To George Washington from “The Author” [Robert Goldsborough], 1 June 1787
From “The Author” [Robert Goldsborough]
Cambridge, in Maryland [1 June 1787]
Sir,
If I had the honour of an Acquaintance with your Excellency, I wou’d respectfully subscribe my name to this address: But in communicating the sentiments which appear in the paper inclosed, I am not governed by a Motive of vanity in personally claiming your attention, but by a warm desire to see our political Union more perfectly established. Whether the ideas it contains can have any tendency to promote an object so ardently wished for by every patriot, is submitted to your superior Judgment. I am, sir, Like the rest of mankind, Your sincere Admirer and most obedient servant,
The Author.
ALS, DLC:GW. The letter is addressed to “His Excellency George Washington President of the Convention in Philadelphia.” Eric Papenfuse has determined that the author of the enclosed proposal for the form of new government being constructed by the Federal Convention probably was Robert Goldsborough (1733–1788), a native of Cambridge, Dorchester County, Maryland. A distinguished lawyer who was at the Inns of Court in the 1750s and took a degree from the college in Philadelphia in 1760, Goldsborough was one of the drafters of Maryland’s constitution in 1776. He was elected to the Annapolis Ratifying Convention in 1788 as a staunch Federalist but was too ill to attend, dying soon after it had adjourned.