Virginia Delegates to Benjamin Harrison, 2 July 1782
Virginia Delegates to Benjamin Harrison
RC (Virginia State Library). In JM’s hand, except the signatures of Bland and Lee. Addressed to “His Excellency. The Honble B. Harrison.” Docketed: “Virga Delegates Lr. July 82[.] July 2d 1782.”
Philada. 2d July 1782.
Sir
We had the honor of receiving your Excellency’s favor of the 22. Ultimo1 by yesterday’s mail.
All the late intelligence from Europe which has not been already communicated, is contained in the gazettes herewith enclosed.2 From the west Indies we have received no certain advices of late date, nor even yet any official advice of the event of the 12th. of April.3 At New York the Enemy, we are told, are industrious in disciplining their army, and substituting oeconomical arrangements in place of the expensive abuses which have prevailed there.4
We have the honor to be with the highest esteem & respect Yr. Excelly’s obedient & humble Servants
J Madison Jr.
Theok: Bland Jr.
A. Lee
2. These may have been the issues of the Pennsylvania Packet for 27 and 29 June and 2 July 1782. See JM to Randolph, 2 July 1782, and nn. 8 and 11.
3. The Battle of the Saints.
4. This and “the Languor and Inertion of the several States in sending on the Recruits to the Army” were the subjects emphasized by Washington in his brief letter of 24 June 1782, read in Congress three days later (, XXIV, 384–85; , XXII, 357 n.). So effective were Sir Guy Carleton’s reforms, particularly in rooting out corruption and favoritism, that one observer credited him with saving the British treasury two million pounds sterling a year (Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Father Knickerbocker Rebels, pp. 162, 249).