ALS (letterpress copy), DLC:GW; Df, in James McHenry’s writing, MiU-C: McHenry Papers; Df, in James McHenry’s and Timothy Pickering’s writing, MiU-C: McHenry Papers; LB, DLC:GW. GW enclosed this letter with his to John Trumbull of 13 Jan. 1797 (see n.2 to that document). McHenry’s undated draft appears to have served as the basis for the recipient’s copy, as the ALS contains similar wording.

The other draft in McHenry’s and Pickering’s writing, which contains strikeouts, interlineations, and significant differences from the letterpress copy, reads: “Your letters of the 8 & 9 Sept. & 1 of Octer have been reced.

“Accept of my thanks for the interest you have taken, to have the forgery to which my name has been affixed placed in a clear point of view. The letters in question bearing the title of ‘Epistles Domestic, Confidential & Official, from General Washington,’ … were not written by me; nor did I ever see or hear of them until they issued from a press in New York at an early period of the American war, for purposes very well understood by my country men and which rendered it unnecessary at that time for me to have declared them a forgery.

“Nor did I loose a particle of my baggage during the whole course of the war. As however the actors of that day to whom these circumstances were known must, like myself, soon disappear from the stage; I have thought it a duty which I owed to truth and to the rising generation to state these facts to the printer of the forged letters and to request him to have them made public. I inclose you a copy of what I have written to him.

“I presume they ought to be with held for the present. As to the other matters your own judgement—aided with the advice of the American minister in London [Rufus King] will be quite adequate.”