181To James Madison from Edmund Pendleton, 20 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC (University of Virginia Library). This is apparently the only one of the many letters written by which still exists in original manuscript form ( Pendleton to JM, 27 August 1780 , headnote). How it alone survived is problematical. Perhaps the neatly printed “To James Madison Nov: 20th: 1780.” near its bottom margin was added by an autograph collector to whom JM gave the letter. The letter...
182From James Madison to Joseph Jones, 21 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC ( LC : Madison Papers). Your favor of the 10th. came by yesterday’s post. I am glad to find you have at last got a house [of Delegates] and have made so auspicious a beginning, as a unanimous vote to fill up our line for the war. This is a measure which all the States ought to have begun with. I wish there may not be some that will not be prevailed on even to end with it. It is much to be...
183From James Madison to Edmund Pendleton, 21 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC ( LC : Madison Papers). Your favor of the 13th. came safe yesterday. The past week has brought forth very little of consequence, except the disagreeable and I fear certain information of the arrival of the Corke fleet. Our last account of the embarkation at N. york was that the Ships had fallen down to the Hook, that the number of troops was quite unknown, as well as their destination,...
184Theodorick Bland, for Virginia Delegates in Congress[?], to Thomas Jefferson, 22 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC (Virginia State Library). This letter is signed only by Bland and is in his hand. In his first two paragraphs and part of the third, however, his “we,” “us,” and “our” show that he clearly writes for JM, his sole Virginia colleague in Congress, as well as for himself. Although the balance of the letter expresses a point of view at variance with JM’s, it is included here because JM’s later...
185To James Madison from Joseph Jones, 24 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC ( LC : Madison Papers). Jones’s dating of this letter is so indistinct that it could be either the “24th” or “25th.” References in his text to specific actions taken by the legislature on particular days make certain that he was writing on the 24th, even though JM acknowledged the letter as of 25 November. I have yours of the 14th: and from my soul wish I could inform you we proceed with...
186To James Madison from David Jameson, 25 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC ( LC : Rives Collection of Madison Papers). I duely recd. your favour of the 14t. and am much obliged to you for forwarding my letters to my Nephew. I have desired him to trouble you with his letters to me and must beg the favour of you to send them as opportunities may offer—I suppose it will not be right to frank them by Post It appears by the proceedings of a Court Martial held in...
187From James Madison to Joseph Jones, 25 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC ( LC : Madison Papers). Probably at the time that JM recovered this letter from Jones’s nephew, James Monroe ( JM to Jones, 19 September 1780 , headnote), he wrote on the last page, parallel to its right hand margin, “Georgia & S. C.—uti possidetis.” On 8 January 1822 JM sent a copy of the letter, together with copies of other letters relating to the same issue, to Hezekiah Niles, who...
188John Mathews, for Committee of Congress, to Nathanael Greene, 27 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan). On 23 October 1780 Congress added JM and William Sharpe to the standing committee, created 8 July 1779 “to correspond with the commanding officer of the southern department,” and prescribed that the committee should thereafter “keep a journal of their proceedings and correspondence” ( Journals of the Continental Congress , IV, 807;...
189To James Madison from Edmund Pendleton, 27 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
Tr ( LC : Force Transcripts). My last Account of the Enemy was the 18th. when they were all embarked, but whether with a design to leave the State or to make an impression on some other part of it was doubtful. There was something Mysterious in their leaving their Slaves on shore & some Captur’d Vessels in the harbour at Portsmouth, & indicated their having designs of further Hostility—unless...
190From James Madison to Joseph Jones, 28 November 1780 (Madison Papers)
RC ( LC : Madison Papers). Yrs. of the 18th. came yesterday. I am glad to find the legislature persist in their resolution to recruit their line of the army for the war, though without deciding on the expediency of the mode under their consideration, would it not be as well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves as to make them instruments for enlisting white Soldiers?...