Certificate for Lieutenant Thomas Pool, [30 September 1785]
Certificate for Lieutenant Thomas Pool1
[New York, September 30, 1785]
I certify that I was privy to the Petitioners being employed by the Commander in Chief in the manner he mentions and that he made several trips to New York before he was taken up by the British. I further certify that from the accounts repeatedly received at Head Quarters of the treatment he experienced there is no reason to doubt he suffered every thing he could bear without loss of life.2
A. Hamilton
ADS, Papers of the Continental Congress, National Archives.
1. Thomas Pool, a spy for the Americans during the Revolution, had been captured by the British and imprisoned for 235 days. He stated that during his imprisonment he underwent “tortures unknown even to the Bastile or Inquisition.” He petitioned the Congress for compensation. H’s certificate was written on the last page of Pool’s petition.
Pool’s petition is also accompanied by a certification from George Washington.
2. On report of the Secretary at War, Congress on September 7, 1786, granted Pool $1,097 “as a reward for personal and pecuniary injuries he sustained in the service of the United States” (, XXXI, 639).