To Alexander Hamilton from Benjamin Wells, 15 December 1798
From Benjamin Wells1
Connells Ville [Pennsylvania] December the 15th 1798
Sir
The hard treatment I have recieved from the government of the united States Since the western insurrection is the Cause of my apealing to you, in the Spring of 94—after the many insults and abuses I had recieved I purposed to you that I would resign you incouraged me by an asshurance that government would never let me Suffer. I have petitioned Congress for relief but to no purpose.2 Now Sir if my former Services have met you aprobation pray dwo Something for me.
I am with respect yours
Benja Wells
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. For background to this letter, see H to George Washington, August 5, September 2, 1794; H’s draft of Edmund Randolph to Thomas Mifflin, August 7, 1794.
2. On November 22, 1797, “A Petition of Benjamin Wells, Collector of the Revenue in the fourth survey of the District of Pennsylvania, was presented to the House and read, praying compensation for losses and injuries which he sustained in his person and property, from certain persons in the Western counties of Pennsylvania, opposed to the execution of the laws laying duties on stills, and on spirits distilled within the United States” (, III, 82–83). On November 24, 1797, this petition was referred to the Committee of Claims (, III, 87). The committee report, dated May 2, 1798, stated that “the prayer of this Petition ought not to be granted” (copy, in Wells’s handwriting, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress; , III, 282). The copy in the Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress, was enclosed in Wells to H, March 1, 1800. On March 1, 1800, the House ordered “That the petition of Benjamin Wells, presented the twenty-second of November, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, together with a report of the Committee of Claims thereon, be referred to the Secretary of the Treasury, with instruction to examine the matter thereof, and report his opinion thereupon to the House” (, III, 610). On March 24 the House sent to Oliver Wolcott, Jr., “a petition of sundry inhabitants of Fayette County, in the State of Pennsylvania … stating certain reasons against granting the petition of Benjamin Wells …” (, III, 638). In his report, dated April 2, 1800, Wolcott recommended that Wells should not be responsible for paying back the money granted him by the act of February 27, 1795, and that he should be fully compensated for his losses in 1794, but that no discrimination should be made in his favor (, Claims, 235–36; , III, 649). The Committee of Claims reported on April 21, and Wells’s petition was deferred (, III, 673). The House deferred Wells’s petition for a third time on February 1, 1803, but on November 30, 1803, the Committee of Claims reported favorably on Wells’s petition (, IV, 258, 463). As a result, on December 13, 1803, the House passed “An Act for the relief of the officers of Government, and other citizens, who suffered in their property by the insurgents in the Western counties of Pennsylvania” (, IV, 486). On January 19, 1804, the Senate postponed consideration of this bill (, IV, 542). The Senate did not pass the bill.