Philadelphia August 29th. 1778
Sir,
I was yesterday favored with your letter of the 25th instant, for which be pleased to accept my thanks. I do recollect that when my brother practised physick in Virginia about ten or eleven years ago, I then heared him sometimes mention a Doctor Berkenhout who had written a pharmacopea which he esteemed, and that he had an acquaintance with and regard for the Doctor.1 Beyond this my knowledge of Doctor Berkenhout or his concerns extends not; having never had a word concerning him from my brother since that time, nor did I ever see the Doctor that I remember.
I have laid your letter before Congress,2 and their sense seems to be, that you use your discretion in cases similar to that of Doctor Berkenhout, governing yourself by the nature of the circumstances.
I have the honor to be, with regard, Sir, your most obedient and very humble servt,
Richard Henry Lee
Lee PapersUniversity of Virginia Archives
Printed in James Curtis Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Volume 1, 1762 - 1778, p. 432.
1 Brigadier General William Maxwell (c.1733 - 96) of the New Jersey Line, was at this time stationed at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, guarding the coast opposite Staten Island, where on 24 August Dr. John Berkenhout appeared under a British flag of truce and applied for a pass to proceed to Philadelphia. Although suspicious of Berkenhout, for news of his trip to America had already been published in American newspapers and many Americans correctly surmised that his visit was more than coincidentally related to the mission of the Carlisle commissioners, Maxwell had granted the doctor a pass largely on the strength of his acquaintance of several years with Arthur Lee. Reaching Philadelphia on the 27th and introducing himself to Richard Henry Lee, Berkenhout was permitted to move about unmolested for a few days, but the Executive Council of Pennsylvania ordered his arrest on 3 September. Whereupon he wrote a letter to Congress appealing for his release and thereby forced the delegates to inquire closely into the purpose of his journey and possible connections with the British government.
Those connections were real enough, for Berkenhout was, as described by one historian who made a careful study of the journal he kept during his American venture, "one of the propaganda agents selected to assist in the work of the [Carlisle] commission." That selection clearly rested upon Berkenhout’s acquaintance with Arthur Lee, which dated from their student days at Edinburgh in the 1760s and which provided the excuse for his introduction to Richard Henry. Although the North Ministry originally expected that he and Mr. and Mrs. John Temple with whom he traveled would accompany the Carlisle commissioners to America, Berkenhout and the Temples sailed several weeks later and did not reach New York until early August, long after prospects for the success of their mission had faded and notice of their "private embassy to the Congress" had been printed in American newspapers. Just two weeks after Pennsylvania authorities placed him under arrest he was escorted back to Staten Island, having totally failed in his aspiration to serve as an intermediary in the opening of serious peace negotiations between Britain and America.
For discussion of Berkenhout’s mission, see Howard Peckham, "Dr. Berkenhout’s Journal, 1778," Pennsylvania Magazine History and Biography, 65 (January 1941): 79 - 92; and Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1941), pp. 106 - 11. For his arrest and Congress’ response to this case, see Henry Laurens to William Maxwell, 5 September 1778.
2 There is no mention of Maxwell’s letter in the journals and it is not in PCC.