The House proceeded to fill up the remaining blanks in the bill to establish the Post Office and Post Roads of the United States; which was then read a third time and passed.
Petition of Catharine Greene.
The House resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, on the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the petition of Catharine Greene, relict of the late General Greene.
The object of the petition is to obtain an indemnification from the United States against certain engagements which were entered into by her husband, the deceased Major General Nathaniel Greene, while commanding officer in the Southern department; and for the circumstances on which it is founded, refers to a representation of the 22d August, 1785, which was then made by the said General Greene to Congress.
The petition is accompanied by a number of vouchers, arranged in alphabetical order by the Secretary of the Treasury in his Report; from all which he draws the following conclusion:
"That strong and extraordinary motives of national gratitude for the very signal and important services rendered by General Greene to his country, must serve to give a keener sting to the regret, which ought ever to attend the necessity of a strict adherence to claims of public policy, in opposition to claims founded on useful acts of zeal for the public service, if no means of protecting from indigence and penury the family of that most meritorious officer shall, upon examination, be found admissible."
Mr. Wayne rose and gave his reasons for supporting the petition, as follows:
Mr. Chairman: It may not be improper to mention the motives that impel me to wish a fortunate issue to the claim now under consideration of this committee, which I must also offer as an apology for the part I have taken, or that I may eventually take, in support of the claim. From my first interview with General Greene until the moment of his dissolution, we always lived in the strictest habits of friendship and confidence. He was an officer with whom I had participated in almost every vicissitude of fortune, (in many a well-tried field,) from the frozen waters of the North to the burning sands of the South. He was a man whose virtues and talents I knew and revered; his noble soul would have revolted at the idea of imposition. He never would have offered in a claim to Congress, but upon the purest principles of honor and justice. I was a witness to the pressing necessity that compelled him to become the surety, for which indemnity is now claimed. He did what I would have done, (as second in command,) had he been absent at that trying crisis. The claim I know to be just, and I am decidedly of opinion that he was drawn into that security from the situation in which he was placed by Congress, as Commander-in chief of the Southern Department. Under these impressions, I beg leave to submit to the consideration of this committee the resolutions now in my hand, and doubt not of their concurrent support.
"Resolved, as the opinion of this Committee, That the estate of the late Major General Nathaniel Greene ought to be indemnified for and on account of the engagements entered into by that General with certain persons in the State of South Carolina, for the purpose of obtaining supplies for the American Army, in the year 1783, and that —— be granted to the Executors of the estate of the late Major General Nathaniel Greene, for that purpose.
"Resolved, That a committee be appointed to bring in a bill in conformity to the foregoing resolution."