[Diary entry: 5 June 1781]

5th. Governor Rutlidge of South Carolina came to Head Qrs. with representations of the situation of Southern affairs, & to sollicit aids. I communicated the plan of Campaign to him & candidly exposed the true State of our Circumstances which convinced him—or seemed to do so—that no relief cd. be given from this army till we had acquired a Naval Superiority and cd. transport Troops by Water.1

1. John Rutledge was at this time governor of South Carolina. Rutledge had left Philadelphia 23 May to visit Headquarters at New Windsor, N.Y., before returning to South Carolina (LMCC description begins Edmund C. Burnett, ed. Letters of Members of the Continental Congress. 8 vols. 1921–36. Reprint. Gloucester, Mass., 1963. description ends , 6:96). Presumably his mission was to relay to GW the hopes of the southern delegates in the Continental Congress for a summer campaign in the South rather than an attack on New York.

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Source Project: Washington Papers
Title: [Diary entry: 5 June 1781]
Author: Washington, George
Date: 5 June 1781

Reference

Cite as: “[Diary entry: 5 June 1781],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0007-0002-0003. [Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1 January 1771–5 November 1781, ed. Donald Jackson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, pp. 377–378.]