The Balance, and Columbian Repository

Number 8 lacks the final six pages; Nos. 37 and 38 each lack the final 2 pages, and No. 41 lacks the final four pages. An article in No. 49 at page 391 has been excised, as well as a signature on the title page. This is otherwise a complete issue of Volume III.

In 1804 Jefferson was President, and his Address to Congress is included. There are references to the Louisiana Purchase, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Alexander Hamilton met his death in a duel with Aaron Burr in that year, and not only is his Funeral Oration by Governeur Morris published, but also Hamilton's letters to Burr on the night before his death. Anti-slavery sentiment is obvious in many articles, including reports on the abolition of slavery in Santo Domingo and a poem lamenting that the only freedom from slavery is death.

The last issue for April contains the 'Song' by Robert Burns on the Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, which may be the first American printing of the complete four stanzas. Two stanzas were previously published in Georgia ca. 1799 as 'Chaveliers' Lament', and the complete poem was issued with significant differences in 1799 in Scotland under the title 'Soliloquy'. It was not published before Burns died in 1796.

This is apparently the editor's copy with his signature on the title page along with that of Aaron Reed. Rare. OCLC finds only two issues of the 1804 volume in one library.

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