From John Jay to John Morin Scott, 22 June [20 July] 1774
To John Morin Scott
[N York 22d June 1774]
Sir
I was much surprised last Evening on being informed that in your speech of yesterday at the Coffee house (the Conclusion of which only I heard) you charged the drawers of the resolves then under Consideration with a design of thereby disuniting the Colonies.
On what Evidence you found an accusation . . . I am at a loss to conceive: but as it cannot be presumed you would wantonly sport with the reputation of persons whose attachment to the interest of their Country has never yet been questioned, you doubtless rest your opinion on Reasons you judge sufficient to support it.1
By the printed hand bill you will perceive Sir, that I was one of the Committee by whom these Resolves were formed,2 and am therefore deeply interested in obtaining from you a Candid and open declaration of the reasons by which you mean to justify holding us up to publick view in a Point of Light which men of Common honesty and spirit can neither merit nor permit. This is a piece of Justice which regard to my Character urges me to ask, and which I flatter myself you will have no objections to give. I am Sir Your hble Servt
John Jay.—
To John Morin Scott Esq
Tr, NN: Bancroft (EJ: 2747). The Tr, in the hand of J. M. Scott, the addressee’s descendant, is dated “22nd June 1774,” but in a letter to George Bancroft filed with the Tr, Scott confessed confusion over the dateline in the manuscript. Scott’s “attempted . . . fac Simile” of the original date shows that JJ had written “July,” even though Scott could not “make the word as written Stand for any thing but June.” The “speech of yesterday” referred to in the letter was obviously that made at the Coffee House on 19 July 1774; the error in the day may have been JJ’s or the transcriber’s.
1. This paragraph in Scott’s Tr was crossed out, probably by Scott, and recopied at the bottom of the page by George Bancroft. In copying the deleted material, Bancroft added the words “so black and so false” in the first phrase where J. M. Scott had entered seven dots to indicate an elision.
2. The handbill was probably the Proceedings of the Committee of Correspondence in New-York . . . July 13, 1774, the only known contemporary publication that contains the names of the subcommittee appointed on 13 July 1774 to draft resolutions for the Committee of Fifty-one (New York: John Holt, 1774; , no. 13477).