From George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, 6 September 1793
To Alexander Hamilton
Philadelphia Septr 6th 1793
My dear Sir,
With extreme concern I receive the expression of your apprehensions, that you are in the first Stages of the prevailing fever. I hope they are groundless, notwithstanding the malignancy of the disorder is so much abated, as with proper & timely applications, not much is to be dreaded.1
The enclosed was written & sent to your Office yesterday, with direction if you were not there, to be brought back. And it would be a very pleasing circumstance if a change so entirely favourable as to justify it, would permit your attendance, & to bring Mrs Hamilton with you, to dine with us at three Oclock.2 I am always & Affectly Yours
Go: Washington
ALS (photocopy), Kenneth W. Rendell, Inc., catalog 106 (c.1975), item 71; copy, DLC: Alexander Hamilton Papers.
1. No written communication by Hamilton informing GW that he had contracted yellow fever has been identified. By 11 Sept., when Hamilton wrote a public letter extolling his physician, he considered himself “compleatly out of danger” (, 15:331–32).
2. The enclosed letter from GW to Hamilton of 5 Sept. has not been found, but it probably was a form of the dinner invitation mentioned in this letter. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (1757–1854), a daughter of Gen. Philip Schuyler, had married Hamilton in 1780.