To John Adams from Jabez Bowen, 21 April 1789
From Jabez Bowen
Providence April 21. 1789
Sir,
I hope this will find you in Health and that Harmony and Unanimity prevails in the Councels of the United States, altho we cannot yet joyn, them.
By the Choice of the Representatives that has taken place in this State we have some prospect of the Lower house Voting a State Convention, hope our Friends in Congress will be mindfull of the Mercantile Intrest in this State. and if a Letter could be obtained from the President, Address’d to our General Assembly who Convene The of May1 I have great hopes that we shall carry a Vote for a Convention.
This will be Deliverd you by my Brother Oliver Bowen Esqr. who has resided for near Twenty Years in the State of Georgia, and who lost all his property by the Revolution, after rendring considerable Services to the Cause of American Liberty. He now solicits the place of Collector of the Impost for the State of Georgia.2 he may be Relied upon as a sober and honest man. every service rendered my Brother will be Esteemed as an Obligation Conferred on your Excellencys most Obedient and verry Humb. Servant.
Jabez Bowen
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “His Excellency John Adams Esqr / Vice President— U. States of Am.”
1. The R.I. General Assembly convened on Wednesday, 6 May (Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, ed. John Russell Bartlett, 10 vols., 1856–1865, 10:324). For the state’s extended ratification debate, see Samuel Allyne Otis’ 7 July 1788 letter, and note 1, above.
2. Oliver Bowen (1742–1800), of Providence, the former Rhode Island deputy governor’s younger brother, had relocated to Georgia, where he was granted 1,500 acres of land in 1784. Previously a naval captain who prospered in the slave trade, Bowen sought the lucrative post of collector at Savannah. He appealed to George Washington twice, in April and May 1789, traveling to New York City to make his case for the post, but met with no success. On 20 May 1796 Washington nominated Bowen to serve as marshal for the district of Georgia, and he was confirmed by the Senate four days later (, 2:177–178; Randy J. Sparks, Africans in the Old South: Mapping Exceptional Lives across the Atlantic World, Cambridge, 2016, p. 85; , 4th Cong., 1st sess., p. 210, 211).