To George Washington from Major General Philip Schuyler, 8 December 1775
From Major General Philip Schuyler
Albany Decr [8] 1775
Dear General
I do myself the honor to advise your Excellency of my arrival here on the 7th Inst: should have wrote you yesterday but I was all day in conference with Sixty of the principal Sachems of the Six Nations. the matter was merely congratulatory and introductory to the business which they intend to open on monday, the substance of which I have not yet been able to learn.1
Inclose you copys of letters from General Montgomery and Colo. Arnold together with one to your Excellency from the latter and one from Colo. Knox,2 I have wrote to Congress that the necessity of sending a Body of troops into Canada this Winter appear’d to me very urgent.3 I was happy to meet Colo. Knox at Fort George. I have made such an arrangement to get the Articles he wants at Fort George that I am confident they will arrive there in eight days from this and I shall take the advantage of the very first snow to send them to Cambridge, My baggage is still behind and therefore cannot send your Excellency the returns, but there is a Sufficiency of every thing Colo. Knox wanted except powder and Flints.4
I am now in tolerable good health but I beleive a perfect restoration will not take place until the cold weather ceases.
Some of the prisoners have attempted to Escape, a Capn Robinson of the Emigrants offered the Capn of an Albany Sloop two hundred Guineas to carry him on board the Asia man of War. I shall request the Capn to made affidavid of it. I am Dear General Your Excellency’s most Obedt and most Humle Sert
Ph: Schuyler
ALS, DLC:GW; LB, NN: Schuyler Papers. The ALS is dated 9 Dec., and the letter-book copy is dated 8 December. Schuyler’s references in his letters to GW of 9 and 15 Dec. to his previous letter of “the 8th instant” indicate that this letter should be dated 8 December.
1. The following Monday was 11 December. For further details of this conference, see Schuyler to GW, 15 Dec. 1775.
2. The enclosed copies were of Richard Montgomery’s letter to Schuyler, 24 Nov., and Arnold’s letter to Montgomery, 20 Nov., both of which are in DLC:GW. “I am ashamed of dating my letter from hence,” Montgomery wrote to Schuyler from Montreal on 24 Nov., “you will not be surprized at my long Stay here, but day after day have I been delayed without a possibility of giting to Arnolds assistance. . . . To morrow I believe I shall sail with two or three hundred men some mortars & other Artillery.” The enclosed letters to GW probably were Arnold’s letter of 20 Nov. and Knox’s letter of 5 December. Schuyler also apparently enclosed a return dated 19 Nov. of the British troops captured aboard Gen. Richard Prescott’s ships at Lavaltrie and a list of their officers dated 21 November. Both of these documents are signed by William Dunbar and are in DLC:GW.
3. In his letter to Hancock of 8 Dec., Schuyler urged Congress to send three thousand men into Canada (DNA:PCC, item 153).
4. Schuyler enclosed a return of the artillery at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in his letter to GW of 9 December. See also Henry Knox to GW, 5 Dec. 1775.