PART OF A LETTER OF WASHINGTON TO BENJAMIN HARRISON, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION AND MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF WAR
Dated at Middlebrook, N. J., May 5, 1779.
(As the letter covers ten folio pages, we give only the salient points of it. It was sold in the Bishop Hurst collection, last Spring, for $1065, the largest price ever paid for a Washington letter).
The letter commences by referring to some statements in a previous letter recommending certain measures, and reiterates their necessity, and that if longer delayed “I shall not scruple to add that our affairs are irretrievably lost.” He also predicts that the result will be “the fate of our paper money and with it a general crash of all things.” Washington then proceeds:
“The measures of Ministry are taken, and the whole strength and resources of the Kingdom will be exerted against it in this campaign; while we have been slumbering and sleeping, or disputing upon trifles, contenting ourselves with laughing at the impotence of Great Britain.... Accts. from London to the 9th. of March, have fixed me in the opinion that G. Britain will strain every nerve to distress us this campaign, but where or in what manner her principal forces will be employed I cannot determine.... My own opinion of the matter is that, they will keep a respectable force at (New York), and push their operations vigorously to the Southward, where we are most vulnerable, and least able to afford succour.... She may, cercumstanced as we are, give a very unfavourable turn to that pleasing slumber, we have been in for the last eight months.... From present appearances I have not the smallest doubt but that we shall be hard pushed in every quarter. This campaign will be the grand, and if unsuccessful, more than probable the last struggle of Great Britain.... They are raising all the Indians from North to South which their arts and money can procure, and a powerful diversion they will make in this quarter with the aid they expect from Canada.”
Washington then criticises the method of calling out the Militia, condemning it, and proposes another scheme. He also writes about the treatment of the British prisoners, and then returns again to the operations and conduct of the war.
“I view General Philips in the light of a dangerous man—in his march to Charlotteville he was guilty of a very grave breach of military judgment and of a procedure highly criminal; for instead of pursuing the route pointed out to him he went”—(Washington then describes the route).
The General then gives warning that deserters or prisoners must not be trusted, giving some interesting facts, and proceeds to relate the latest news of the operations against the Indians on the frontier. The letter is signed G. Washington in full, and a postscript is added giving some news of the sailing of a British expedition, presumably to Georgia, and stating what he has ordered in consequence, signed G. W.