Archive · The claimants and the governor, 1782 to 1784
March 22, 1783
Theodorick Bland asks Washington to recover two people
A Virginia delegate to Congress encloses a letter for Carleton about “two Valuable Servts” who left him in May 1781 and are in New York, and asks Washington to forward it.
What it says, in plain language
Bland, one of the three delegates who would write Governor Harrison from Princeton on August 23, 1783, sends Washington an open letter addressed to Carleton. Two people who “iloped” from him in May 1781 are, he hears, in New York in the service of British officers. If Washington sees any impropriety he will drop it; if not, he asks that the people “be secured” until he can send for them. Only “the sanction of a solemn treaty,” he writes, would have led him to ask.
No image of the original is shown here yet. The manuscript is in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress; no page image is reproduced here yet.
Transcription
Philadelphia March 22d 1783
Sr
I have taken the liberty to enclose to your Excellency a letter addressd to Genl Carleton on acct of two Valuable Servts who iloped from me in the month of May 1781 who are both as I am informd in New York, and as I have been told in the Service of some officers of the British Army, shd Yr Excellency concieve the smallest impropriety in the application which I leave open for your perusal I shall cheerfully desist from prosecuting it and request that you will suppress it, if Yr Excelly shd think otherwise, I must sollicit your goodness to give it an introduction, and shd it be attended with success, that you will be pleased to order the negroes to be secured untill I can be advertized of their being returned when I will immediately send for them. I must add that nothing but the sanction of a solemn treaty, would ever have induced me to think of such an application not withstanding the Multiplied losses I have sustaind of that kind during the Invasion of the State of Virginia, I need not repeat my entire confidence in your Excellencys prudence as well as goodness or that I am Yr most obedt Servt
Theok Bland
Text from Founders Online (National Archives). Original spelling kept; the manuscript’s long dashes are shown as commas; modern editorial notes are not reproduced.