Extract printed in Worthington Chauncey Ford, The Spurious Letters Attributed to Washington description begins Worthington Chauncey Ford. The Spurious Letters Attributed to George Washington. Brooklyn, 1889. description ends (Brooklyn 1889), 155. The letter is said to have been written to GW’s “agent,” almost surely Valentine Crawford, whose brother William Crawford was searching for land for GW. The extract reprinted here was included in a note written by the Rev. Bennett Allen in 1779 and accompanied his description of GW’s avaricious character. Allen wrote: “It is evident Washington egregiously outwitted the Governor of Virginia; his request was singularly modest, to include the Provincial officers and soldiers in the grant, for whom the King’s proclamation could not design those lands, for this obvious reason, that the object of the war was answered by securing them in possession of their own lands—and to exclude the British officers and soldiers, for whose reward they were assigned, and to whose distressed families they might hereafter have proved a seasonable refuge, by insisting on their personal application in Virginia. Many friends of government likewise on the spot were excluded by possession of those lands, as it will afford a safe asylum to the American leaders, if unsuccessful, so it will enlarge their territory to a boundless extent, if they establish independency” (ibid., 155–56).