From Benjamin Franklin to Dumas, 16 August 1781
To Dumas
LS:2 Yale University Library; AL (draft): Library of Congress; copies: Library of Congress, National Archives
Passy, Aug. 16. 1781.
Dear Sir,
We have News here that your Fleet has behaved bravely;3 I congratulate you upon it, most cordially.
I have just received a 14. 5. 3. 10. 28. 2. 76. 202: 66. 11. 12. 273, 50. 14. joining 76. 5. 42. 45. 16. 15. 424. 235. 19: 20. 69. 580. 11. 150. 27. 56. 35. 104. 652. 28. 675. 85. 79. 50. 63. 44. 22. 219. 17. 60. 29. 147. 136. 41. but this is not likely to afford 202. 55. 580. 10. 227. 613. 176. 373. 309: 4. 108. 40. 19. 97. 309. 17. 35. 90. 201. 100. 677.4
By our last Advices our Affairs were in a pretty good train. I hope we shall soon have Advice of the Expulsion of the English from Virginia. I am ever, Dear Sir, Your most obedient & most humble Servant
B Franklin
Mr. Dumas
2. In L’Air de Lamotte’s hand except for the portion of the complimentary close beginning “Your”, which is in BF’s.
3. In a bitterly fought battle off Dogger Bank on Aug. 5, a Dutch squadron lost more than 100 killed and some 400 wounded, a British squadron slightly fewer: Gaz. de Leyde, Aug. 12; W.M. James, The British Navy in Adversity: a Study of the War of American Independence (London, New York, Toronto, 1926), pp. 310–12, 448.
4. For some reason BF here has used the 1776 Dumas cipher (XXII, 405) rather than the 1780 Jones-Dumas code and cipher (XXXI, 345–7). Correcting for BF’s enciphering mistakes the passage reads, “I have just received a new commission joining me with M. Adams in negotiations for peace but this is not likely to afford me much employ at present”: Ralph E. Weber, United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers 1775–1938 (Chicago, 1979), pp. 26–7.