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

to general greene - 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 general greene

dear General:

I acknowledge myself to have been unpardonably delinquent in not having written to you before, but my matrimonial occupations have scarcely left me leisure or inclination for any other. I must now be brief, as the post is just setting out. I shall shortly write you at large. I have not been much in the way of knowing sentiments out of the army, but as far as I am acquainted with them, either in or out, you have great reason to be satisfied. Your conduct in the southern command seems to be universally approved, and your reputation is progressive. How long this will last, the wheel of fortune will have too much in determining. I cannot tell you any thing of our prospects here, because we know little about them ourselves. Hitherto we have received few recruits. I fear this campaign will be a defensive one on our part. Harrison has left the General to be a chief-justice of Maryland. I am about leaving him to be any thing that fortune may cast up—I mean in the military line. This, my dear General, is not an affair of calculation, but of feeling. You may divine the rest, and I am sure you will keep your divinations to yourself. The enemy have gotten so much in the way of intercepting our mails that I am afraid of seeing whatever I write hung up the week after in Rivington’s Gazette. This obliges me to be cautious. Adieu. My dear General, let me beg you will believe that whatever change there may be in my situation, there will never be any in my respect, esteem, and affection for you.

P. S.—Let me know if I could find any thing worth my while to do in the southern army. You know I shall hate to be nominally a soldier.1

[1]This letter is reprinted from the History of the Republic, ii., 187. It has no date except the year, but was evidently written just after the disagreement with Washington, of Feb. 16th, described in the preceding letter.