From George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, 20 March 1793
To Thomas Jefferson
United States [Philadelphia] March 20th 1793
Sir,
I have to request that it may be given in charge to the director of the mint, to take measures for collecting samples of foreign coins issued in the Year 1792, of the species which usually circulate within the United States, to examine by assays at the mint whether the same are conformable to the respective standards required, and to report the result, that the same may be made known by proclamation1—agreeably to the Act entitled “An Act regulating foreign Coins, and for other purposes.”2
Go: Washington
LS, in Tobias Lear’s writing, DLC: Jefferson Papers; copy, in Lear’s writing, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; LB, DNA: RG 59, George Washington’s Correspondence with His Secretaries of State; LB (photocopy), DLC:GW.
1. GW sent this letter in response to an earlier letter of this date from Jefferson, in which Jefferson wrote: “that the Departments being instituted to relieve the President from the details of execution, it will be sufficient that the directions go from the head of the department, the President’s approbation being known. they shall accordingly be given” (DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters). Jefferson’s letter to GW was an answer to Tobias Lear’s note to him of 19 March. For the assay of foreign coins, as well as GW’s involvement in the activities of the U.S. Mint, see Jefferson to GW, 10 Mar. 1793 (second letter), and note 1. On 21 Mar., Jefferson wrote to David Rittenhouse, the director of the mint, telling him that he had “the approbation of the President” to collect and examine all foreign coins minted in the year 1792 ( 25:423). No presidential proclamation regarding the assaying of these coins has been found.
2. See 300–301.