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January 15
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State. I should sooner have done myself the honor of writing to your
Excellency on this Subject but that I hoped to have had it laid before
you more fully than could be done in writing by a Gentleman who
was to have passed on other public business by the way of Annapolis
the late events in this State having retarded his setting out I think it
my duty no longer to postpone explanation on this head. Your Ex-
cellency cannot be unapprised of the powerful armies of our enemies
at this time in this & the Southern States, and that their future plan
is to push their Successes in the same quarter by still larger rein-
forcements. The forces to be opposed to these must be proportion-
ably great, & these forces must be fed. By whom are they to be fed ?
Georgia & South Carolina are annihiliated, at least as to us, by the
requisition to us to send provisions into your State it is to be sup-
posed that none are to come to the Southern army from any State
north of this; for it would seem inconsistent that while we should
be sending north your State & others beyond you should be sending
your Provisions South upon North Carolina then already exhausted
by the ravages of two armies & on this State are to depend for sub-
sistence those bodies of men who are to oppose the greater part of
the enemy's force in the United States, the subsistence of the Ger-
man & of half the British Conventioners To take a view of this mat-
ter on the Continental requisitions of November 4. 1780 for specific
quotas of provision it is observable that N. Carolina & Virginia are
to furnish 10.471.740 Ibs of animal food & 13529 barrels of flour
while the States north of these will yield 25293310 Ibs of animal
food & 106.471 barrels of flour. If the greater part of the British
armies be employed in the South it is to be supposed the greater part
of the American force will be sent there to oppose them but should
this be the case, while the distribution of the provisions is so very
unequal would it be proper to render it still more so by withdrawing
a part of our contributions to the support of posts northward of us?
it would certainly be a great convenience to us to deliver a portion of
our Specifics at Frederictown rather than in Carolina but I leave it
to your Excellency to judge whether this would be consistent with
the general good or safety, instead of sending aids of any kind to
the northward it seems but too certain that unless very substantial &
timely assistance is receiv'd from thence our enemies are yet far short
of the ultimate term of their successes. I beg leave therefore to refer
to your Excellency whether the specifics of your State as far as shall
be necessary had not better be applied to the support of the posts
within it, for which your quota is much more than sufficient, or were
it otherwise, whether those of the States north of you had not better
be called on than to detract any thing from the resources of the
Southern opposition already much too small for the encounter to
which it is left. I am far from wishing to count or measure our
contributions by the requisitions of Congress were they ever so much
beyond these I should readily strain them in aid of any one of our
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