that U.S. principles disfavor Americans holding foreign consular offices.
  Takeaway: The 1814 policy remained the baseline, with exceptions explicitly marked as such.

• 

• October 30, 1816, Letter to Ralph B. Forbes (State Department).
  States that, upon examination, the requisite number of states had accepted the amendment and that it “has thus become a part of the Constitution.” The letter then recites TONA’s text.
  Takeaway: By late 1816 the executive branch was not merely confident—it affirmed adoption in writing.

• 

Placed beside the 1816 Potter manual, you now have two branches of government—the executive (State Department) and the judiciary (a U.S. district judge as compiler-editor)—pointing in the same direction at the same time: TONA belonged with the amendments.

Why These 1814–1816 Sources Matter Historically

1) Contemporaneity and independence

• The State Department statements (1814, 1815, 1816) and the North Carolina manual (1816) were produced independently, for different audiences (foreign missions and consuls vs. local civil officers), yet they converge on the same practical point: treat TONA as operative.

2) Policy in action (not just printing ink)

• The 1814 circular is not a printer’s mistake—it announces revocation or withholding of exequaturs for U.S. citizens, exactly the kind of conduct TONA targets. That is government action grounded in the amendment’s rule, not a scholastic note.

3) The certification gap explains the later confusion

• In January 1814 there was no federal statute requiring a formal proclamation of adoption. Congress did not impose that ministerial duty until 1818. That administrative lag helps explain why historians later found a patchwork record: government acted on and printed TONA during 1814–1816, while the centralized, statutory paper trail that modern researchers expect did not yet exist.

4) Authority and audience amplify the signal

• Monroe’s letters speak with the voice of U.S. foreign policy.

• Potter’s manual speaks to state and local officers across North Carolina’s legal system.
  When both spheres—international practice and local administration—treat TONA as part of the constitutional order, that is strong evidence of contemporary understanding.

What This Evidence Can—and Cannot—Prove

What it can prove:

• By 1814–1816, prominent U.S. officials and legal reference works treated TONA as belonging with the Constitution, and the executive branch implemented its core rule in consular practice.

• In October 1816, State explicitly asserted that the requisite number of states had accepted the amendment, i.e., adoption.

What it cannot prove on its own:

• The complete Article V ledger—the fully itemized, time-stamped list of each state’s ratification and transmittal that modern scholars would call the “closing file.” That kind of centralized certification only becomes routine after 1818.

Historical Impact

1. Strengthening the “contemporaneous adoption” narrative
   The Potter volume corroborates the executive’s 1816 adoption claim with an independent judicial-compiled source used by civil officers. Together, these show TONA was not a rumor; it entered the working legal literature.

2. Shaping administrative expectations
   For North Carolina’s officers (and likely readers elsewhere who used similar manuals), TONA’s rule—citizens who accept foreign titles/offices (or certain benefits) forfeit civic standing and office eligibility—was part of the constitutional landscape to be applied, not ignored.

3. Explaining later erasures
   When, after 1818, certification practice tightened and later compilers standardized amendment lists, inconsistencies in earlier receipts or the addition of new states to the Union (raising the threshold) may have led some federal editors to discontinue printing TONA—despite the 1814–1816 record showing it was treated as operative. The Potter and Monroe documents are thus a snapshot of an official understanding that later editors did not always preserve.

Where This Leaves the Debate

• If the question is, “Did people inside government in 1814–1816 treat TONA as adopted or belonging among the amendments?”
  The answer, on this record, is yes. The Monroe documents show policy and assertion; the Potter manual shows legal codification in a practitioner text.

• If the question is, “Is there a modern, uncontested Article V certificate proving adoption?”
  These sources do not supply that single, final document. They do, however, shift the burden: anyone denying adoption must account for why both State (1816: “has thus become a part of the Constitution”) and a U.S. district judge’s 1816 manual present TONA as part of the constitutional family.

Next Steps for a Definitive Historical File

To lock this down to modern standards, compile in one dossier:

• Certified (or best-evidence) copies of each state ratification credited by State by 1816;

• Any receipts/transmittals to State then on file;

• The exequatur ledgers showing revocations/denials 1814–1816;

• Parallel 1815–1817 legal manuals or statute compilations that likewise print the “Additional Amendment.”

This 1814–1816 cluster—Monroe’s policy and adoption statements + Potter’s 1816 “Additional Amendment” page—is already a tight, mutually reinforcing package. Even if later editors dropped TONA, the immediate post-war record reveals what the people running the government and guiding local officers believed the Constitution contained—and how they behaved because of it.