Baron von Steuben to the President of Congress, [1784]
Baron von Steuben to the President of Congress
[New York, 1784].1 In a letter beginning “Nothing could justify my repeated applications to Your Honorable body, but that rigorous lot by which I feel myself oppressed,” Hamilton set forth von Steuben’s claims to compensation by the Continental Congress.
Df, in writing of H, Mr. Herbert R. Strauss, Chicago.
1. Because von Steuben sent so many memorials to Congress, any one of which may have been written by H, it is impossible to date this letter precisely. It contains, however, one clue to the date on which it may have been written. In the first paragraph H writes for Steuben: “It is now two years that I have been soliciting the accomplishment of that Indemnification which has been adjudged to me by different Committees of Congress.” As von Steuben’s first memorial was submitted in December, 1782 (see “Continental Congress. Report on the Claim of Baron von Steuben,” December 30, 1782), this memorial presumably was written in 1784.