Beschreibung:

WASHINGTON, George. Autograph letter signed ("G o:Washington") to General Benjamin Lincoln (1733-1810), Mount Vernon, 4 April 1784. 1 page, 4to, browned along folds, small hole affecting one text letter, neatly laid down on protective sheet . WASHINGTON'S FIRST SPRING HOME AT MOUNT VERNON, AFTER EIGHT AND A HALF YEARS AT WAR Washington returned to his home at the end of 1783: "The tranquil walks of domestic life are beginning to unfold themselves," he told Rochambeau in February. But, as he had earlier predicted, he came home "with empty pockets," to find plantation revenues depleted (partly due to the exhaustion of the soil) while his debts, and the cost of entertaining the many guests he now received at Mount Vernon, mounted. The problem, of course, had been compounded by his strict insistence that his long service to the nation be unpaid; his out-of-pocket expenses, which he tallied at the end of the war, came to more than £10,000. Washington "always held to the conviction that the advantageous lease or profitable sale of his western holdings would reimburse him for his wartime losses and for his expenditures in the improvement of Mount Vernon" (D.S. Freeman, George Washington: Partion and President , p.8). He still owned extensive lands on the largely undeveloped western frontier, but rents had gone uncollected for many years. Some lands were occupied by squatters, and others were being offered for sale even though Washington's title was clear. Here, Washington asks Revolutionary War comrade Benjamin Lincoln to place an advertisement in Massachusetts seeking tenants for his lands: "You will oblige me by having the enclosed advertisement inserted twice in a gazette of your state. The one which you think will be most diffusive among that class of people whose views it is most likely to meet will answer my purposes a best." (The same request was also sent to Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. the same day). Washington assures Lincoln that he will cover the costs: "Please to let me know the cost of publication and the money and the money [ sic ] shall be sent by one of your delegates to the general meeting of the Cincinnati next month with my thanks for the trouble you must have in this business." Washington's efforts to find reliable, paying tenants for his lands had very limited success: "his western lands were yielding little except suits for eviction and troublesome searches for documents with which to prove his titles." His extensive lands "yielded him scarcely enough to justify him in entering it upon his books" ( ibid ., pp.32-33). Not in Writings , ed. J.C. Fitzpatrick.