From George Washington to Brigadier General Peter Muhlenberg, 12 October 1779
To Brigadier General Peter Muhlenberg
West point October the 12. 1779
D. Sir
I have received your Letter of the 6th Instant.1 As some late Regulations have taken place with respect to the Hide department and for furnishing the Army in general with Shoes on a systematic plan2—I cannot authorise a deviation from them, and the Shoe makers you mention must be recalled, when the time expires for which they were engaged with Mr Taylor.3 I am pressing by repeated Letters every person concerned in the Shoe business to forward supplies.4 I am Dr Sir Yr Most Obedt sert
G.W.
Df, in Robert Hanson Harrison’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. This letter has not been found.
2. For Congress’s new regulations for the commissaries of hides, adopted in July, see 14:870–72. The Board of War had also sent out instructions to the commissaries of hides (see Board of War to GW, 14 Aug.). For GW’s comments on these regulations, see GW to the Board of War, 16 August.
3. For a time early in the year, the brigadiers had been authorized to contract for shoes (see GW to the Board of War, 26 Aug.; see also General Orders, 1 Jan., 6 Feb., and 3 April).
Obediah Taylor, of New Germantown, N.J., had apparently been manufacturing shoes for the Virginia line with the help of soldiers, and was later charged with fraud (see Muhlenberg to Taylor, 24 Sept. 1779, Timothy Pickering to John Mehelm, 20 Jan. 1780; Mehelm to GW, 9 and 28 March 1780; and GW to Mehelm, 13 March 1780, all DLC:GW).
4. See GW to the Board of War, 2 Oct. and this date; GW to George Starr, 2 Oct., and GW to James Wilkinson, 5 Oct.; see also Board of War to GW, 9 Oct., and GW to Moses Hatfield, 17 Oct. and 25 Oct., DLC:GW.