New-York Delegates to Provincial Congress

v2:1137

NEW-YORK DELEGATES TO PROVINCIAL CONGRESS.

Philadelphia, June 30, 1775.

GENTLEMEN: We have received your letter of the 23d instant, and arc sorry to be informed of your being retarded

v2:1138

Permit us earnestly to recommend to you to proceed in this business with alacrity and despatch. The honour as well as the interest of the Province is much concerned in the success of this measure. Your neighbours of Connecticut boast of their having raised their men in ten days' time; endeavour not to be behind hand with them.

We have the pleasure to acquaint you that a Continental currency is forming, and when completed, you will be immediately supplied with a sum adequate to your exigences.

If forces cannot be raised without bounties, we beg leave to submit it to your consideration, whether it would not be better to do it at the expense of the Province, or by advancing it on the credit of their pay, than lose this opportunity of signalizing your attachment to the cause, and provide for a great number of your poor.

From the intelligence we have received of the state of ammunition in your City and Province, we are apprehensive that you are so destitute of powder as to be exposed to very imminent danger in case of an attack, against which we think it extremely necessary that provision be speedily made.

We fear there are too many in New-York who flatter themselves with safety and security from the removal of the Troops. For our parts we consider it as a mere temporary suspension of danger, and that this opportunity of putting the Country in a posture of defence, is very fortunate, and by all means to be improved.

We are, gentlemen, with the greatest respect, your roost obedient and humble servants,

PHILIP LIVINGSTON,
WILLIAM FLOYD,
JOHN ALSOP,
ROBT˙ LIVINGSTON, JUN.
JOHN JAY,

To Peter Van Brugh Livingston, Esq.

P˙ S. Since writing the above, the Congress have requested the Committee of Philadelphia immediately to send forward fifty quarter-casks of powder; it set out this day consigned to the Committee at Elizabethtown, who will send it to Dobb' s Ferry. You are requested to provide for its being immediately taken from thence and carried to Albany, for the use of the Troops at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, &c.