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

TO JOSEPH REED. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. X (1782-1785) [1891]

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. X (1782-1785).

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

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TO JOSEPH REED.

Those Officers who claim the specific ration as a matter of right could not in justice, and I persuade myself would not in decency, complain if they should be compelled to draw or forfeit them. But the question in my Opinion is, whether they ought to be compelled to draw them (whether they want them or not) and whether (as it costs the public no more to give them the alternative of drawing the specific Ration or its value) it is not reasonable, especially under the deprivation of pay, to gratify them in it, as it is all they have to live upon.

Dear Sir,

I shall beg your indulgence but a little while longer till I subscribe fully to your observation that, without a Civil list, neither Civil nor Military Men can exist; but I must beg leave to add to it as my own that, if the Military should disband for want of Pay (while the war continues to rage) a period will very soon be put to the Civil Establishment under our present Constitution—the Civil and Military Men, having a reciprocal dependance upon each other, taxation of the property of one being equal to that of the other, and the wants of both the same, it is worthy of some considerations whether the first is to receive all and the other no part of their pay.

The appeal contained in your letter of the 11th instant is equally unexpected and surprising.2

These Sentiments, my dear Morris, are between ourselves, and tho’ freely communicated to you are concealed from the Officers of this Army, on whom I am constantly inculcating patience and forbearance; adding that their relief must flow from the Taxes, and that it is incumbent upon all and every of them to impress the necessity of Taxation upon their several Connexions and Friends as the only source of redress, for that you are totally unsupported and cannot work miracles.

Not knowing the particular charges which are alledged against you, it is impossible for me to make a specific reply. I can therefore only say in general terms that the employments you sustained in the year 1776, and in that period of the year, when we experienced our greatest distresses, are a proof that you was not suspected by me of infidelity, or want of integrity; for had the least suspicion of the kind reached my mind, either from observation or report, I should most assuredly have marked you out as a fit object of resentment.

As I never say any thing of a Man that I have the smallest scruple of saying to him, I would not be understood to mean by this being between ourselves that any part of it that effects Mr. Sands should be hid from him. You are perfectly at liberty if you think it necessary to communicate these my Sentiments to him.

While on our retreat through Jersey, I remember your being sent from Newark, to the Assembly of New Jersey, then sitting, to rouse and animate them to spirited measures for our support; and at the same time gen. Mifflin was sent to Pennsylvania for the same purpose. This employ was certainly a mark of my confidence in you at that time.

I hope some good will result from the deputation of Congress to the several States—Inclosed I send you a Copy of my Letter to them of the 4th of May, and should have done it sooner, if I could have trusted the conveyance without putting the Letter in Cypher. I pray you to make a tender of my best respects, in which Mrs. Washington joins me most cordially, to Mrs. Morris & Miss Livingston, and to believe that with every sentiment of esteem and Regard I am, &c.

Your conduct, so far as it came to my immediate notice, during the short period we lay on the west bank of the Delaware, appeared sollicitous for the public good; and your conduct at Princeton evidenced a spirit and zeal which to me appeared laudable and becoming a man well effected to the cause we were engaged in.

[2 ]Reed had become engaged in an acrid political controversy with General Cadwallader, in which it was charged that in December, 1776, he had meditated going over to the British. He asked Washington for “a few lines expressive of your sense of my conduct in the fall and winter of 1776,” and to give his sanction to using the letters Washington had written to him at that time.

[2 ]Reed had become engaged in an acrid political controversy with General Cadwallader, in which it was charged that in December, 1776, he had meditated going over to the British. He asked Washington for “a few lines expressive of your sense of my conduct in the fall and winter of 1776,” and to give his sanction to using the letters Washington had written to him at that time.