With the greatest respect, &c.
ROBERT MORRIS.
REPORT OF A LETTER TO DON BERNARDO DE GALVEZ, MADE TO CONGRESS, NOVEMBER 21ST, 1781.
The Superintendent of Finance, in pursuance of the order of the 7th instant, prays leave to submit the following draft of a letter to General Galvez.
Sir,
Your letter, dated at New Orleans the 22d of July, 1780, has been received, and was laid before the United States of America in Congress assembled on the 29th of September following. The committee to whom that letter was referred, did not make any remittances in consequence of it, nor write you an answer, because the dangers attending a communication with you at that time were too great, occasioned by the many ships of war, with which the enemy then infested our coast.
I am now, Sir, directed by the United States to express to you the grateful sense they entertain of your early efforts in their favor. Those generous efforts gave them so favorable an impression of your character, and that of your nation, that they have not ceased to respect you, and to wish for an intimate connexion with your country. Conceiving it to be for the mutual interest of Spain and North America, they have an earnest wish, that as the cause is one, and the enemy one, so the operations against him may be continued in such manner, as to answer the great purposes, which all have in view. The late successes, which have crowned the combined arms of France and America in Virginia, while they demonstrate the benefits which flow from a union of efforts, will at the same time, lead to wholesome reflections on the manner in which that union has been cemented. The French and American soldier marching under the same banners, enduring the same fatigues, bearing the same dangers, and bleeding in the same field together, express in the language of their different nations the common sentiment of fraternal affection. Let me congratulate you very much on this success, and still more on the sentiment, by which, under Providence, it has been secured.
With respect to the advance made by your Excellency, I have the honor to enclose copies of two resolutions of Congress, one of the 6th of February last, and the other of the 7th instant, by which you will perceive, that the public accounts with Mr Pollock are settled, and a considerable balance carried to his credit. In these accounts is included a part of your advance, and the remainder of it is contained in Mr Pollock's account with the Commonwealth of Virginia. This latter account has been referred to the consideration of that Commonwealth, and I trust the debt to Mr Pollock will be acknowledged by them. That which is due from the United States to Mr Pollock is now on interest at six per cent, and if you wish that the sums which he has appropriated to the service of the United States out of those advanced by your Excellency should be credited to you, on transmitting an assignment thereof from Mr Pollock, it shall immediately be done, and payment will be made both of the principal and interest, as soon as the situation of our finances will admit of it, which, from the present prospect of things, may happen in a shorter space of time, than the public creditors have been generally led to expect.
With perfect respect and esteem, I am, &c.