From George Washington to the Committee at Headquarters, 24 May 1780
To the Committee at Headquarters
Head Quarters Morris Town 24th May 1780
Gentlemen
I have considered the powers vested in you by the resolution of Congress of the 19th Inst.1 The importance of taking every step on the surest ground induces me to request your opinion of the competency of these powers to the objects they are intended to answer2—and whether you think they will enable you as far as is practicable in our circumstances, to draw forth the resources of the Country. If you should be of opinion they are not, I entreat you will have the goodness to point out in what they appear to you to be defective—and what alterations or additions may be necessary to render them as far as possible adequate to the emergency.3 I have the honor to be with perfect respect—Gentlemen Your Mo. Obet Servant
Go: Washington
LS, in Richard Kidder Meade’s writing, DNA:PCC, item 152; Df, DLC:GW; copy, DNA:PCC, item 11; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
Delegates John Mathews, Nathaniel Peabody, and Philip Schuyler composed the Committee at Headquarters (see GW to Samuel Huntington, 3 April, source note).
2. For advice that also prompted this request, see Nathanael Greene to GW, 23 May.
3. No reply from the committee to GW has been found.
In a letter to New York delegate Robert R. Livingston, dated 30 May at Morristown, Schuyler criticized Congress for having “appointed a Committee with powers not to draw forth the resources but merely to apply to the States for those resources, And yet Members of Congress have held up to the Minister of France, to the Marquis de la Fayette, and are propagating thro out the Country, that their Committee have the most ample powers to enable to Supply every want of the Army … surely this is Injurious and putting the Committee into a very disagreeable predicament” (, 15:218–21).