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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

to william livingston 2 - Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 9 [1774]

Edition used:

The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (Federal Edition) (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). In 12 vols. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), 12 vols.

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to william livingston2

A number of disaffected persons having been taken up and brought to his Excellency, he has ordered an examination into their cases to know who of them were subject to a military jurisdiction, and who came properly under the cognizance of the civil power; also to discriminate those who were innocent or guilty of trivial offences from those whose crimes were of a more capital and heinous nature, directing that those of the former character should be dismissed, and those of the latter be referred to you for further trial and punishment. The examination, at which I was present, has been accordingly made, and the enclosed list of names will inform you of those who have been deemed proper subjects for a legal prosecution; and who are herewith sent under guard to be disposed of as you shall direct. I have transmitted you a bundle of papers, in which you will find the information and evidence that support the charges against them, and the confession they made in the court of inquiry. Many of them have nothing against them but what is to be found in their own acknowledgments. How far these may operate in fixing their guilt you can best determine. Several of them have been taken in arms, and others were beyond a doubt employed in enlisting men for the service of the enemy. You will readily concur with his Excellency in the obvious necessity of inflicting exemplary punishment on such daring offenders, to repress that insolent spirit of open and avowed enmity to the American cause, which, unhappily, is too prevalent in this and some of the States. The examination, in this instance, is somewhat irregular and out of the common order of things. But in the present unsettled state of government, the distinction between the civil and military powers cannot be upheld with that exactness which every friend to society must wish. His Excellency desires to avoid nothing more, I flatter myself you will believe me, than deviations from the strict rules of propriety in this respect, or the least encroachments either upon the rights of the citizens or of the magistrate. It was necessary to make inquiry for the sake of the discrimination before mentioned, and tenderness to the innocent, to save them from long and unmerited confinement, commended the measure.1

[2]The distinguished revolutionary governor of New Jersey.

[1]Reprinted from Hamilton’s History of the Republic, i., 194.