To Alexander Hamilton from Stephen Moylan, 5 April 1792
From Stephen Moylan1
Philadelphia, April 5, 1792. “I will not take up your time for the trouble I am about to give by apologizing for it.… I never received my commutation certificate the reasons are, first I was under a necessity of living very retired since the peace the Limitation Act2 never came to my Knowledge until May 89 when I went to New York—the other is, an impossibility of my being able to close my Regimental Accounts3—Such as I coud make out were transmitted to the proper office. The reason of my inability in this matter proceeds from the loss of a part of my most essential papers.… If you can put me in the way of getting what is so justly due to me for long and some essential services renderd the public it will place me in a very different situation to that I now stand in—it will place me above Want.…”
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. During the American Revolution Moylan, a resident of Pennsylvania, had served as an aide-de-camp to George Washington, as quarter-master general, and as colonel in the Fourth Continental Dragoons.
2. On November 2, 1785, Congress “Resolved, That all persons having claims for services performed in the military department, be directed to exhibit the same for liquidation to the commissioners of army accounts, on or before the first day of August, ensuing the date hereof, and that all claims, under the description above mentioned, which may be exhibited after that period, shall forever thereafter be precluded from adjustment or allowance, and that the commissioner of army accounts give public Notice of this resolve in all the states for the space of six Months” (, XXIX, 866).
3. Moylan’s accounts had come to the attention of the Continental Congress in connection with the petition of Moore Fauntleroy, one of the officers in Moylan’s regiment (, XXXIV, 120–21).