Ebenezer Smith Platt to the American Commissioners, 21 April 1778: résumé
Ebenezer Smith Platt to the American Commissioners4
ADS: Massachusetts Historical Society
<Paris, April 21, 1778: The petitioner recounts his role in obtaining the gunpowder landed at Savannah in 1775, and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment in Jamaica and in England.5 He was released through the efforts of a committee for American prisoners, arrived in Paris destitute, and asks help in getting home.>
4. Published in Taylor, Adams Papers, VI, 44–6, where the annotation carries the story through the Platts’ return home. For an excellent recent survey of Ebenezer’s entire career see Sheldon S. Cohen, “The Odyssey of Ebenezer Smith Platt,” Jour. of Amer. Studies, XVIII (1984), [255]–74.
5. The account differs only in minor details from the fuller one given BF by Elizabeth Wright in February, 1777: above, XXIII, 322–6.