"I have written to Mr. Jefferson on this subject. Notwithstanding which, I would thank you for your opinion and that fully, as you see my embarrassment. I even ask more. I would thank you, not being acquainted with forms, to sketch some instrument for publication, adapted to the course you may think it would be most expedient for me to pursue in the present state of things, if the members are called together as before mentioned.
"The difficulty of keeping clerks in the public offices had in a manner put a stop to business before I left Philadelphia, and the heads of departments having matters of their own, which called them away, has prevented my return thither longer than I had intended. I have now desired the different secretaries to meet me there, or in the vicinity, the 1st of next month, for which I shall set out the 27th or the 28th of the present.
"The accounts from the city are really affecting. Two gentlemen now here from New York, Colonels Platt and Sergeant, say that they were told at the Swede's ford of Schuylkill, by a person who had it from Governor Mifflin, that, by an official report from the mayor of the city, upward of 3,500 had died, and that the disorder was raging more violently than ever. If cool weather, accompanied by rain, does not put a stop to the malady, distressing indeed must be the case of that city, now almost depopulated by removals and deaths." {5}
1. Footnote: The precise return was: For President George Washington, 132. For Vice-President—John Adams, 77; George Clinton, 50; Thomas Jefferson, 4; Aaron Burr, 1.
2. Footnote: Published in Arthur's "Home Gazette."
3. Footnote: John Quincy Adams on Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality.
4. Footnote: On the 8th of October John Hancock died at Boston.
5. Footnote: The whole number that died during the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia was over 4,000.