James Madison Papers
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Benjamin Harrison to Virginia Delegates, 15 January 1782

Benjamin Harrison to Virginia Delegates

FC (Virginia State Library). In the hand of Charles Hay.

In Council January 15th. 1782

Gentlemen

The inclosed resolution of the Assembly just came to hand directing no money to be paid or specifics1 delivered but by special order of Congress or the Financier General You will please therefore to put it in such a train that Congress may avail themselves of any supplies we may be able to furnish them.2 I am &c

Benja Harrison3

1That is, specific commodities, such as food, other military matériel, or tobacco.

2On 5 January 1782 the Virginia General Assembly resolved, “That the Executive are hereby directed not to pay any money or specifics on continental account, except to the financier general or his order, or other person specially appointed by Congress to receive the same; and that particular accounts of such payments and their vouchers for the same, be laid before the General Assembly, at the beginning of every session” (Journal of the House of Delegates description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg. Beginning in 1780, the portion after the semicolon reads, Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond. In the County of Henrico. The journal for each session has its own title page and is individually paginated. The edition used, unless otherwise noted, is the one in which the journals for 1777–1786 are brought together in two volumes, with each journal published in Richmond in 1827 or 1828, and often called the “Thomas W. White reprint.” description ends , October 1781, p. 73). For an explanation of this resolution, see Harrison to Virginia Delegates, 1 March 1782. The delegates assured Harrison in their letter of 12 March (q.v.) that they had delivered a copy of the resolution to Robert Morris. See also Harrison to Morris, 27 March 1782 (McIlwaine, Official Letters description begins H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Official Letters of the Governors of the State of Virginia (3 vols.; Richmond, 1926–29). description ends , III, 184–85).

3On 1 February 1782 Edmund Randolph acknowledged to Harrison, “in behalf of the Virginia delegation,” his dispatch of 17 January. The journal of the Council of State usually made note of letters which were to be or had been written by the governor to the delegates, but no entry of this kind appears in the record for 17 January (Journals of the Council of State description begins H. R. McIlwaine et al., eds., Journals of the Council of the State of Virginia (3 vols. to date; Richmond, 1931——). description ends , III, 28). Randolph may have meant to acknowledge receipt of the present letter rather than one dated two days later; but if he did receive a letter of the seventeenth, it is now missing. See Virginia Delegates to Harrison, 8 February 1782, n. 1.

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