Robert Hanson Harrison to George Washington, 14 April 1781
From Robert Hanson Harrison
Philadelphia April 14th 1781
Dr Sir,
As soon as I came to the City, I applied to Doctr Baker for such pinchers as Your Excellency wanted, & finding he had but One pair, which he could not part with, I engaged him to procure a set. He has assured me he has made diligent inquiry upon the occasion & has not been able to succeed. The matter, he says, will still be retained in his mind and if he can find a pair, he will forward them to Camp by the first Opportunity.1
I have been detained here, ever since saturday Sennight2 by a painful indisposition, and, though much better now, do not know whether I shall be in condition, especially if the Weather continues so exceedingly cold & disagreeable, to set out for four or Five days. This has prevented my going to the General Court on the Eastern shore, at which I would willingly have been, & which ought to have begun on Tuesday Morning, but whether it did, is a matter of doubt, owing to the state of the Enemy in the Bay & the communication being, in a great degree, interrupted by them, between the Two Shores. Colo. Grayson has just arrived from the Southward & tells me they have done much more mischief up the Rivers than I had heard of.3 He says they have burnt the whole of Colo. Barnes’s Houses near Leonard Town4—robbed several—and that he was told on the road, they had proceeded up potowmack as far as the Mouth of portobacco Creek and burnt priest Hunter’s elegant buildings.5 They were there within Ten miles of my place. He also tells me a small pickerooning Vessel had been at Alexandria to cut some Vessel out of the port, which had been captured, after a chace of Sixty Miles down the River.6 What a defenceless condition are We in, to be liable to be insulted by a mere barge, such a distance from the Enemy’s post?7 Unless we should be so happy as to receive a reinforcement of Ships, & such as will give our Allies a superiority in these seas, I think, we shall experience infinite distress this Summer, both in Virginia & Maryland. Having been confined to the House ever since Monday week, I have had little or no opportunity of hearing much about politics or public affairs. I believe however, all our embarrassments, with respect [to] money, exist in full force, and how they are to be relieved, is a point as yet unsettled, & which I fear is too much for our wisdom. The constituting of Boards of finance &c. &c. seems to be at an end, at least for the present. General St Clair is here & has been much afflicted with the Gout. He and General Wayne, and indeed All the Officers I have seen, have been using their best endeavours to get things in train for advancing their Troops to the Southward. They are at a stand for Money, and I don’t know that they have a prospect of getting any, as the Assembly broke up Two or three days ago, without having provided a Supply.8 The supreme Court is sitting here, and I am just told the Grand Jury has found an information or Bill of Indictment against J. Mease and West for their conduct after the evacuation of the City by the Enemy in 1778. I hope they will be made to pay through the Nose for their iniquities. It is strange, but it is true, that several Men of high Character visit & are on terms of intimacy still with Mease.9 There has not been an arrival from any quarter since I came here, so that there is a dearth of news There are Reports that Count D’Estaing has sailed from Brest with Thirty three Ships of the line & that Ten of them are for Us—but I can’t find that th[e]se are well founded.10 I hope however we may expect succour. We never wanted it more. I request Your Excellency to present me most respectfully to Mrs Washington and the Gentlemen of the family & to accept my best wishes for your happiness.11 I am Dear sir With the greatest re⟨gard & respect⟩ Yr Most Obedt st
Rob: H: Harrison
ALS, DLC:GW.
Harrison had resigned as GW’s secretary but received a warrant for $320 “New Emission” on 26 March for his “Pay & Subsistence from 1st Augst to 20th Octr 1780” (Revolutionary War Warrant Book 5, 1780–1783, DLC:GW, ser. 5; see also Harrison to GW, 26 Feb.). For the type of money, see Philip Schuyler to GW, 12 March 1780, and notes 3 and 4 to that document.
1. GW had written John Baker from New Windsor on 29 March: “A day or two ago I requested Colo. Harrison to apply to you for a pair of Pincers to fasten the wire of my teeth. I hope you furnished him with them—I now wish you would send me one of your scrapers, as my teeth stand in need of cleaning, and I have little prospect of being in Philadelpa soon. It will come very safe by the Post—& in return, the money shall be sent so soon as I know the cost of it” (ALS, MiU-C: Clinton Papers; GW signed the cover, which is addressed to Baker at Philadelphia; the month in the dateline—originally written as “Mar.”—now looks like “May” because a later hand added a tail to the final letter). GW’s letter apparently was among captured mail (see Elias Dayton to GW, 4 April, and n.2 to that document).
John Baker (c.1732–1796), an English immigrant, practiced dentistry in Boston and New York City before moving to Williamsburg, Va., where he began treating GW’s dental problems in 1772. He went to Philadelphia during the war and later settled in New York City.
2. The Saturday a week previous to this date was 7 April.
3. The next term of Maryland’s General Court of the Eastern Shore commenced in May. For British raids up the Potomac River and its tributaries in the spring of 1781, see Lafayette’s second letter to GW, 10 April, and n.3. Enemy operations threatened Harrison’s property and financial interests in Maryland (see his letter to GW, 28 Nov. 1780).
4. British forces do not appear to have harmed Richard Barnes’s estate, America Felix Secundus, which came to be called Tudor Hall after the war.
Richard Barnes (1744–1804), a patriot leader in Maryland and county lieutenant for St. Mary’s County, served as a Maryland militia colonel (see Maryland Council to Barnes, 4 April 1781, and Maryland Council to Andrew Buchanan, 8 April, in , 45:376, 383–84). He was a member of the convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution for Maryland in 1788. A death notice in The Maryland Herald, and Hager’s-Town Weekly Advertiser for 9 May 1804 reads: “His will declares all his negroes, amounting between three and four hundred, free three years after his death, provided they behave themselves well.”
5. George Hunter (1713–1779), born in northern England, entered the Jesuits in 1730 and arrived in Maryland in 1747. Based at St. Thomas’s Manor in Charles County, Md., he directed fellow priests and Jesuit-owned plantations in Maryland. British forces raided some of those plantations in 1781 and during the War of 1812.
6. County lieutenant Henry Lee wrote Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson from Prince William County, Va., on 9 April 1781 about British depredations that included an unsuccessful attempt at Alexandria, Va., to capture “a Vessel belonging to Baltimore” during the night of 1 April. “If the Enemy had Succeeded at Alexandria they intended; one of the Prisoners say, to have burnt Genl. Washingtons Houses, Plundered Colo. Mason and myself and endeavoured to have made me a Prisoner. . . . it would be Adviseable to order a few horse to be raised in the different Countys on Potomac and Constantly keep in pay to give Notice of the Movements of the Enemy from time to time which would be of Amazing Utility and Quiet the Inhabitants in their Possessions and save Many familys from being Plundered” (, 5:393–94; see also GW to Lund Washington, 30 April).
7. The British forces in Virginia were based at Portsmouth.
8. See Arthur St. Clair to GW, 6 April, and notes 1 and 3 to that document.
9. Congress had resolved on 9 Jan. to inform the president and Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania “that Congress have paid due attention to their letter of the 6 December last, stating ‘a high abuse of office, committed by James Mease, late clothier-general, and William West, jun., his deputy or appointee: who, in conjunction with Major General Arnold, did, under colour of office, in the year 1778, take from sundry inhabitants of this city, great quantities of merchandise, not necessary for the army, which were converted to their private emolument.’” Congress disapproved “such conduct … as a flagrant abuse of office” and recommended prosecution (, 19:40; see also Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council to Samuel Huntington, 6 Dec. 1780, DNA:PCC, item 69).
Pennsylvania officials appointed Jonathan D. Sergeant on 22 Jan. to assist the attorney general’s prosecution of James Mease and William West, Jr. (see , 12:604). Mease and West apparently escaped punishment, but the British later captured the latter as he attempted to ship supplies from the West Indies to Philadelphia and imprisoned him at New York City (see Paul A. Wallace, “Historic Hope Lodge,” 86 [1962], 115–42).
10. The intelligence about French vice admiral d’Estaing was erroneous (see Rochambeau to GW, 27 Feb., n.8).
11. Harrison means GW’s military family (see General Orders, 7 March, source note).