From Alexander Hamilton to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, 5 April 1800
To Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
New York April 5th. 1800
Sir
I have received your letter of the 28th. ultimo.
I approve of your reasons, & the plan you propose, for the disposition of the fifth sixth and seventh Regiments. Captain Ingersoll & Captain McClellan will proceed to join you as soon as Capt. Huger,1 who is hourly expected, shall arrive with his company from the Southward. Major Tousard I believe will be employed, in the Eastern Quarter, by the Secy. of War in some plan of fortification.
Genl. Pinckney
Df, in the handwriting of Ethan Brown, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Francis Kinloch Huger, the son of Major Benjamin Huger, who was killed in 1779 at Charleston, South Carolina, studied medicine in England. With Justus Erich Bollmann he attempted to rescue Lafayette from prison at Olmütz. Huger and Bollmann were captured in the attempt and also imprisoned. See H to George Washington, January 19, 1796; Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to H, June 5, 1796. After Huger was released from prison, he returned to the United States and completed his study of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his degree in 1797. He was appointed a captain in the Second Regiment of Artillerists and Engineers on June 1, 1798 (, 277, 279).
On March 4–5, 1800, in a letter listed in the appendix to this volume, H wrote to Huger, who was stationed at Charleston: “You will form out of all the parts of the second regiment of Artillerists in South Carolina and Georgia a complete company, and proceed with them to this place.…”
On March 27, 1800, in a letter listed in the appendix to this volume, Huger wrote to H: “I received yesterday your orders to proceed with my Company to New York. The Agent of the W: D here Mr [William] Crafts, has engaged our passage in the South Carolina … [which will] sail on the 5th April.”