Copy, in unidentified writing, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters.

James Reynolds was the son of David and Mary Reynolds of Orange County, New York. During the Revolution Reynolds and his father were employed in the commissary department, and after the war both father and son made numerous attempts to secure compensation for alleged losses during the war years. See, for example, David Reynolds to Congress, April 1786, DNA:PCC, item 41; JCC, description begins Worthington Chauncey Ford et al., eds. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. 34 vols. Washington, D.C., 1904–37. description ends 30:250, 31:736–37, 34:526. The younger Reynolds did not secure federal employment in 1789, and by 1790 he was deeply involved with other New York speculators in purchasing pay claims of Revolutionary War veterans in Virginia and North Carolina. In 1792 he was charged with fraud involving a deceased soldier’s estate and arrested. While incarcerated in Philadelphia Reynolds claimed that he could make disclosures injurious to the reputation of a member of the president’s cabinet. The ensuing investigation eventually resulted in Alexander Hamilton’s public disclosure of his “amorous connection” with Reynolds’s wife Maria. For discussion of the Reynolds affair and Reynolds’s attempts to blackmail the secretary of the treasury, see Syrett, Hamilton Papers, description begins Harold C. Syrett et al., eds. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 vols. New York, 1961–87. description ends 21:121–44, and Boyd, Jefferson Papers, description begins Julian P. Boyd et al., eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. 41 vols. to date. Princeton, N.J., 1950–. description ends 18:618–88. For Julian Boyd’s use of Reynolds’s letter of 26 June to GW to support his contention that Hamilton forged the “Reynolds Pamphlet,” see Jefferson Papers, 18:681–82; for the rebuttal by the editors of the Papers of Alexander Hamilton, see Hamilton Papers, 21:142–44.