Benjamin Franklin Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0393

The Committee of Secret Correspondence to William Bingham, 23 October 1776

The Committee of Secret Correspondence to William Bingham

LS: Historical Society of Pennsylvania; copy: National Archives

Philada. October 23d. 1776

Sir

We have wrote you already by this Conveyance of the Brigantine Andrew Doria to St. Eustatia which we deem safer than the Sachem as she sails faster and is of more Force.1 Therefore we now enclose you some very Important dispatches for Mr. Dean2 and request you will forward them by the very first good Conveyance advising us hereafter the Vessell and Masters name by which they go and also of their arrival when you hear it. We are Sir Your Obedient Servants

B Franklin
Robt Morris
Richard Henry Lee
Wm Hooper
Jno Witherspoon

Wm Bingham Esqr.

Addressed: To / Wm Bingham Esqr. / Martinico

Endorsed: C of Secret Correspondence October 23d 1776

1This is ambiguous, but the letter went by both ships; see the next note. The Sachem was a ten-gun sloop and the Andrew Doria a fourteen-gun brig: Nathan Miller, Sea of Glory . . . (New York, [1974]), p. 528.

2These were two letters, dated Oct. 23, for Bingham to forward. One went directly to Martinique by the Sachem, as mentioned in the committee’s letter to Bingham of Oct. 21, and the other by the Andrew Doria via St. Eustatius. The first, signed by Morris alone, merely enclosed the commissioners’ additional instructions of Oct. 16. A summary of the second is below. Morris added a note to Bingham, of the same date, urging him to take particular care of these dispatches: Force, 5 Amer. Arch., II, 1198.

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