From George Washington to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 7 November 1796
To the Commissioners for the District of Columbia
Philadelphia 7th Novr 1796
Gentlemen,
Your two letters, dated the 31st Ulto, with their several enclosures, were received on thursday last.1 The one to Mr Wolcott has been delivered to him; but he seems to have no sanguine expectation of obtaining a loan from the Bank of the United States, for the purposes of the Federal City.2 He intended to communicate your offer to the President and Directors on Saturday and to support it with an expression of his wishes that you might be accommodated.3 He promised to write to you himself, by this day’s Post, but did not expect he should be able to give the result of his application at that time.4
I gave him your letter for Messrs Willink, to be forwarded to those Gentlemen, and shewed him the copy of it, as I had some doubt myself with respect to the offer of 7½ pr Ct pr Annum.5 His doubts of the eligibility of this offer under the Act of Congress guaranteeing the Loan,6 being still greater than mine, I requested he would give the matter mature consideration, and inform you of the result, if in his judgement it was inadmissible under the Act. You will observe that the objection lyes to the words pr Annum, not because the cost & charges in obtaining the loan may amount to this in the first instance—As Mr Wolcott (if he is confirmed in this opinion) will write to you himself on this subject, I shall not enlarge except to inform you that I shall detain the letter until this point is decided.7
My opinion always has been (since the first Sale to Greenleaf8) and still is, oppos’d to large Sales of Lots, except in the dernier resort.9 I am more disposed therefore to try any other expedient to raise money in preference. If these fail, and it comes to the alternative of Selling in the manner you propose, or suspending the operations altogether I shall have no hesitation in my choice of the first. I have no doubt of your being informed of the result of Mr Wolcotts application here, by Wednesdays Mail10 (if he says nothing thereon to day). If this fails, I will execute and forward the power authorising the other application to the Legislature of Maryland, by the succeeding Post.11
Enclosed is a Statement handed to me by the Proprietors of the Hotel in the Federal City, I told the bearer (one of them) who brought it to me that I would, simply, transmit it. If your answer passes through me, to them, let it be distinct from other matters, and so framed as that the letter may be turned over to them, under a blank cover.12 With great Esteem I am Gentlemen Your Obedt Servt
Go: Washington
LS, DLC: U.S. Commissioners of the City of Washington records; ADfS, DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW. The LS is docketed: “The Statement of the Proprietors of the Hotel within mentioned did not come inclosed herein as stated” (see n.12). The commissioners replied to this letter on 11 November.
1. The previous Thursday was 3 November.
2. For the commissioners’ letter to Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., see Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 31 Oct. (second letter), and n.1 to that document; see also the commissioners’ first letter to GW of that date.
3. On Saturday, 5 Nov., Wolcott wrote the president (Thomas Willing) and directors of the Bank of the United States: “I am authorised by the Commissioners appointed … to make proposals to your board to lend to the City of Washington the Sum of One hundred Thousand dollars for one year. …” Wolcott listed the terms of the loan, including the stipulation that the commissioners “pay interest at the rate” of 6 percent per “Annum, for the whole sum Loaned.” Wolcott promised repayment “in one year from the date of the Loan, or sooner,” and noted that the advance would be guaranteed by the United States and repaid from the “proceeds of a Loan authorized to be opened in Holland.” Wolcott strongly advocated for the loan: “the monies applied for, are destined to a public object, the Seasonable execution of which is a matter of primary importance that the inconveniences which would arrise from retarding the Completion of the public buildings can only be prevented by a Loan or by the alienation of public property at this time when an unusual demand for monied Capital would render Sales peculiarly disadvantagious” (DNA: RG 42, Records of the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, Letters Received). Wolcott sent a copy of the above letter to the commissioners when he wrote them on 17 Nov. (see DNA: RG 42, Records of the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, Letters Received).
4. No letter of this date from Wolcott to the commissioners has been identified. The Bank of the United States later rejected the loan application (see GW to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 11 Nov., and n.3 to that document).
5. In their letter of 31 Oct. to Dutch bankers Jan and Wilhem Willink, the commissioners proposed an interest payment of 6 percent per annum on a loan to be negotiated in Holland, but stipulated that charges for brokerage and other expenses not exceed “One & an half” percent “on the principal sum to be borrowed” (DNA: RG 42, Records of the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, Letters Sent; see also Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 31 Oct., first letter).
6. The “Act authorizing a Loan for the use of the City of Washington,” 6 May 1796, authorized the commissioners to borrow a total of $300,000 “at an interest not exceeding six per centum per annum.” The law also named the United States as the guarantor of the loan ( 461).
7. No letter from Wolcott to the commissioners pertaining to the interest payment on the anticipated Dutch loan has been identified.
8. For the contract of 23 Sept. 1793, by which the D.C. commissioners agreed to sell 3,000 Federal City lots to land speculator James Greenleaf, see GW to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 20 Aug. 1793, and n.3 to that document. The agreement was modified in December 1793 when the commissioners authorized the sale of 6,000 lots to Greenleaf and Robert Morris (see Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 23 Dec. 1793).
9. GW had expressed a similar view in a letter of 7 Jan. 1795 to then-D.C. commissioner Daniel Carroll, which reads: “you will readily perceive … how much my sentiments are opposed to any more large sales, if there be any other resource by which money can be obtained to carry on your operations.”
10. The following Wednesday was 9 November.
11. On 21 Nov., GW carried out an executive order authorizing the commissioners to secure a maximum loan for $150,000 from the state of Maryland (see GW to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 21 Nov.). For the text of that order or “power,” see the commissioners’ second letter to GW of 31 Oct., n.2. GW executed that order after learning of Wolcott’s failure to obtain a loan from the Bank of the United States.
12. GW intended to enclose the letter to him of 31 Oct. from the Philadelphia firm of Budd & Pryor, but he inadvertently failed to transmit it with the present document. His secretary George Washington Craik wrote the commissioners on that matter from Philadelphia on 9 Nov.: “Under cover you will receive a letter which, through hurry in making up the despatches of last post, had been omitted to be enclosed to you in the presidents letter of the 7th inst.” (LB, DLC:GW). The commissioners’ book of proceedings for 12 Nov. records the receipt of Craik’s letter “inclosing a Letter from Messrs Budd & Prior” (DNA: RG 42, Records of the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, Proceedings, 1791–1802). The firm’s owners, George Budd and Norton Pryor, Jr., had won the grand prize of a Federal City hotel in a lottery, but the hotel was never completed.