Halifax, 17th January, 1826.
A. D. Murphey, Esq.,
Sir:
Permit me to congratulate you on the resolution which passed the Legislature, authorizing you to have a Lottery. Your old friends
throughout the State feel the greatest solicitude for its success and I am persuaded will make every exertion to promote it, when you have it under way. I hope you will have an office for sale of tickets at Halifax and myself with others will do all in our power.In writing a History of this State it will be almost absolutely necessary in order to do justice to the part which we bore in the Revolution that you should have access to my Father’s papers, particularly to some books of correspondence written from 79 to 83 which shew that North Carolina supported the Troops of the whole Southern States and that without the aid of the Specific Tax laid by this State and placed under the management of my Father, General Greene would have been forced to disband his Army and the Cavalry of Virginia which they could not feed; that both man and horse grew fat on the Flesh Pots of Roanoke; circumstances for which, as a State, we have never either as a State or as individuals had justice awarded to us.
The last year of my Father’s life I looked over all these papers, and indeed the greater part of his correspondence, and he then explained much of it to me with a view to its future publication which with Parental fondness he thought me capable of, but I feel that on weighing the subject I am inadequate to such a Task and should be happy to place in your hands all those papers and also their explanations which were given me by him both as to the Revolution and also the Civil History of our State.
These papers are now on the Catawba at William Davie’s where I shall send a messenger in a few days, and shall request my brother to send them to me, if they come and you wish to see them I shall be truly glad to see you at my house, when I can give you every explantation that you may want. Should William not be at home when my messenger gets there the papers will not come, but I am sure that William will let you have them according to a list which I shall send him; he himself knows nothing of them and indeed no one but myself.
All the papers connected with our mission to France in ’99 are there, would you want them? They might afterwards be placed in the Library at Chapel Hill in memory of one of the Fathers of that Institution; which would be a disposition of the diplomatic correspondence to which I should cheerfully agree.
Permit me to hear from you on this subject, and believe me, with