George Washington Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-18-02-0149

To George Washington from Gouverneur Morris, 5 June 1795

From Gouverneur Morris

Altona [Germany] 5 June 1795

My dear Sir

This will accompany my last of the 30 Decr. Within these two Days I have receivd Duplicates of the Letters to which it replies1 Accept I pray you my Thanks for that Attention. A many little Things have detaind me here since the Navigation opened but the Day after Tomorrow I shall I trust embark for London. I will take the Liberty of writing to you from that City on the State of Things as they shall then appear. I can say nothing better on the Peace with Prussia than what a french Valet de Chambre wrote from Paris to his master in this Country.2 “It was necessary that his prussian Majesty should make Haste to save our Dignity for in three Months we should have been on our knees to beg Peace from the Allies on any Terms they might prescribe.” I long since gave you an Idea of the Cabinet in that Country.3 I omitted perhaps the word Corruption & if so you may write it in Capitals but the Half Way Talents of Prince Henry may be considered as one Cause of that measure which will I think tend in its Consequence,4 to melt down the Colossus raisd by the great Frederic. I consider Holland as a ruin’d Country more especially if the War should continue for two Years longer and Britain will suck up that Commerce which formerly flowed thro so many Channels to Amsterdam.5 It seems probable also that the War will ere long be felt in this quarter of Europe but I suspend all further Observations for the present and the rather as I am just return’d from a Tour thro this Dutchy and am packing up for my Departure. Adieu my dear Sir I am truly yours

Gouvr Morris

ALS, DLC:GW; LB, in Morris’s hand, DLC: Gouverneur Morris Papers.

1Morris referred to GW’s letters to him of 19 and 25 June 1794.

2Prussia and the Republic of France signed a treaty that ended Prussia’s participation in the War of the First Coalition and ceded lands to France on the left side of the Rhine River.

4Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig (“Prince Heinrich”; 1726–1802) was the younger brother of Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia. At age 14 he joined the Prussian army as a colonel and participated in the Silesian Wars and the Seven Years’ War. After 1763, Prince Heinrich served as a Prussian diplomat and helped arrange the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Evidence suggests that Nathaniel Gorham, president of the Continental Congress, may have briefly corresponded with Prince Heinrich in 1786 on his possible service as president or king of the United States. Beginning that same year, Prince Heinrich acted as advisor to the successors of Frederick the Great—Frederick William II and, in 1797, Frederick William III.

5For events in the Netherlands, see Benjamin Franklin Bache et al. to GW, 11 April, n.1; and Edmund Randolph to GW, 20 April, n.4, and 26 April, notes 4 and 5.

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