To George Washington from Alexander Hamilton, 19 January 1797
From Alexander Hamilton
New York Jan. 19, 179[7]1
Sir
Mrs De Neuville widow of Mr De Neuville formerly of Holland lately passed through this City. On her way she called upon me and announced her intention to make application to Congress on the grounds of the political services rendered the U. States by her husband, as in fact a principal cause of his pecuniary misfortunes—and expressed a wish that I would bring her case under your eye. I told her that your situation did not permit you to take an agency in similar matters depending before Congress—and that you was very delicate on such subjects. She replied that you might perhaps indirectly promote her cause and that from a letter from you to her husband she was encouraged to think you would be dispossed to befriend her—I yielded at last to female importunity & promised to mention the matter—I do not know what the case admits of, but from some papers which she shewed me it would seem that she had pretensions on the kindness of this Country.2
Our Merchants here are becoming very uneasy on the subject of the French captures and seizures—They are certainly very perplexing and alarming—and present an evil of a magnitude to be intolerable if not shortly remedied3—My anxiety to present Peace with France is known to you—and it must be the wish of every prudent man that no honorable expedient for avoiding a Rupture be omitted. Yet there are bounds to all things. This Country cannot see its Trade an absolute prey to France without resistance. We seem to be where we were with G. Britain when Mr Jay was sent there4—and I cannot descern but that the Spirit of the Policy then pursued with regard to england will be the proper one now in respect to France (viz.) A solemn and final appeal to the Justice and interest of France & if this will not do, measures of self defence—Any thing is better than absolute humiliation—France has already gone much further than Great Britain ever did.
I give vent to my impressions on this subject though I am persuaded the train of your own reflections cannot materially vary. With respectful & Affect. Attachmen[t] I have the honor to remain Sir Yr very Obedt
A. Hamilton
ALS, DLC:GW; ALS (retained copy), DLC: Hamilton Papers. GW replied to Hamilton on 22 January.
1. Hamilton wrote the year as “1796,” but both GW’s docket, which reads “19th Jan. 1797,” and his reply date the present document to 1797.
2. Anna-Margaretha de Neufville, a Boston resident and the widow of Jean de Neufville, a former Amsterdam merchant and banker who died in 1796, sought compensation for debt that was still owed her husband and his firm, Jean de Neufville & Fils, for Revolutionary War expenditures. De Neufville had used his funds on behalf of Commodore Alexander Gillon in the latter’s efforts to purchase frigates for the South Carolina navy in the early 1780s. For more on the Revolutionary War expenditures of Jean de Neufville & Fils and the debt owed that firm, see GW to Jean de Neufville, 6 Jan. 1784, and the source note to that document, in 1:18–19; see also GW to Leonard de Neufville, 29 June 1789. In his 6 Jan. 1784 letter to Jean de Neufville, GW anticipated “that justice will … be rendered to all the public Creditors.”
Hamilton wrote South Carolina congressman William Loughton Smith on 19 Jan. to inform him that Anna was going to Philadelphia “to solicit the Kindness of Congress in virtue of services rendered the American cause by her husband” (20:468–69). Upon her arrival, Anna apparently met with GW and discussed her situation. Before GW’s retirement from the presidency, Congress took action relative to Anna’s case (see her letter to GW of 2 Feb., and n.1 to that document).
,3. The French Directory had passed a decree of 2 July 1796 that subjected U.S. vessels bound for British ports to seizure (see GW to Hamilton, 2 Nov. 1796, and n.2 to that document). As a result, the French captured at least 316 U.S. vessels between July 1796 and early 1797 (see , 2:28–65). , Foreign Relations
4. Hamilton refers to John Jay’s mission as envoy extraordinary to Great Britain in the summer and fall of 1794, which resulted in the signing of the Jay Treaty that November (see GW to the U.S. Senate, 16 April 1794 [first letter]; see also Notice of John Jay’s Powers as Envoy Extraordinary to Great Britain, 6 May 1794; and Edmund Randolph to GW, 6 May 1794). Treaty negotiations between the United States and Britain had been prompted by several factors, including Britain’s attacks on neutral shipping and the British failure to evacuate western posts (see The Jay Treaty: Appointment and Instructions, in , 5:609–21).