I will thank you in your letter to me to answer the following question:
What appeared to be my ideas and disposition respecting the removal of Congress? Did I appear to wish to hasten it, or did I not rather show a strong disposition to procrastinate it?
I will be obliged to you in answering this question to do it fully. I do not intend to make any public use of it, but through my friends to vindicate myself from the insinuation I have mentioned, and in that to confute the supposition that the motive assigned did actuate the members on whom it fell to be more particularly active.
Yours,
A. Hamilton.
HAMILTON TO MRS. HAMILTON.
Philadelphia, July 22, 1783.
I wrote you, my beloved Eliza, by the last post, which I hope will not meet with the fate that many others of my letters must have met with. I count upon setting out to see you in four days; but I have been so frequently disappointed by unforeseen events, that I shall not be without apprehensions of being detained, till I have begun my journey. The members of Congress are very pressing with me not to go away at this time, as the House is thin, and as the definitive treaty is momently expected.
Tell your father that Mr. Rivington, in a letter to the South Carolina delegates, has given information, coming to him from Admiral Arbuthnot, that the Mercury frigate is arrived at New-York with the definitive treaty, and that the city was to be evacuated yesterday, by the treaty.
I am strongly urged to stay a few days for the ratification of the treaty; at all events, however, I will not be long absent.
I give you joy of the happy conclusion of this important work in which your country has been engaged. Now, in a very short time, I hope we shall be happily settled in New-York.