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

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


TO LUND WASHINGTON.

Your letter of the 29th of Jany. came by the last Post,—You do not seem to have considered the force and tendency of the words of yr. letter when you talk of the probability only of sending me “the long promised account.” “The irregularity of them” is not, you add, “for want of knowledge in keeping them, but neglect, your aversion to writing,” &c. &c. These are but other words for saying, “as I am not fond of writing, and it is quite immaterial whether you have any knowledge or information of your private concerns or whether the accts. are kept properly or no, I have delayed, and do not know how much longer I may continue to delay bringing you acquainted with these accts., irregular as they are.”

Dear Lund,

Delicacy hitherto, and a hope that you long ago would have seen into the propriety of the measure without a hint of it from me, has restrained me from telling you, that annual accounts of my Crops, together with the receipts and expenditure of my Money, State of my stocks, &c., ought to have been sent to me as regularly as the year came about. It is not to be supposed, that all the avocations of my public duties, great and laborious as they have been, could render me totally insensible to the only means by which myself and family, and the character I am to maintain in life hereafter, is to be supported; or that a precise account of these matters would not have been exceedingly satisfactory to me. Instead of this, except the accounts rendered at Valley Forge in the year 1778, I have received none since I left home; and not till after two or 3 applications in the course of last year, could I get any accounts of the Crop of the preceding one; and then only of the Corn, by the Post on Sunday last.

My last letter would have informed you that I was disappointed in my application at Philadelphia for money, and that I had given up all thoughts of purchasing Dows’ land. Since then, I have met with an offer of £2000 York currency, for which, if I take it, I shall have to pay at the rate of 7 pr. ct. per annum interest.

I have often told you, and I repeat it with much truth, that the entire confidence which I placed in your integrity made me easy, and I was always happy at thinking that my affairs were in your hands—which I could not have been if they had been under the care of a common manager. But this did not exempt me from the desires which all men have, of knowing the exact state of them. I have now to beg that you will not only send me the account of your receipts and expenditures of specie, but of every other kind of money subsequent to the account exhibited at Valley Forge, which ended some time in April, 1778. I want to know before I come home (as I shall come home with empty pockets, whenever Peace shall take place) how affairs stand with me, and what my dependence is. I wish to know also what I have to expect from the wheat of 1781 and ’82, as you say the two crops are so blended that they cannot be rendered seperately; how are settlements to be made with and justice done to the several Parties Interested under these Circumstances?

Under this disadvantage and the difficulty I may experience in procuring money for repayment of the loan, I would have you before any conclusion is come to with Dow and comy., wait upon Mrs. French and Mr. Dulany for the last time, and know decidedly of them, whether, if a bargain is struck with Dow, they will make an even exchange—tract for tract. You may inform them as an apology for this application, that my reasons for requiring a definitive answer to this question are, that no man is better acquainted with their land than I am, so consequently, no person can be more fully convinced that £2000 is the full value of it;—more indeed, than I ever expected it would cost me, in case I should become the purchaser. That as this sum is the price fixed upon Dow’s land, and two or three purchasers are ready to strike, and the sale of it is only suspended on my account, from a disposition in Mr. Adam to give me the preference, I cannot avoid deciding thereon immediately. That as Mrs. French is unwilling to part with her land without having the value of the two tracts ascertained; it is an evidence in my mind, that she has reason to believe hers will be highest valued, and lastly, if this should be the case, and I, in addition to the £2000 should have a further sum to pay, it would advance the price of her land in the neck so much beyond its real value, that I think it most prudent to forego the purchase of Dow’s land as the means of effecting the exchange for hers, rather than run the hazard of paying too severely for the gratification of a mere fancy (for it is no more) of putting the whole neck under one fence; as it is well known that I stand in no need of land, or meadow for all my purposes.