From George Washington to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 21 November 1796
To the Commissioners for the District of Columbia
Philadelphia 21st Novr 1796.
Gentlemen
Your letter of the 11th Instant has been duly received. The altered One to Messrs Wilhem, and Jan Willink has been forwarded to its address, and the former is herewith returned.1
Your application to the Bank of the United States for the loan of money, having failed (as I presume the Secretary of the Treasury has informed you, and as I had always supposed would be the case)2 I have executed the Power which was sent to me authorising a similar application to the Legislature of Maryland. and hope, if made, that it will be attended with better success.3 I advise the retention of it, however, a few days, until you hear from Mr Wolcott the result of his soundings of a Mr Hope (of the House of Hope, late of Amsterdam) who is just arrived in this City; and of whom it is supposed money might be obtained.4 With great esteem I am Gentlemen Your Obedient Servt
Go: Washington
ALS, DLC: U.S. Commissioners of the City of Washington records; ALS (letterpress copy), DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW. The commissioners received this letter on 24 Nov. (see DNA: RG 42, Records of the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, Proceedings, 1791–1802).
1. For the letter of 31 Oct. from the commissioners to Dutch bankers Jan and Wilhem Willink, and its several versions, see Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 31 Oct. (first letter), and notes 1 and 2; see also the commissioners to GW, 11 Nov., and notes 1 and 2.
2. See GW to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 7 Nov., and notes 2 and 3 to that document; see also GW to the commissioners, 11 Nov., and n.3 to that document.
3. GW signed an executive order on this date authorizing the commissioners to secure a loan from the state of Maryland. For the text of that order, see the commissioners’ second letter to GW of 31 Oct., n.2. The Maryland legislature granted the loan (see GW to John Hoskins Stone, 7 Dec.; and Stone to GW, 12 Dec., and n.2 to that document).
4. GW probably refers to Henry Hope of the Amsterdam and London banking firm Hope & Company. Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., evidently met with Hope in the effort to obtain a loan, but he later informed the commissioners of his failure to secure the funds (see Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 3 Dec., and n.2 to that document).
Henry Hope (1735–1811), of Massachusetts, went to England around 1748 to pursue his studies. In 1762 he became a partner in the Dutch mercantile and banking firm of Hope & Co., operated by his uncles. After the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1794, the firm relocated from Amsterdam to London and formed an alliance with Sir Francis Baring’s merchant bank. Hope returned to Amsterdam in 1802.