201.35

PREFACE.

The first volume of these Letters of Members of the Continental Congress extended from the beginnings of the sessions of that Congress to July 4, 1776, the period to which the maximum of attention has been directed and which has been most largely illustrated already by the publication of letters. After that date, and especially after the close of the year 1776, when Force's Archives comes to an end, letters not heretofore printed increase in number and importance as compared with those which have been printed. For the year 1777 there are still certain collections of materials in which large numbers of letters of members are found, such as the Journals of the New York Provincial Congress, the Archives of Maryland, the North Carolina State Records, and Staples's Rhode Island in the Continental Congress, as well as collections of the correspondence of some of the most assiduous writers among the delegates, such as Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, and Samuel Adams; but these printed collections pertain to only a few states or a few individuals. Upon the whole the material is found to be widely scattered and more meagerly printed. In the present volume, for instance, about one-third of the materials of the period from July 5 to December 31, 1776, has not been found in print, while for the year 1777 the quantum of materials not hitherto printed is considerably greater than the printed. Taking the volume as a whole, fully half the materials found in it appears now, it is believed, for the first time.

For the most part these new materials are pretty evenly distributed over the whole period. There are, however, a few items that call for special notice. One of the most important of these is the series of letters to Joseph Trumbull, who had been commissary-general of stores and provisions since July, 1775, and was chosen commissary-general of purchases in June, 1777. There are some fifty of these, some of them possessed by the Connecticut Historical Society, others by the Connecticut State Library, and they were written mainly by three members of Congress, William Williams (Trumbull's brother-in-law), Eliphalet Dyer (his father-in-law), and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. These letters are particularly enlightening upon certain phases of the problem of supplying the army, and are also not without value for the light which they cast upon other matters, such as the personalities of those chiefly concerned. Closely related to this group, indeed sometimes concerned with the same subject, are some letters to Joseph Trumbull's brother, Jonathan Trumbull, jr., paymaster-general of the northern army, and about a dozen

letters, chiefly from William Williams and Roger Sherman, to the elder Trumbull, governor of Connecticut.

One particularly valuable record of the proceedings of Congress during a few days came to light about the time these materials were going into page-proof. This was the Notes of Debates kept by Secretary Thomson for July 24-29, 1777 (nos. 559a, 559b, 560a, 562A). The discovery of these notes naturally gives rise to the query whether Thomson habitually kept such a record of proceedings, and whether this small bit and the more extended journal for two months in the summer of 1782 (July 22 to September 2) happen to be the only fragments that have survived, or whether these two items represent the whole of Thomson's industry in the way of private note-taking.

Upon the first of the debates recorded by Thomson, that concerning the proposed plan for an expedition in 1777 against West Florida, the journals proper furnish but little information. Thomson's notes, cryptic as they are, throw a flood of light upon the manner in which such matters were dealt with in Congress, as well as upon the views of individual members. Additional light is thrown upon the discussion by Henry Laurens in two letters-one to General McIntosh, August II, and more particularly one to President Rutledge of South Carolina, August 12. According to Laurens, all that was necessary to cast the whole project into the discard was a breath of cold logic. This Laurens applied, and the air-castle tumbled to the ground. The whole episode was indeed a minor one, but if the project had actually been undertaken, perhaps it would not have remained minor in character. Other bubbles were blown in Congress first and last, many of them more pretentious and of more radiant hues, and not a few of them required time and the hard blows of experience for their bursting. The story of this bubble and its speedy collapse arouses the wish that many another dark spot in the journals might have been lighted up by similar revelations.

Thomson's notes and Lauren's account give the impression that the plan for an attack upon the British in West Florida had been killed and buried. In a form so ambitious it did not indeed rise again; yet a lesser project, which must have taken its rise from the same source, was presently attempted, although, it would appear, without the knowledge of Congress as a body. Some facts concerning the expedition of Captain James Willing to New Orleans in 1778 have been well known, particularly that the outcome of the affair did not redound to the honor either of Willing or of Congress, but the origin of the expedition has remained in obscurity. The letter of the commercial committee to General Edward Hand, November 21, 1777 (no. 749A), which came to light only as these materials were going through the press, together with other facts which may be gathered from the correspondence between the commercial committee and Oliver Pollock, agent of the United States at New Orleans, helps to clear up this obscurity.

The second of the debates recorded by Thomson, that upon the motion. to appoint Gates to the command of the northern army in place of Schuyler, is one of which the journals give no intimation whatever. Letters of Duane and Duer, June 19, 1777, neither of which has before been printed, relate that Gates had, a day or so before, obtained admission to the floor of Congress with a view to having himself reinstated, as he expressed it, in command in the north, while Thomson's notes show that some five weeks later an acrimonious debate once more arose over the relative merits of Schuyler and Gates and continued for at least three days. These notes appear to end abruptly, but some letters and the journals show the sequel to have been the decision of Congress to institute an inquiry into the conduct of Schuyler and St. Clair.

Noteworthy among the new materials to be found here are also the Diary, or Notes, kept by Benjamin Rush of a number of important debates during the month of February, 1777, and the " Abstracts" of debates left by Thomas Burke, most of the latter being of the same month and to some extent of the same debates. Sections of Burke's Abstracts have been printed in the North Carolina State Records, but other considerable sections are printed now for the first time. These notes and abstracts furnish our principal source of information of the proceedings of Congress upon several matters, notably those upon the conference of the New England states relative to the regulation of prices, those upon the question of raising the interest on loan-office certificates, those pertaining to the proposed conference with General Lee, and the question of adjournment from Baltimore to Philadelphia. One of Burke's extended abstracts, not hitherto printed, is of a debate, February 25, upon the measures proper to be taken relative to desertion, a debate in which Burke took a principal part, and in which he gives utterance to some of his characteristic views. Still another important unprinted manuscript of Burke is his comments on the Articles of Confederation, found under November 15, 1777.

For the last half of the year 1777 we have also the letters of Henry Laurens, for which we are indebted to the kindness of the South Carolina Historical Society, and very few of which, beyond some of his official letters written as President of Congress, have hitherto been printed, except that some extracts appear in the recent life of Laurens by Professor Wallace. During the next two years the correspondence of Laurens furnishes by far the greatest single source of information of the proceedings of Congress, outside of the journals themselves.

Among the other sources from which new materials have been drawn should be mentioned the letter-book of President Hancock, in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as numerous other letters from the same repository; and there are a number of important letters from the Gates Papers, in possession of the New York Historical