University of Virginia Library

TO EDMUND PENDLETON.[1]

Dear Sir,—The only event with which the period
since my last has enabled me to repay your favor of
the twenty-fifth ultimo, is the arrival of four Deputies
from Vermont, with a plenipotentiary commission to
accede to the Confederacy. The business is referred
to a committee who are sufficiently devoted to the
policy of gaining the vote of Vermont into Congress.
The result will be the subject of a future letter.

The thinness, or rather vacancy, of the Virginia
line, and the little prospect of recruiting it, are subjects
of a very distressing nature. If those on whom
the remedy depends were sensible of the insulting
comparisons to which they expose the State, and of
the wound they give to her influence in the general

councils, I am persuaded more decisive exertions
would be made. Considering the extensive interests
and claims which Virginia has, and the enemies and
calumnies which these very claims form against her,
she is perhaps under the strongest obligation of any
State in the Union, to preserve her military contingent
on a respectable footing; and unhappily her
line is perhaps, of all, in the most disgraceful condition.
The only hope that remains is, that her true
policy will be better consulted at the ensuing Assembly,
and that as far as a proper sense of it may
be deficient, the expostulations of her friends, and
clamors of her enemies, will supply the place of it.
If I speak my sentiments too freely on this point, it
can only be imputed to my sensibility to the honor
and interest of my country.