From George Washington to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 1 July 1796
To the Commissioners for the District of Columbia
Mount Vernon 1st July 1796.
Gentlemen
Your two letters, dated the 29th Ulto, have been received. The enclosures for the several Printers, to whom they are directed, are franked; and will go with this, and other letters to the Post Office this afternoon. I do not think it would be amiss to add Hartford, in Connecticut (a paper of extensive circulation altho’ I do not recollect the name of the Editor of it) and some Gazette in North Carolina, to your list of publications.1
The decisive manner in which you treated the notification of Mr Hadfield, was, in my opinion, very proper. There ought to be no trifling in these matters. Coaxing a man to stay in Office—or to do his duty while he is in it, is not the way to accomplish the objects.
Having received (by the last Post) the certificates I wrote to Philadelphia for, I enclose them, with the Power of Attorney to Messrs Willinks, that you may forward them by the first conveyance that offers.2 I am not in the way to hear of any.
The continual disappointments of Messrs Morris & Nicholson are really painful. One would hope that their assurances were not calculated for delay, and yet they seem to admit of hardly any other interpretation. An answer from the Secretary of the Treasury might, and I think ought to have been received by you, on Wednesday last.3 With esteem & regard I am Gentlemen Your Obedient Servt
Go: Washington
ALS, DLC: U.S. Commissioners of the City of Washington records; copy, DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW. The commissioners replied to GW on 12 July.
1. Hartford then had two weekly newspapers: Elisha Babcock edited the American Mercury, and Barzillai Hudson and George Goodwin edited The Connecticut Courant (see 1:19, 22). The commissioners apparently acted on GW’s recommendations, as The Connecticut Courant for 15 Aug. and The North-Carolina Journal (Halifax) for 1 Aug. printed his executive order dated 25 June. For that order, see GW to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 26 June, n.2.
2. GW probably is referring to his letter to James McHenry dated 22 June (see also McHenry’s reply on 29 June). GW needed to sign these certificates that authorized the commissioners to borrow money (see Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 13 May, n.1).
3. The preceding Wednesday was 29 June. The commissioners had written Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr., on 20 June, and he replied on 27 June (see Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 22 June, and n.3).