To Alexander Hamilton from Henry William De Saussure, 6 August 1803
From Henry William De Saussure
Charleston [South Carolina], August 6, 1803. Replies to Hamilton’s letter of June 9, 1803.1 States his opinion on Isaac Clason’s2 attachments on the property of Bird, Savage, and Bird and on the property of Robert Bird and Company and on the validity of an assignment of property which the partners had made to Richard Harison.3
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Letter not found.
2. Clason was a New York City merchant.
3. Bird, Savage, and Bird was a South Carolina firm of merchants and bankers operating in London. The partners were Benjamin Savage and Robert and Henry Bird, who were brothers. Savage and Henry Bird lived in England and Robert Bird in the United States, where the firm was known as Robert Bird and Company. On December 3, 1802, shortly before the three partners were declared bankrupts, they made a secret assignment of part of their property to Richard Harison, a New York City attorney, “in trust for certain of their creditors” (William Johnson, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature, and in the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors in the State of New-York, I [New York, 1807], 118).