above described, I shall with pleasure execute your orders; or if you wish that a copy of Virginia, or of the whole country, may be taken from those in Purchase, your orders shall be equally attended to. I much doubt, however, whether that book be so extremely scarce as to require a transcript from it for the purpose you seem to have in view. Congress have taken no step in the business of the Western territory since the report of the Committee, of which I have already given you an account, and which, we hear, arrived at Richmond on the day of the adjournment of the Assembly. We wish it to undergo their consideration, and to receive their instructions before we again move in it. TO EDMUND PENDLETON. Philadelphia, March 19, 1782. DEAR SIR, The Ministerial speeches, with other circumstances, place it beyond a doubt that the plan for recovering America will be changed. A separate peace with the Dutch-a suspension of the offensive war here an exertion of their resources thus disencumbered against the naval power of France and Spain and a renewal of the arts of seduction and division in the United States, will probably constitute the outlines of the new plan. Whether they will succeed in the first article of it, cannot be ascertained by the last intelligence we have from Holland. It is only certain that negotiations are on foot, under the auspices of the Empress of Russia. DEAR SIR, TO THOMAS JEFFERSON. Philadelphia, March 26, 1782. A letter has been lately received from you by the President of Congress, accompanied by a bundle of papers procured from the Cherokees by Colonel Campbell. As it appears that these papers were transmitted at the request of the late President, it is proper to apprize you that it was made without any written or verbal sanction, and even without the knowledge of Congress; and not improbably with a view of fishing for discoveries which may be subservient to the aggressions meditated on the territorial rights of Virginia. It would have been unnecessary to trouble you with this, had it not appeared that Colonel Campbell has given a promise of other papers; which if he should fulfil, and the papers contain any thing which the adversaries of Virginia may make an ill use of, you will not suffer any respect for the acts of Congress to induce you to forward hither. DEAR SIR, TO EDMUND PENDLETON. Philadelphia, April 2, 1782. 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 ac cede 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. DEAR SIR, TO EDMUND RANDOLPH. Philadelphia, April 9, 1782. I perceive, by a passage cited in the examination of the Connecticut claim to lands in Pennsylvania, that we have been mistaken in supposing the acquiescence of Virginia in the defalcations of her chartered territory to have been a silent one. It said that" at a meeting of the Privy Council, July 3d, 1633, was taken into consideration the petition of the planters of Virginia, remonstrating that some grants had lately been obtained of a great proportion of the lands and territories within the limits of the Colony there; and a day was ordered for further hearing the parties, (to wit: Lord Baltimore, and said adventurers and planters.)" The decision against Virginia is urged as proof that the Crown did not regard the charter as in force with respect to the bounds of Virginia. It is clearly a proof that Virginia at that time thought otherwise, and made all the opposition to the encroachment which could then have been made to the arbitrary acts which gave birth to the present revolution. If any monuments exist of the transactions of Virginia at the period above mentioned, or any of the successive periods, at which these encroachments had been repeated, you will have an opportunity of searching more minutely into them. It is not probable, however, that after a failure in the first opposition any further opposition will be found to subsequent grants out of Virginia. DEAR SIR, TO THOMAS JEFFERSON. Philadelphia, April 16, 1782. I entreat that you will not suffer the chance of a speedy and final determination of the Territorial Question, by Congress, to affect your purpose of tracing the title of Virginia to her claims. It is, in the first place, very uncertain when a determination will take place, even if it takes place at all; and in the next it will assuredly not be a final one, unless Virginia means to be passive and silent under aggression on her rights. In every event, therefore, it is proper to be armed with every argument and document that can vindicate her title. Her adversaries will be either the United States, or New York, or both. The former will either claim on the principle that the vacant country is not included in any particular State, and consequently falls to the whole, or will clothe themselves with the title of the latter by accepting its cession. In both cases it will be alleged, that the charter of 1609 was annulled by the resumption of it into the hands of the Crown, and that the subsequent grants to Maryland, &c., denote this to have been the construction of it; that the proclamation of 1763 has constituted the Alleghany ridge the Western limit of Virginia, and that the letter of President Nelson, on the subject of a new Colony on the Ohio, relinquishes on the part of Virginia all interference with the authority of the Crown beyond that limit. In case the title of New York should alone be opposed to that of Virginia, it will be further alleged |