your Excellency’s most obedient
and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XXXVIII.—TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS, Jan. 15, 1781
TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Sir,
Richmond, January 15, 1781.
I received some time ago from Major Forsyth, and afterwards from you, a requisition to furnish one half the supplies of provision for the Convention troops, removed into Maryland. I should sooner have done myself the honor of writing to you on this subject, but that I hoped to have laid it before you more fully than could be done in writing, by a gentleman who was to pass on other public business to Philadelphia. The late events in this State having retarded his setting out, I think it my duty no longer to postpone explanation on this head.
You cannot be unapprized of the powerful armies of our enemy, at this time in this and the southern States, and that their future plan is to push their successes in the same quarter, by still larger reinforcements. The forces to be opposed to these must be proportionably great, and these forces must be fed. By whom are they to be fed? Georgia and South Carolina are annihilated, at least, as to us. By the requisition to us to send provisions into Maryland, it is to be supposed that none are to come to the southern army, from any State north of this; for it would seem inconsistent, that while we should be sending north, Maryland, and other states beyond that, should be sending their provisions south. Upon North Carolina, then, already exhausted by the ravages of two armies, and on this State, are to depend for subsistence those bodies of men, who are to oppose the greater part of the enemy’s force in the United States, the subsistence of the German, and of half the British Conventioners. To take a view of this matter on the Continental requisitions of November the 4th, 1780, for specific quotas of provisions, it is observable that North Carolina and Virginia are to furnish 10,475,740 pounds of animal food, and 13,529 barrels of flour, while the States north of these will yield 25,293,810 pounds of animal food, and 106,471 barrels of flour.