To Alexander Hamilton from Edmund Randolph, 30 April 1794
From Edmund Randolph1
[Philadelphia] April 30, 1794. “The Secretary of State has the honor of inclosing … a paragraph from a letter of Mr. Pinckney, dated January 10th 1794.2 It respects M. la Colombe, a french Officer, formerly in our army … and seems to lie more particularly in the department of the Secretary of the Treasury. Any answer, which may be thought adviseable the Secretary of State will forward to Mr. P.”
LC, RG 59, Domestic Letters of the Department of State, Vol. 6, January 2–June 26, 1794, National Archives.
1. For background to this letter, see Thomas Pinckney to H, February 27, 1794.
2. The extract from Pinckney’s letter reads as follows: “I mentioned in a former letter that I had advanced some money to M. La Colombe on account of his Certificate due from the United States for services performed in our army last war. The difficulty of communicating with Paris where his interest is payable, added to a circumstance I mentioned in that letter induced me to make the advance, and unless I receive contrary directions from you the same reason will engage me to furnish him with a farther sum in the same account to enable him to go to America. The transfer of this credit may easily be made from one fund to the other but I should not have ventured to have made this arrangement but for the reason specified” (LC, RG 59, Domestic Letters of the Department of State, Vol. 6, January 2–June 26, 1794, National Archives). Pinckney’s letter to Randolph may be found in RG 59, Despatches from United States Ministers to Great Britain, 1791–1906, Vol. 3, November 29, 1791-May 4, 1797, National Archives.