RC (ViW); endorsed by TJ as received 11 Oct. 1792 and so recorded in SJL, which indicates that it was delivered by “Colo. Robisson.”

Mercer seems to have exaggerated the great difficulties encountered by Maryland slaveholders in recovering fugitive slaves from Pennsylvania. The state’s gradual emancipation acts of 1780 and 1788 carefully safeguarded the property rights of slaveholders from other states, and the only known Pennsylvania court case prior to this time involving a Maryland owner seeking to recover a fugitive slave had resulted in a verdict in favor of the master (Paul Finkelman, The Law of Freedom and Bondage: A Casebook [New York, 1986], 41–8, 55–6; Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861 [Baltimore, 1974], 5–7; Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, ed., Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 vols. [Washington, D.C., 1926–37], iv, 256). The scene of infamy may be a reference to the recent controversy in Maryland generated by Mercer’s charges that Alexander Hamilton had actively opposed his successful bid for reelection to the House of Representatives because of Mercer’s sharp criticism of his administration as Secretary of the Treasury (Syrett, Hamilton, description begins Harold C. Syrett and others, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, New York, 1961–87, 27 vols. description ends xii, 481–6).