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

TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON. - 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 ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.

My anxiety to get home increases with the prospect of it, but when is it to happen? I have not heard that Congress have yet had under consideration the lands and other gratuities, which at different periods of the war have been promised to the army. Does not these things evince the necessity of a committee’s repairing to camp, in order to arrange & adjust matters without spending time in a tedious exchange of letters. Unless something of this kind is adopted, business will be delayed & expences accumulated, or the army will break up in disorder, go home enraged, complaining of injustice & committing enormities on the innocent inhabitants in every direction.

Dear Sir,

I write to you unreservedly. If, therefore, contrary to my apprehension all these matters are in a proper train, & Mr. Morris has devised means to give the army three months’ pay, you will, I am persuaded, excuse my precipitancy and sollicitude, by ascribing it to an earnest wish to see the war happily & honorably terminated; to my anxious desire of enjoying some repose, & the necessity of my paying a little attention to my private concerns, which have suffered considerably in eight years’ absence. * * *

I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 12th and for the enclosures—the early communication of such important occurrances rendered the favor doubly acceptable. Would to God the articles for a general pacification were as well advanced as those, between America and Great Britain; but I am not without fears that that event is at a greater distance than the sanguine ones imagine.