From George Washington to Brigadier General Jacob Bayley, 20 January 1779
To Brigadier General Jacob Bayley
Philadelphia 20th Jany 1779
sir.
I have your favor of the 25th Ulto. I have heard nothing of Col. Wheelock but hope your fears on his account are groundless—I do not know what dispatches he might have been charged with from others—but he had none from me.1
I have given directions to the Commissary Genl of Purchases to have proper care taken of the Stores that have been collected upon the upper part of Connecticut River.2 I am Sir Yours &.
G.W.
Df, in John Laurens’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. Lt. Col. John Wheelock arrived at Haverhill, N.H., by 27 Jan., when he wrote Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates that he had delivered Gates’s letter of 17 Jan. to his seriously ill father, Eleazer Wheelock, at Dartmouth College and that “I have likewise, agreeable to your Excellency’s Instructions, intimated to Col: [Timothy] Bedel your Dispatches to Congress, respecting the State of their Stores; and the consequence of not affording immediate assistance to his men; that have alone been depended on to guard the Same: being in the condition that I have lately been apprehensive of—a Situation truly critical—Not a word from Gen. Washington” (). GW had been equivocal about the need to continue Bedel’s regiment for the coming campaign when Wheelock had visited GW at his Fredericksburg, N.Y., headquarters in November 1778. Later that month, Congress had resolved to disband the regiment (see GW to Henry Laurens, 20 Nov., and Laurens to GW, 28 Nov. 1778).