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

CIRCULAR LETTER TO THE STATES. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. VIII (1779-1780) [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. VIII (1779-1780).

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

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CIRCULAR LETTER TO THE STATES.

Sir:

You will have received I make no doubt a copy of an act of Congress of the 9th instant, ascertaining the quotas of the noncommissioned officers and privates to be furnished by the respective states for the ensuing campaign, and directing the men in the additional corps—the guards, artillery, and the horse, and the regimental artificers in the departments of the quarter-master-general and commissary general of military stores, as well as those of the battalions in the state levies, whose services do not expire before the last of September next, to be counted as part of the quotas of the states to which they respectively belong. The quota of the state of New Hampshire is fixed at 12151 and I have now the honor to inclose you a special return of the noncommissioned officers and privates in her three battalions, and of those belonging to her in Jackson’s and Hazen’s regiments, and Lamb’s regiment of artillery, designating in a particular manner, the proportion engaged for the war and the periods when and in what proportion the services of the rest will expire. You will be pleased to observe that by the act, men whose engagements expire before the last of September next, as I have already taken the liberty to mention, are not to be computed as part of the 1215; and therefore according to the return inclosed, the deficiency of men to be raised is 695. There are one or two corps besides those I have mentioned, of which I have not yet obtained returns; in which possibly there may be a few men belonging to the state. When I procure these, if this should be the case, I shall take the earliest occasion to communicate it and their number. I would observe before I conclude, that this return bears the fullest number of men under every description the state can have in her three battallions and the other corps which it comprehends, and they would most probably be found, if an actual inspection could take place, to fall a good deal short of the complement, as there is always a material difference between an army on paper and its real strength. A comparative view between the total of an army, as borne upon every general return and the column of present fit for duty, and the absentees that can be accounted for as certainly existing, demonstrates this beyond question. I have the honor to be, &c.

[1 ]The details varied for each state.