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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: War and Peace
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

COPY OF THE LETTER REFERRED TO ABOVE. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. VI (1777-1778) [1890]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890). Vol. VI (1777-1778).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

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COPY OF THE LETTER REFERRED TO ABOVE.

Dear Sir,

I learn from undoubted authority, that General Clinton quarters in Captain Kennedy’s house in the city of New York, which you know is near Fort George, and, by the late fire, stands in a manner alone. What guards may be at or near his quarters, I cannot with precision say; and therefore shall not add any thing on this score, lest it should prove a misinformation. But I think it one of the most practicable, (and surely it will be among the most desirable and honorable) things imaginable to take him prisoner.

This house lying close by the water, and a retired way through a back yard or garden leading into it, what, if you have whale-boats, (8 or 10), but want of secrecy, can prevent the execution in the hands of an enterprising party? The embarkation might even be (and this I should think best) at King’s Ferry, on the first of the ebb, and early in the evening. Six or eight hours, with change of hands, would row the boats under the west shore and very secretly to the city, and the flood-tide will hoist them back again; or a party of horse might meet them at Fort Lee. I had like not to have mentioned that no ship of war is in the North River; was not, at least ten days ago; nor within four hundred yards of the Point; all being in the East River. I shall add no more. This is dropped as a hint to be improved upon, or rejected, as circumstances point out and justify. I am, &c.1

[1 ]“Mrs. Washington has received the miniature, and wishes to know whether Major Rogers is still at York. The defects of this portrait, I think are, that the visage is too long, and old age is too strongly marked in it. He is not altogether mistaken with respect to the languor of the general’s eye; for altho’ his countenance when affected either by joy or anger, is full of expression, yet when the muscles are in a state of repose, his eye certainly wants animation. My proficiency in this kind of drawing never went beyond sketching a profile. I never attempted to paint a miniature likeness of a full face. There is a miniature painter in camp who has made two or three successful attempts to produce the general’s likeness.”—John Laurens to his father, 9 March, 1778. Mr. W. S. Baker says in his Engraved Portraits of Washington, that Charles Willson Peale completed in December, 1777, a miniature for Mrs. Washington. It was begun at the close of October. “An engraving by Dr. Mare from this miniature, or from a copy made by Peale himself, is published in Irving’s Life of Washington, without being ascribed to the painter, and with the erroneous title ‘Washington at the age of twenty-five.’ ” The painter mentioned by Laurens may have been Peale.