Board of War to George Washington, 5 June 1781
From the Board of War
War Office [Philadelphia] June 5. 1781
Sir
The enclosed Letters are transmitted for your Excellency’s Information.1 We are endeavouring to get a farther Supply of Arms for the Southern States, but their Numbers will depend upon our Supplies of Money to repair them. We have the Honour to be with the highest respect Your very obedt Servants
Richard Peters
By Order
ALS, DLC:GW. The cover is addressed to GW at New Windsor. GW’s secretary Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., wrote “recd 11th June” on the docket. GW replied to the board on 21 June.
1. The board enclosed a letter from Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Huntington, president of Congress, written at Charlottesville on 28 May; an extract from Maryland governor Thomas Sim Lee’s letter to Maryland delegates written at Annapolis on 30 May; and a letter from George Plater, president of the Maryland Senate, and William Bruff, speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, to Maryland delegates written at Annapolis on 1 June (all DLC:GW; see also , 20:597).
Jefferson’s letter is a truncated version of one he wrote GW on 28 May. They are similar until after the words “Navigable Waters,” when the letter to Huntington reads to its conclusion: “and the very powerful operation preparing by a joint force of British and Indian Savages on our frontier oblige us to embody an Army there of between two and three thousand Men. these facts with those which I have heretofore been constrained to trouble your Excellency with will enable Congress to form a proper Judgment of the Situation of this State and to adopt such measures for its Aid as its Circumstances may require and their powers affect.”
The extract from Lee pointed to the state’s “extraordinary exertions” to meet congressional demands that “have altogether exhausted our treasury and Stores of Arms and Clothing. …
“Under these distressing circumstances we request you to make known our wants, to Congress in the most earnest manner and endeavour to obtain a proportion of all Clothing Arms &c. that Congress now, or hereafter may have, for this State” (DLC:GW; see also , 45:450).
In their letter, Plater and Bruff asked the delegates “to inform Congress of the Movements of Lord Cornwallis, and to urge them in the most pressing manner to order all the Force, which can possibly be spared, to march immediately to the assistance of the Marquis de Lafayette.” They believed “that the object of the Enemy is Alexandria; where it is supposed Genl Leslie is to meet them, and thence to Baltimore. …
“We wish you would communicate the Intelligence you receive to his Excellency Genl Washington, whose Presence with a Body of Regulars, would effectually stop the Progress of the Enemy” (DLC:GW).