University of Virginia Library

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.[1]

Dear Sir,—Nothing under the title of news has occurred
since I wrote last week by express, except that
the enemy on the first of March remained in the neighbourhood
of Charleston, in the same posture as when
the preceding account came away. From the best intelligence
from that quarter, there seems to be great
encouragement to hope that Clinton's operations will
be again frustrated. Our great apprehensions at
present flow from a very different quarter. Among
the various conjunctures of alarm and distress which

have arisen in the course of the Revolution, it is with
pain I affirm to you, sir, that no one can be singled
out more truly critical than the present. Our army
threatened with an immediate alternative of disbanding
or living on free quarter; the public treasury
empty; public credit exhausted, nay the private
credit of purchasing agents employed, I am told, as
far as it will bear; Congress complaining of the extortion
of the people; the people of the improvidence
of Congress; and the army of both; our affairs requiring
the most mature and systematic measures,
and the urgency of occasions admitting only of temporizing
expedients, and these expedients generating
new difficulties; Congress recommending plans to
the several States for execution, and the States separately
rejudging the expediency of such plans, whereby
the same distrust of concurrent exertions that has
damped the ardor of patriotic individuals must produce
the same effect among the States themselves;
an old system of finance discarded as incompetent
to our necessities, an untried and precarious one substituted,
and a total stagnation in prospect between
the end of the former and the operation of the latter.
These are the outlines of the picture of our public
situation. I leave it to your own imagination to fill
them up. Believe me, sir, as things now stand, if the
States do not vigorously proceed in collecting the
old money, and establishing funds for the credit of
the new, that we are undone; and let them be ever
so expeditious in doing this, still the intermediate
distress to our army, and hindrance to public affairs,
are a subject of melancholy reflection. General
Washington writes that a failure of bread has already
commenced in the army; and that, for any
thing he sees, it must unavoidably increase. Meat
they have only for a short season; and as the whole
dependence is on provisions now to be procured,
without a shilling for the purpose, and without credit
for a shilling, I look forward with the most pungent
apprehensions. It will be attempted, I believe, to
purchase a few supplies with loan-office certificates;
but whether they will be received is perhaps far from
being certain; and if received will certainly be a
most expensive and ruinous expedient. It is not
without some reluctance I trust this information to
a conveyance by post, but I know of no better at
present, and I conceive it to be absolutely necessary
to be known to those who are most able and zealous
to contribute to the public relief.