From George Washington to Timothy Pickering, 2 September 1796
To Timothy Pickering
Friday Evening 2d Sep. [1796]
Dear Sir,
I thank you for your private letter of this date, & will arrest the talk intended for the Cherokee Indns until it can be further considered. For this purpose I send the one I have just received from you, back again; with a request that you would pursue the remarks you have begun; and let me have them as soon as you can, conveniently, in the morning; that I may be possessed of them before I see the Secretary of War.1 Yours sincerely, & always
Go: Washington
I did not admire the draught when it was presented to me & told the Secretary so; but I am so pressed, & allowed so little time to consider matters that my signature, or approbation is, I am persuaded given, sometimes, rather too hastily.
Transcript, MHi: Pickering Papers. Octavius Pickering certified this transcript as “A true copy” in 1866.
1. In response to GW’s request, Pickering submitted a fully revised draft of the talk with a cover letter dated 2 Sept.: “The day before yesterday the Secretary of War put into my hands a printed Talk to the Cherokees. I have not found time to consider it till now. It does not accord with my ideas or my experience in Indian affairs. I attempted to make alterations: but my train of thinking was so different from that of the Secretary of war—not in the Substance, but in the manner, that I found it necessary to leave the subject, or make a new draught: and deeming it a matter of consequence, seeing it is to proceed from the supreme executive of the U. States, I could not withhold the draught from you. It is now respectfully submitted to your consideration” (ALS, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; ALS [letterpress], MHi: Pickering Papers; LB, DNA: RG 59, GW’s Correspondence with His Secretaries of State). For the final version of GW’s talk, which followed Pickering’s draft with few variations, see GW to the Cherokee Nation, 29 Aug., and notes 1 and 2 to that document.