Henry Knox to Tobias Lear, 25 April 1793
Henry Knox to Tobias Lear
[Philadelphia] 25 April 1793
Dear Sir
Please to submit the enclosed letters from Governor Telfair,1 & Lt Governor Wood,2 to the President of the United States. Yours sincerely
H. Knox
ALS, DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW.
1. Gov. Edward Telfair of Georgia, in his letter to Knox of 9 April, expressed “peculiar satisfaction” that the secretary of war was considering calling up the militia “in the event of general hostility” ( 1:368). Knox waited until 29 April to answer this and another recently received letter from Telfair of 3 April (Knox to GW, 18 April, and note 3; see also Knox to Lear, 24 April 1793, DLC:GW). Knox wrote Telfair that since the concerns of William Blount, the governor of the Southwest Territory, are “blended with the state of affairs related by your excellency, the President of the United States is desirous that some general principles should be adopted which shall be applicable (as far as circumstances will admit) to the general state of the Southern frontiers, the result of which shall be transmitted to you” ( 1:363). Knox submitted this letter for GW’s approval on 29 April ( 122). For Telfair’s appeals for military assistance, see Lear to Knox, 21 Jan., n.1. On 29 May, GW’s cabinet met to discuss a response to Indian depredations in Georgia (Cabinet Opinion on Georgia and the Creek Indians, 29 May, and Knox to Lear, 30 May 1793 [first letter], n.1).
2. In a letter to Knox of 19 April, James Wood, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, enclosed a letter from Capt. Andrew Lewis to Gov. Henry Lee of 9 April, detailing Indian depredations along the Virginia frontier (see Vi: Executive Letter Book, 1792–94; 6:329–30). GW returned these letters to Knox on 26 April ( 119–20).