Philadelphia Octr. 21st 1775
My dear Col.
I received your Letter with great pleasure tho contrary to your expectation it paid postage to the hated Post office. As the constitutional post now goes regularly, we may with a safe conscience say how d’ye to each other.1 It gives me concern to hear that you are withdrawing from public business;2 upon my word, this is not a time for men of abilities with good intentions to be only spectators, if we cant do all the good we cou’d wish, let us at least endeavour to prevent all the mischeif in our power. Your good friend Ld. Dunmore is endeavouring to raise all the powers on earth to demolish poor Virginia. We have advice, that at his earnest sollicitation a fleet may be expected this fall to ravage our defenceless plantations & burn our little Towns. And we have lately discovered a plot of his & Conolly’s, which is to be executed in the following manner. Conolly despairing of getting up the Country through Virga. or the Carolina’s, is to go to St. Augustine from thence to the Creeks & Cherokees, and through all the tribes to Detroit; by general Gage’s commission he is to have the Garrison & Cannon of that place, & the assistance of the French at that settlement. With all these he is to form an army in the spring, & march to Pitsburgh, from thence to Alexandria, proclaiming freedom to all servants that will enlist; there he is to be join’d by Dunmore with the fleet & troops from England & march through the Country. He has Captains commissions from Dunmore for Cornstalk & White Eyes. We have given the earliest intelligence of these schemes to our Com. of safety, & hope with their endeavours assisted by the Carolinas & Georgia, that Conolly may be intercepted this fall or winter.3 Our military operations this campaign have been very languid, from the want of powder, but we still hope, our success in Canada will be such, as to cut a figure for the first essay. Such measures have been taken, as give us good reason to expect a plentifull supply of that necessary article before the next spring; and then we shall be in readiness to receive the very warm attack, which from all our advices, the Ministry are preparing for us. But least we shou’d fail in being supply’d from abroad, every man shou’d exert himself in making saltpetre. Your several plantations wou’d furnish a good deal, & you know the process is easy. With plenty of powder, the Victory is surely ours.
Octr. 22d. Here I was interrupted yesterday evening by an express for Doct. Shippen to our worthy speaker. He went out to dine with Mr. Hill and while at dinner was suddenly seized with a dead palsy, and this morning we are inform’d that he died last night.4 You knew his Virtues & will lament the loss of the friend and Patriot. I am so concern’d that I cant think of politicks.
My best respects to my good friend Mr. Carter.5 I have got a man at work to make his wool cards, & we are in possession of Miss Betsys musick, which shall be sent by the first opportunity. Mrs. Lee Jolns me in every good wish to Mrs. Carter & Miss Lucy. We have no doubt of Miss Lucy’s happiness in the married state, as so much depends upon herself, & knowing the worth of Mr. Colston. Remember me to all friends. When I shall see them, God knows.
Believe me my dear Col. your sincerely affect. friend & respectfull Servant
Francis Light. Lee
Receiver’s copy, Virginia Historical Society.
1 Although this is the first of Lee’s extant letters written from Philadelphia, his congressional service commenced on September 11 when he arrived there to begin a term to which he had been elected on August 15 in place of Richard Bland. His claim against Virginia, dated Philadelphia, August 11, 1776, included £762-15s-0 for "attendance on Congress from Sepr. 8, 1775, to Aug. 10th. 1776 indusive being 339 days at 45s each day" and £11-10s-0 for "travelling to Philadelphia 230 miles at 1d a mile." NNPM.
2 Landon Carter (1710 - 78), Virginia planter, member of the House of Burgesses, 1752 - 68, and chairman of the Richmond County Committee, 1774 - 75, was so incensed by some recently adopted militia regulations in Virginia that he threatened to resign his office as county lieutenant in charge of the Richmond militia, although he did not actually carry out his threat until early in 1776. Jack P. Greene, ed., The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752 - 1778, 2 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1965), 1:3 - 8, 2:937 - 39.
3 For an account of Dr. John Connolly (c.1743 - 1813) and his abortive plan to raise a force of loyalists and Indians in the backcountry to oppose the American cause, see DAB, Supplement one; and Paul H. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 15 - 18.
4 For comments on Peyton Randolphâs death and funeral, see Robert Treat Paineâs Diary, October 22; John Adamsâ second letter to James Warren, October 23, 1775; and JCC, 3:3024.
5 Presumably Robert Wormeley Carter (1734 - 97), Landonâs eldest son, who had been Leeâs colleague from Richmond County in the House of Burgesses and at recent Virginia conventions. Louis Morton, "Robert Wormeley Carter of Sabine Hall," Journal of Southern History, 12 (August 1946): 350 - 51.