To James Madison from Edmund Pendleton, 18 December 1784
From Edmund Pendleton
Letter not found.
18 December 1784. The list probably kept by Peter Force (DLC: Madison Miscellany) indicates Pendleton wrote a letter from Edmundsbury on this day that was an “Appeal for the family of Philip Davis; a forger of tobacco notes.” The punishment for forging tobacco notes was death ( , IX, 516). Counterfeiting and forgery were accounted treason and under the common law the estate of the felon was forfeited to the state. The petition on behalf of “the family” was an effort to save the estate of Philip Davis for the benefit of his family. There is no surviving evidence that JM aided Davis, who, although convicted, was reprieved and his sentence was commuted to five years of public labor ( , III, 414, 416, 419, 422; Patrick Henry to Charles Pearson, 28 Mar. 1785, , pp. 452–53).