The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

3pp. on bifolium (229 x 191 mm), some minor reinforcements at folds; matted.

AN IRATE GEORGE WASHINGTON DEMANDS PAYMENT FOR HIS LANDS.

James Ross was an American lawyer and politician who was elected to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania in 1794, replacing Democratic-Republican Senator Albert Gallatin, who had been removed for partisan reasons relating to his opposition to Washington's reaction to the Whiskey Rebellion as well as to Hamilton's establishment of the financial system. Ross was first tasked by Washington with negotiating an end to the Whiskey Rebellion and was then appointed Washington's agent to negotiate the sale of lands in Pennsylvania, which the president had deemed "unproductive." Among the sales negotiated by Ross was that of approximately 1,645 acres of land to Colonel Israel Shreve in August 1795. Upon completion of the deal, Shreve and his family settled on the land but quickly fell behind in payments, a situation that caused President Washington no small amount of frustration.

Ironically, Washington's decision to sell these lands in the first place was due to nonpayment of rent by tenants, who would often make improvements or unauthorized changes and then either charge him for them or refuse to make payments outright. In a move that only further aroused Washington's anger, Shreve then began selling off portions of the land Washington had sold to him at great profit. With only a few months left in his second term and eager to return to Virginia once and for all, Washington was determined to collect all debts owed to him in Pennsylvania.

Increasingly furious letters from Washington, sent to Shreve through Ross as an intermediary over the next two and a half years, demanded payments, with Washington even threatening to sue Shreve (but finding himself unable to, given Shreve's military service in the Continental Army). Both men would die hundreds of miles apart on the same day, 14 December 1799, with the debt still unpaid.

In part: "Two or three days ago a person (whose name I did not ask) called upon me to pay me at the request, he said, of Col. Shreve, £100 on account of the Land he had purchased of me. I told him I would not receive money from the gentleman in driblets; That nothing less than the whole second payment which was £600 and interest would be received - and that if I was thus trifled with by Col. Shreve I would have recourse to other means to obtain a more punctual compliance with our bargain.

"This reply produced a further offer, to the amount I think, in the whole of £300, but conceiving as I did at that moment that the whole second installment was due, I refused this sum also. Nor was it before this morning it occurred to me, that in April last, you paid me eleven hundred and sixty dollars in part of this installment.

"Having made this discovery too late to rectify it with the person who was charged with a payment to Col. Shreve, and having authorised [sic] that person to inform him that nothing short of the whole sum due would content me, I felt it incumbent on me to give you this explanation of the matter, and through you (if an occasion should present) of making it known to Col. Shreve.

"I think it not improbable that the person I allude to, not knowing his name, with the aid of 1160 dollars received from you, would have paid the whole sum due on the second installment with interest agreeable to the articles; for he is a purchaser from Shreve of part of the tract, at a price very considerably advanced. Not knowing whether M. Chas Morgan is living or dead, or what has been done relatively to the rents which was due on the Land, will you permit me to request the favor of you, to ask him (if in being) or Col. Shreve, when I am to receive it. I am in the same predicament with respect to the rents of the Land on Millers Run, and shall be equally obliged by your enquiries concerning it whenever it shall fall your way. With great esteem and reg. I am - Dear Sir - Your Obed. 'Serv'...

"P.S. For the government of those who may have a business to transact with me, I add, that on Monday or Tuesday next, I shall leave this city for Virginia - that I shall return to it again myself before the first day of September, and shall remain here until the middle or 20th or the month. GW."

PROVENANCE:
Charles Hamilton Galleries, 16 September 1976, Sale 99 Lot 339; Sotheby's New York, 1 May 1985, Sale 5313 Lot 83; Jay I. Kislak (1922-2018), American businessman and philanthropist; his sale Sotheby's New York, 21 July 2022, Lot 1072

REFERENCE:
The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, ed. Hoth & Ferraro, 20:271–273