Sender: Richard Henry Lee’s Recipient: the Carlisle Commissioners
[16 June 1778]
My Lords & Gentlemen1
I have reced your letter of and laid it before Congress with its inclosures. In answer I am instructed to inform you, that Congress ever ready to stop the effusion of human blood have been induced to hear your letter read thro out2 and to consider its inclosures notwithstanding the very inadmissible and offensive things that are contained in the former. Tho It is impossible Congress can fail to be affected with the highest resentment at the indignity offered them by the indecent reflections you have thought proper to make upon his most Ch. Majesty the Great & good (& faithful) ally of these States. The Commission from his Britannic Majesty under which you act, a copy of which you have inclosed, and the Acts of Parliament on which the Commission is founded, being both formed upon the idea of the good people of these States being Subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, and proposing peace upon dependent principles and a return to the domination of a power that hath accumulated every injury and insult on their unoffending States, Congress consider them both as totally inadmissible, and cannot consent to any further communication on such grounds. I am further instructed to inform your Excellency that Congress will be always ready to enter upon the Consideratn. of a Treaty of Peace, when a sincere disposition thereto shall be evidenced on the part (G.B.) of his B[ritish] M[ajesty] by an explicit acknowledgement of the Independence of these States and by withdrawing his Fleets from our Coasts and his Armies from the 13 States.
Manuscript, American Philosophical Society. In the hand of Richard Henry Lee and endorsed by him: "Letter from Congress to the King’s commissioners."
1 Lee drafted this letter as a member of a committee appointed on 16 June to prepare a response to the Carlisle commissioners’ 9 June peace overture. A comparison of the texts of the Lee draft and the committee draft prepared by Gouverneur Morris indicates that Morris followed the sequence of points presented by Lee and incorporated many of Lee’s words and phrases into his own more concise and moderately toned version. Morris’ draft, introduced by a preamble in Lee’s hand, was reported to Congress on the 16th and approved the following day. See JCC, 11:610 - 11, 614 - 15; and Henry Laurens to the Carlisle Commissioners, 17 June 1778. For additional information on Congress’ response to the British commissioners, see Samuel Adams to James Warren, 13 June, note 3; and the documments of Francis Dana, Charles Thomson, and John Witherspoon, this date.
2 At this point in the draft the following passage is set off by diagonal marks: "and have Considered it with a coolness that that having." Both James Ballagh and Edmund Burnett incorporated a part of this passage into their differing versions of Lee’s draft, but neither seems to reflect Lee’s intent. The appearance of the manuscript and the sense of the sentence suggest that Lee simply intended to delete these words. See Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 1:414 - 15; and Burnett, Letters, 3:296 - 97.