To Alexander Hamilton from Abishai Thomas, [18 June 1791]
From Abishai Thomas1
[Philadelphia, June 18, 1791]
Sir
Congress having appropriated Money for payment of the Invalid pensioners commencing with the 4th March 1789,2 and payment for the whole of that year having been made by the State of North Carolina to all the pensioners on the returns of that State,3 prior to the appropriation aforesaid, or at least prior to the knowledge thereof being obtained within the State, it follows that the money sent pursuant to the appropriation remains in the hands of Mr. Haywood4 the Gentleman who was appointed to make the payments for account of the United States. As Agent for the said State in settlement of her accounts with the United States, the documents and vouchers of the aforesaid payments by the State will necessarily pass through my hands, and I conceive it would be neither proper nor just to exhibit them as charges against the union on the same principles with those for services and supplies rendered during the late war, but rather that as actual money has been paid by the State for the purpose for which the appropriation was made by the U, S, She ought to be reimbursed in actual money, under this impression I take the liberty to solicit that instead of withdrawing the money from the hands of Mr Haywood and appropriating it to other purpose, you cause it to be paid into the hands of the Treasurer of the State5 on his producing proper vouchers that payment has been made to the invalids by the State aforesaid.
I have the honor to be &c
ADf, North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh; copy, North Carolina Department of Archives and History.
1. Hugh Williamson and Thomas were appointed as “Agents to Superintend the Settlement of the accounts of this State” with the United States by the North Carolina House of Commons on December 4, 1788 (, XXI, 160).
2. “An Act providing for the payment of Invalid Pensioners of the United States” ( 95 [September 29, 1789]) had been continued by “An Act further to provide for the Payment of the Invalid Pensioners of the United States” ( 129–30 [July 16, 1790]) and “An Act to continue in force the act therein mentioned, and to make further provision for the payment of Pensions to Invalids, and for the support of lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers” ( 218 [March 3, 1791]).
3. On December 29, 1785, in accordance with a recommendation of the Continental Congress, the legislature of North Carolina had passed “An Act for the Relief of the Officers, Soldiers and Seamen, Who Have Been Disabled in the Service of the United States During the Late War” (, XXIV, 735–37).
4. John Haywood had been appointed treasurer of North Carolina early in 1787. See H to Haywood, February 2, 1790.
5. John Haywood.