Philada. Sepr. 17th 1779
Dear Sir
I have written very frequently to you, but have no Copies of the Emanations of my friendly Attachment to your merits as they have at those Periods appeared on paper. But the Nature & especially the sincerity of them may perhaps be better judged of by seing what I wrote to your Non Amicals. I find that a Mr. Cummins and a Mr. Smith have been taken. By the latter I wrote in a private Capacity to all three of the Commissrs. but have only a copy of one to Dr. F - - and perhaps never sent a copy of that before this day.1I have ordered the Bearer of this Scrawl to deliver one to you marked 4 if you are in France, if not to break the Seal and deliver the inclosed as directed. If it comes into yr. hand, break the Seal and you will find a second Envelop properly directed, to which you may put a Wafer. If you do not get that Proof, take my Word for it that what little Health I have left unsacrificed by 17 months Imprisonment & 33 months Drudgery here, shall be exerted on every necessary occasion to defend your Name & Character against vilainous Attacks, the Spirit for which, however, has long ago become despicable.
Your Choice from Salust of a Motto for one of yr. Friends came too late almost, for in a few days after my Receipt of it, quietus took absolute occupancy of turbidus inquietus atrox.2 Dont start at the Expression of my Receipt; but know that upon reading a Letter for RHL or FLL or JL3 I broke every Seal and by the Advice of yr. hearty friends Mr. Laurens, Gen. Whipple & others, presented the Defences, Replications, Remarks & their Vouchers, not keeping back the last half Sheet wsh. contained an a fortiori.4
A paper unsigned, among Mr. A. Lee’s Dispatches, read Sepr. 2d.5
This was a Course of Observations upon the Correspondence relative to yr. joint papers.
The Remarks upon the Employment of W - s6 are at hand whenever that Business shall be taken up, as also are Letters between JA and Ct. V - g - ns.7 Mr. A’s Testimony in Regard to you & yr. two Brothers is manly as well as just.
No Step is yet thought necessary with regard to the Affair of Sergeant & Ingersol,8 or that of evacuating the Post mentioned by you. The moving of the Waters are closely watched.
I find by a Letter this day recd. from my friend Genl. Warren of the Navy Board Boston that some Justice of Peace in the Jersies has rudely opened Letters for you & Mr. Schweighawser going from me to his Care by a Boston Gentleman who did not think of taking a Pass with him:9 better so than to be opened by some such as you and I know who are no Justices. I believe the Letters were from R H L covered by me to Schweighauser for the Sake of telling him that I shou’d ward off the arrows of the assassins of his Son in Law’s Character when any of them fly this Way. They come from awkward tho practiced Bowmen.
La Luzerne does not speak English. I shall naturally be led to more Intercourse with him than his Predicessor, from that Circumstance. You see how SA & I are marked in the Company - Thing of Paca & Drayton,10 doubtless the latter tale bore many of our Honesties from the State House to the Hotel; but I cannot say that I ever discovered a consequent Manifestation of Dislike. Those Browbeatings however are never practiced against manly Indifference. Perhaps it would have been better if several of us had not, from an aversion to even the appearance of Sycophancy, left a Stranger without proper Warnings against that insidious Class. Ford has not been here. You know by my Letters of April11 that he was judged by the State of Virginia to be not fit to be near the Person of an American Commissioner. RHL has been greatly indisposed but is mending now in his Health. I doubt whether you will by this opportunity know any thing decisive of our opinion respecting the 2 Spanish points of negociation; but you may depend on it that we are disposed to do every Thing to cement a triple Alliance whenever Spain shall signify her Wishes through you or other regular Channel. The Floridas are not ours; they belong to our Enemy. A free Navigation of the Miss’pi. is to be wished for but cannot be claimed if S - - 12 owns both Banks near the Mouth though millions of Acres of Virginia lay also on the Waters of that River higher up.
Are you so munified with orders from the State of Virginia that if a Vessel with Goods sent by you for that State should be lost you will not be made to bear the whole burden? I have been told such a Thing is whispered here. Pray be on yr. Guard. Caution is what an honest Man may condescend to learn from Rogues.
I must endeavor to speak a good Word for Daddy Dumas.13 He has been very particular in the margins of the Leyden Gazette Feb. 23 to write where it respects you. "Je nai aucune part a toute cette insertion; & je n’ai pu la voir qu’ avec affliction." I should think he would not hesitate to tell the author of that rascally Paragraph which is in the Gazette of March 30. How wou’d the Refusal consist with his written profession above mentioned? You have had an abandoned set at your Elbow to watch over. And you made some here very rancorous at the first of yr. Correspondence. I never cou’d find by the Books of the Comtee. who the two were that you was mistrustful of.14 The Letter Book is not signed, so as that I can see who were 2d & 5th. It will not do to take them as they stand on the Journals when elected. But if Complaisance put Franklin in the Chair I get Harison & Jay. You also once said something about Mr. Duane’s Servant. An Attempt was made to embitter the Mind of Govr. Reed who happened to be a Member of Congress when the Dictionary came to light. But Mr. Reed says you did your Duty well.15
Something in yr. Letters to the Comtee was in Cyphers. Merryweather Smith decyphered it readily otherwise I must have sent it on to Virginia to yr. Brother. I know that RHL thinks that mode is now as useless as if Deane knew it; need I say more? I think it would be clever to have a Cypher in Comtee, but not to be also used to your Brother or yr. Friend; those should be distinct ones. We have never yet got but one Treaty printed in French by Authority. I mean one of Each which I gave to the Secretary’s office. I wish to own them myself.
Why should you and I fret at a Man’s putting up in his Chamber the Bust of Cataline or any other Rascal, if he leaves us at Liberty to place in ours Cato, Hampden or Adams?
If yr. Brother and Mr. Izard are near you deliver the Letters for them inclosed.16 I am not become enough acquainted with those Gentlemen to scrawl away freely & carelessly to them my Resentments at the manner in which they have been treated by privite Information or public Decissions. I Esteem them both as fast friends of America and Mankind at large.
I before informed you that some wiseacres affirm that a Comtee for Correspondence is useless. I have no Clerk, the Papers of the former Office lay at Random, and I am determined they shall be preserved in due Arrangement, therefore you will believe me when I say I am overplied with affairs. I fear losing a convenient Occasion of getting my Packets to the Ship if I do not now close; but will if necessary take up my Pen again before she sails to give you Information and fresh Assurance of my being, Dear Sir, your Friend and very humble Servant,
James Lovell
Receiver’s copy, Lee Family Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
1 See Lovell to Benjamin Franklin, 29 April 1779.
2 Lovell was undoubtedly referring to Arthur Lee’s use of this phrase, in reference to William Henry Drayton, in a letter to his brother Francis Lightfoot, as reported by their brother Richard Henry Lee. "In a letter from Dr. Lee to my brother F.L.L.," Richard Henry wrote to Henry Laurens on September 5, "is the following paragraph 'I expected W.H.D. would take precisely the part he has. His character is too much of the Catilinarian cast, for him to remain long among honorable men. Turbidus, inquietus, atrox - he should be always dealt with as one, who, tho your friend to day, may betray you tomorrow. But I am mistaken if his state dont put a mark upon him'." Lee, Letters (Ballagh), 2:146 - 47.
3 That is, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and James Lovell.
4 Concerning the "half-sheet," see Lovell to Richard Henry Lee, August 28, 1779, where he informed Richard Henry that he had presented Arthur’s letter to Congress "without cutting off the last leaf."
5 See JCC, 15:1016.
6 Jonathan Williams.
7 That is, John Adams and the comte de Vergennes.
8 Arthur had suggested to his brother Richard Henry that Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant and Jared Ingersoll be consulted about a libel suit against Silas Deane for Deane’s public attack on him of 5 December 1778. See Lee, Letters (Ballagh), 2:143 - 44.
9 See Lovell to James Warren, 13 August 1779.
10 See Lovell to Samuel Adams, 12 August, note 2.
11 Not found, but for the return to America of Lee’s former secretary Hezekiah Ford, see Lovell to Abigail Adams, 11 August 1779, note.
12 That is, Spain.
13 Charles W. F. Dumas, agent of the United States in the United Provinces.
14 Lovell was clearly referring to Lee’s statement in his February 13 and 14, 1776, letters to the Secret Committee: "I received a few days since yours of the 30th November, 1775, informing me of the appointment of a secret Committee. I am sorry, however, to say that the second and last upon the list are men in whom I can not confide, and I am not a little surprised that it should so happen that these two men are upon such a committee, while others are omitted with whom I am known to be in habits of communication and confidence." Wharton, Diplomatic Correspondence, 2:76 - 77.
The committee members were listed in the journals in the following order: Benjamin Harrison, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Johnson, John Dickinson, and John Jay. JCC, 3:392. Lee may have been referring to Franklin and Jay, although Lovell suggests further on that Lee had in mind Harrison and Jay.
15 For the attempt "to embitter the mind of Govr. Reed," see these Letters, 10:457 - 60.
16 These were duplicates of the Committee for Foreign Affairs’ letters to Ralph Izard and William Lee of July 17, 1779.