Albany, October 3, 1783.
Sir:
I have lately received from Messrs. Duane and L’Hommedieu, an extract
of a letter from your Excellency to the delegates, of the twenty-third
of August last, requesting “a particular detail of the motives
which influenced the determination of Congress,” respecting the
application of the Legislature to have their State troops released from
Continental pay, for the purpose of garrisoning the frontier posts. In
my letters to your Excellency, of the first of June and twenty-seventh
of July, which were intended to be official, I summarily informed you,
that Congress had made temporary provision for garrisoning the frontier
posts, and that a plan was under deliberation relative to a peace
establishment, which would, of course, embrace that object permanently;
that such temporary provision being made at the common expense, and a
general plan being under consideration for the future, I had declined
pressing a compliance with the application of the Legislature;
conceiving it to be more for the interest of the State, that the
expense should be jointly borne, than that it should fall exclusively
upon itself.
I did not enter into a more full detail upon the subject, because the
business continued, to the time I left Congress, in an undecided state;
and it was impossible to judge what views would finally prevail.
The concurrent resolutions of the two Houses had been immediately, on
their receipt, referred to a committee appointed to report on a peace
establishment, who had suspended their report on these resolutions,
till it should appear, what would be the fate of a general plan which
had been submitted.
As to the motives that influenced Congress in making the provision
they did make, rather than immediately assenting to the application
of the State; as far as I was able to collect them, they were these:
The opinions of many were unsettled as to the most eligible mode of
providing for the security of the frontiers, consistent with the
Constitution, as well with respect to the general policy of the Union,
as to considerations of justice to those States whose frontiers were
more immediately exposed. A considerable part of the House appeared to
think, from reasons of a very cogent nature, that the well-being of the
Union required a federal provision for the security of the different
parts; and that it would be a great hardship to individual States,
peculiarly circumstanced, to throw the whole burthen of expense upon
them, by recurring to separate provisions, in a matter, the benefit of
which would be immediately shared by their neighbors, and, ultimately,
by the Union at large: that, indeed, it was not probable particular
States would be either able, or, _upon experiment_, willing, to make
competent provision at their separate expense; and that the principle
might eventually excite jealousies between the States unfriendly to the
common tranquillity.