Alexander Hamilton Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-05-02-0073

To Alexander Hamilton from Tench Coxe, [23 January 1789]

From Tench Coxe1

[January 23, 1789]

Dear Sir

Our city are about applying to the legislature for an incorporation, and among other lights have availed themselves of the corporation act of your city.2 As experience points out many defects, wch. do not at first strike the observation, you will very much oblige me by noting such things as you would advise us to avoid. If there are any matters which have been omitted, or if there are any clauses in the act of extraordinary Value I would wish your notes to extend to them. These notes maybe brief, and will be in time, if your engagements permit you to make them by the 28th or 30th. instant.

I am, Sir, very respectfully Yr. mo. obedt. h. Servt.

Tench Coxe

Alexr. Hamilton Esqr.

ALS, New-York Historical Society, New York City.

1Coxe was a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress.

2The movement for the incorporation of Philadelphia was almost a decade old. The city’s numerous petitions for a charter had been refused chiefly because a majority in the Pennsylvania Assembly distrusted all corporations and charters, and because it objected to the provision in the proposed charters that the suffrage be restricted to freeholders. A bill providing for the city’s incorporation was finally passed in 1789.

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