Benjamin Harrison to Virginia Delegates, 11 January 1783
Benjamin Harrison to Virginia Delegates
FC (Virginia State Library). In the hand of Thomas L. Savage. Addressed to “Virginia Delegates in Congress.”
Council Chamber Januy: 11th. 1783.
Gentlemen
Your favor of the 31th. of last Month is before me the contents of it were in some Measure answer’d by the last post.1 Why the Bill laying an impost of 5 pCt. on imported Articles was repealed, is left to conjecture, other than is declared by the preamble,2 the Assembly had your Letter as you suppose and therefore could not be ignorant of the disagreeable Consequences that would flow from a repeal of the Law.3 You have enclosed such papers as are necessary respecting the Arbitration with mr: Nathan, I have no other directions to give but to request you to persue the same Methods for having the Matter adjusted as were proposed by Gover. Jefferson.4 I give you Joy on the long expected event of the evacuation of Charles Town’s taking place5 you will know the particulars before this reaches you from Major Burnett,6 who is gone on; will not the going of the french Troops more than counterbalance this?7 I confess I have my fears it will. Will it not be proper to call on mr: Nathan to swear he paid the full sum mentioned in the Bills in Gold and Silver for them.8
I am Gentl. &c.
B. H.
2. Harrison to JM, 4 Jan. 1783, and n. 4.
3. By “your Letter,” Harrison referred to that of the Virginia delegates to him on 10 December 1782 (, V, 389–90; 390, n. 1). See also ibid., V, 430; 431, n. 2; Harrison to JM, 4 Jan. 1783, and n. 1.
4. , V, 228–29; 229, nn. 2, 3, 5, 6; 344, and n. 10. For the “Methods” agreed upon by Governor Thomas Jefferson in Council in March 1781 for settling Simon Nathan’s claim, see , III, 20; 21, n. 1; 22, nn. 3, 4.
5. Harrison to JM, 4 Jan. 1783, and n. 9. The reoccupation of Charleston on 14 December 1782 by the American army was announced in the Virginia Gazette of 11 January 1783.
6. Major Ichabod Burnet (1756–1783) of Trenton, N.J., was graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1775. He was secretary of the Essex County, N.J., Committee of Safety in 1776, and aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Greene from 9 January 1778 until the close of the war. Arriving in Philadelphia on 15 January 1783 with Greene’s dispatch reporting the evacuation of Charleston by the British, Burnet proceeded to Newburgh and on 6 February “popped in unexpectedly” at Washington’s headquarters. He died at Charleston, S.C., on 12 September (Irving C. Hanners, The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey … [Bethlehem, Pa., 1949], p. 65; Burnett, Letters, VII, 17, 18; , XXVI, 104).
7. For the departure of Rochambeau’s army and the French fleet from Boston on 24 December 1782, see , V, 429, n. 5; 475, n. 10; JM Notes, 3 Jan. 1783, and n. 2.