Volume 1 / Part 1 — PART I. LETTERS WRITTEN BEFORE HIS MISSION TO EUROPE 1773-1783. (continued 4)

I have the honor to be with very great esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.

P. S. Your letter of the 31st ultimo came safely to hand with the packet to Mr. Adams accompanying it.

GEORGE WASHINGTON TO THE HONORABLE THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Newburgh, 10th February, 1783.

Dear Sir,—I have been honored with your favor of 22d of January from Philadelphia. I feel myself much flattered by your kind remembrance of me in the hour of your departure from this continent, for the favorable sentiments you are pleased to entertain of my services for this our common country. To merit the approbation of good and virtuous men is the height of my ambition, and will be a full compensation for all my toils and sufferings in the long and painful contest in which we have been engaged. It gave me great pleasure to hear that the call upon you from Congress to pass the Atlantic in the character of one of their ministers for negotiating peace had been repeated; but I hope you will have found the business already done. The speech of his Britannic Majesty is strongly indicative of the olive branch; and yet, as he observes, unforseen events may place it out of reach. At present, the prospect of peace absorbs, or seems to do so, every other consideration among us; and would, it is to be feared, leave us in a very unprepared state to continue the war, if the negotiations at Paris should terminate otherwise than in a general pacification. But I will hope that it is the dearth of other news that fills the mouths of every person with peace, while their minds are employed in contemplating on the means of prosecuting the war, if necessity should drive us to it. You will please to accept my grateful thanks for your obliging offer of services during your stay in France. To hear from you frequently will be an honor and very great satisfaction to, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.

ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Philadelphia, 14th February, 1783.

Sir,—I have delayed in answering your favor of the 7th instant until I could obtain the sense of Congress on the matter it contains. I conceive it hardly possible, while the British cruisers retain their present station, for you to elude their vigilance in either of the ships offered to your choice. This, concurring with the late advices from England, has induced Congress to pass the enclosed resolution.[108] We have reason to conjecture that peace is already concluded; whether it is or not, a few days will determine. I transmit the speech of his Britannic Majesty, which, with what you already know of the state of our negotiations, will enable you to form your opinion on the same ground that we do. I have the honor to be, Sir, with great respect and esteem, your most obedient, and most humble servant.

TO R. R. LIVINGSTON.

Baltimore, February 14, 1783.

Sir,—I apprised you in my former letter of the causes which had so long delayed my departure. These still continue. I have this moment received a printed copy of his British Majesty's speech to his Parliament, by which we learn that the preliminaries between Great Britain and America, among which is one for the acknowledgment of our independence, have been provisionally agreed to on his part. That the negotiations with the other powers at war were considerably advanced, and that he hoped, in a very short time, they would end in terms of pacification. As considerable progress has been made in the negotiations for peace since the appointment with which Congress were pleased to honor me, it may have become doubtful whether any communications I could make or any assistance I could yield to the very able gentlemen in whose hands the business already is, would compensate the expense of prosecuting my voyage to Europe. I therefore beg leave through you, Sir, to assure Congress that I desire this question to be as open to them now as it was on the day of my appointment, and that I have not a wish either to go or to stay. They will be pleased to weigh the economy of the one measure against the chance which the other may offer of my arriving in such time as that any communications which have been confided to me may produce effect on definitive articles. I shall continue here for the prosecution of my voyage, under the orders before received, or for its discontinuance, should that be more eligible to Congress, and be signified at any moment before my departure. I have the honor to be, &c.

ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Philadelphia, February 18, 1783.

Sir,—I was yesterday honored with your favor of the 14th, which I shall lay before Congress this morning. As you have by this time received their resolution which I had the honor to send you by the last post, and again enclosed, you will be relieved in some measure from your embarrassments, though not entirely of your suspense with respect to their final determination. But that cannot be long doubtful, since the negotiations have certainly arrived at such a crisis as either to terminate soon in a peace or a total rupture. In the latter case, you will necessarily be obliged to proceed on your voyage, as Congress seems anxious to avail themselves of your abilities and information in the negotiations, unless they are fully assured that a speedy peace will preclude them from that advantage.

I enclose a paper which contains all that we have yet received on that interesting subject. It may, perhaps, be difficult to account for our ministers having signed before those of France. But if this letter is genuine, it serves, when compared with their instructions, to prove that the terms of peace are acceptable to us and not disagreeable to France. I have the honor to be, Sir, with great respect and esteem, your most obedient, and most humble servant.

TO THE HON. R. R. LIVINGSTON.

Philadelphia, March 13, 1783.

Sir,—Supposing the despatches received by the Washington, may have enabled Congress to decide on the expediency of continuing, or of countermanding my mission to Europe, I take the liberty of expressing to you the satisfaction it will give me to receive their ultimate will, so soon as other business will permit them to revert to this subject.[109] I have the honor, &c.

TO JOHN JAY.

Philadelphia, April 11, 1783.

Dear Sir,—In a letter which I did myself the honor of writing to you by the Chevalier de Chattellux, I informed you of my being at this place, with the intention of joining you in Paris. But the uncommon vigilance of the enemy's cruisers, immediately after the departure of the French fleet, deterred every vessel from attempting to go out. The arrival of the preliminaries soon after showed the impropriety of my proceeding, and I am just now setting out on my return to Virginia. I cannot, however, take my departure, without paying to yourself and your worthy colleague my homage for the good work you have completed for us, and congratulating you on the singular happiness of having borne so distinguished a part both in the earliest and latest transactions of this revolution. The terms obtained for us are indeed great, and are so deemed by your country—a few ill-designing debtors excepted. I am in hopes you will continue at some one of the European courts most agreeable to yourself, that we may still have the benefit of your talents. I took the liberty in my letter of suggesting a wish that you would be so kind as to engage lodgings for me. Should you have given yourself this trouble, I beg leave to return you my thanks, and to ask the favor of you to communicate the amount of their hire to Mr. Robert Morris, of this city, who will immediately remit it to you, as I lodge money in his hands for this purpose. Accept my warmest wishes for your happiness, and be assured of the sincerity with which I have the honor to be, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.

P. S. I beg to be affectionately remembered to Dr. F. and Mr. A., if they be still with you.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY GENERAL WASHINGTON.

Annapolis, April 16, 1784.

Dear Sir,—I received your favor of April 8th, by Colonel Harrison. The subject of it is interesting, and, so far as you have stood connected with it, has been matter of anxiety to me; because, whatever may be the ultimate fate of the institution of the Cincinnati, in its course, it draws to it some degree of disapprobation. I have wished to see you standing on ground separated from it, and that the character which will be handed to future ages at the head of our Revolution, may, in no instance, be compromitted in subordinate altercations. The subject has been at the point of my pen in every letter I have written to you, but has been still restrained by the reflection that you had among your friends more able counsellors, and, in yourself, one abler than them all. Your letter has now rendered a duty what was before a desire, and I cannot better merit your confidence than by a full and free communication of facts and sentiments, as far as they have come within my observation. When the army was about to be disbanded, and the officers to take final leave, perhaps never again to meet, it was natural for men who had accompanied each other through so many scenes of hardship, of difficulty, and danger, who, in a variety of instances, must have been rendered mutually dear by those aids and good offices, to which their situations had given occasion; it was natural, I say, for these to seize with fondness any proposition which promised to bring them together again, at certain and regular periods. And this, I take for granted, was the origin and object of this institution; and I have no suspicion that they foresaw, much less intended, those mischiefs which exist, perhaps in the forebodings of politicians only. I doubt, however, whether, in its execution, it would be found to answer the wishes of those who framed it, and to foster those friendships it was intended to preserve. The members would be brought together at their annual assemblies, no longer to encounter a common enemy, but to encounter one another in debate and sentiment. For something, I suppose, is to be done at these meetings, and, however unimportant, it will suffice to produce difference of opinion, contradiction and irritation. The way to make friends quarrel is to put them in disputation under the public eye. An experience of near twenty years has taught me, that few friendships stand this test, and that public assemblies, where every one is free to act and speak, are the most powerful looseners of the bands of private friendship. I think, therefore, that this institution would fail in its principal object, the perpetuation of the personal friendships contracted through the war.

The objections of those who are opposed to the institution shall be briefly sketched. You will readily fill them up. They urge that it is against the Confederation—against the letter of some of our constitutions—against the spirit of all of them;—that the foundation on which all these are built, is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and, particularly, the denial of a pre-eminence by birth; that, however, in their present dispositions, citizens might decline accepting honorary instalments into the order, a time may come, when a change of dispositions would render these flattering, when a well-directed distribution of them might draw into the order all the men of talents, of office and wealth, and in this case, would probably procure an ingraftment into the government; that in this, they will be supported by their foreign members, and the wishes and influence of foreign courts; that experience has shown that the hereditary branches of modern governments are the patrons of privilege and prerogative, and not of the natural rights of the people, whose oppressors they generally are; that, besides these evils, which are remote, others may take place more immediately; that a distinction is kept up between the civil and military, which it is for the happiness of both to obliterate; that when the members assemble they will be proposing to do something, and what that something may be, will depend on actual circumstances; that being an organized body, under habits of subordination, the first obstruction to enterprize will be already surmounted; that the moderation and virtue of a single character have probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish; that he is not immortal, and his successor, or some of his successors, may be led by false calculation into a less certain road to glory.

What are the sentiments of Congress on this subject, and what line they will pursue, can only be stated conjecturally. Congress, as a body, if left to themselves, will, in my opinion, say nothing on the subject. They may, however, be forced into a declaration by instructions from some of the States, or by other incidents. Their sentiments, if forced from them, will be unfriendly to the institution. If permitted to pursue their own path, they will check it by side-blows whenever it comes in their way, and in competitions for office, on equal or nearly equal ground, will give silent preferences to those who are not of the fraternity. My reasons for thinking this are, 1. The grounds on which they lately declined the foreign order proposed to be conferred on some of our citizens. 2. The fourth of the fundamental articles of constitution for the new States. I enclose you the report; it has been considered by Congress, recommitted and reformed by a committee, according to sentiments expressed on other parts of it, but the principle referred to, having not been controverted at all, stands in this as in the original report; it is not yet confirmed by Congress. 3. Private conversations on this subject with the members. Since the receipt of your letter, I have taken occasion to extend these; not, indeed, to the military members, because, being of the order delicacy forbade it, but to the others pretty generally; and among these, I have as yet found but one who is not opposed to the institution, and that with an anguish of mind, though covered under a guarded silence, which I have not seen produced by any circumstance before. I arrived at Philadelphia before the separation of the last Congress, and saw there and at Princeton some of its members, not now in delegation. Burke's piece happened to come out at that time, which occasioned this institution to be the subject of conversation. I found the same impressions made on them which their successors have received. I hear from other quarters that it is disagreeable, generally, to such citizens as have attended to it, and, therefore, will probably be so to all, when any circumstance shall present it to the notice of all.

This, Sir, is as faithful an account of sentiments and facts as I am able to give you. You know the extent of the circle within which my observations are at present circumscribed, and can estimate how far, as forming a part of the general opinion, it may merit notice, or ought to influence your particular conduct.

It remains now to pay obedience to that part of your letter, which requests sentiments on the most eligible measures to be pursued by the society, at their next meeting. I must be far from pretending to be a judge of what would, in fact, be the most eligible measures for the society. I can only give you the opinions of those with whom I have conversed, and who, as I have before observed, are unfriendly to it. They lead to these conclusions: 1. If the society proceed according to its institution, it will be better to make no applications to Congress on that subject, or any other, in their associated character. 2. If they should propose to modify it, so as to render it unobjectionable, I think this would not be effected without such a modification as would amount almost to annihilation; for such would it be to part with its inheritability, its organization, and its assemblies. 3. If they shall be disposed to discontinue the whole, it would remain with them to determine whether they would choose it to be done by their own act only, or by a reference of the matter to Congress, which would infallibly produce a recommendation of total discontinuance.

You will be sensible, Sir, that these communications are without reserve. I supposed such to be your wish, and mean them but as materials, with such others as you may collect, for your better judgment to work on. I consider the whole matter as between ourselves alone, having determined to take no active part in this or anything else, which may lead to altercation, or disturb that quiet and tranquillity of mind, to which I consign the remaining portion of my life. I have been thrown back by events, on a stage where I had never more thought to appear.[110] It is but for a time, however, and as a day laborer, free to withdraw, or be withdrawn at will. While I remain, I shall pursue in silence the path of right, but in every situation, public or private, I shall be gratified by all occasions of rendering you service, and of convincing you there is no one to whom your reputation and happiness are dearer than to, Sir,

Your most obedient, and most humble servant.