Philadelphia, 1st April, 1776.
My Dear Friend,
I hope my former reasons for not delivering your letter to the President will meet your approbation.
1 Since I wrote you last, the Congress has appointed two Engineers for the Southern department, Mr John Stadler, now in Virginia, and the young German Massenbach whom you took with you from Baltimore.2 They have also appointed Monsr Dohicky Arundel (who I expect will deliver you this) a Captain of Artillery in the Continental service with the following resolve, "That General Lee be directed to set on foot the raising a Company of Artillery, and that it be recommended to the Convention or Committee of Safety of Virginia to appoint the other officers of said Company of Artillery."3 The better opinion now is, that Gen. Howe will rest awhile at Halifax, and embrace the first opportunity of pushing up to the relief of Quebec, and we are making ready to meet him there. I think the number of men already ordered for that country amounts to more than 10,000. We are informed that General Howe carried off all his American prisoners with him in chains. The people of New-York have collected and burnt publickly every copy they could find of Plain Truth,4 and they have treated the Effigies of Tryon in the same manner. The arrival of 10 tons of powder and a considerable quantity of sail cloth to the Eastward, is all the news we have here.
Farewell my dear friend, I wish you happy, healthy, and successful.
Richard Henry Lee
Cato still continues to write nonsense,5and the other Tories to forge lies about the Commissioners. General Lee, at Williamsburg, in Virginia. NOTES:
Reprinted from New York Historical Society Collections, The Lee Papers, 4 (1871): 367 - 68. Printed in James Curtis Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Volume 1, 1762 - 1778, pp. 174 - 75.
1 See Richard Henry Lee to Charles Lee, March 25, 1776.
2 See JCC, 4:241. For the identity of Massenbach (Felix Lewis Maussenbaugh) see Md. Archives, 11: 173, 274.
3 See JCC, 4:212.
4 Plain Truth: Addressed To The Inhabitants of America, Containing Remarks on a Lad Pamphlet, entitled Common Sense By Candidus (Philadelphia: R. Bell, 1776). For James Chalmers's authorship of this pamphlet, see T. R. Adams, American Independence, p. 152.
5 Rev. William Smith, provost of the College of Philadelphia, was the author of the "Cato" letters, which appeared in the Pennsylvania newspapers during March and April 1776 and are in Am. Archives, 4th ser. 5:125 - 27, 188 - 90, 443 - 46, 514 - 17, 542 - 46, 839 - 43, 850 - 53, and 1049 - 51. See also John Adams to Abigail Adams April 28, 1776.