I am to acknowledge your kind attentions of Feb. 10 and March 1st. I hoped to be able to give you a better account of Cornwallis than you have of Arnold: But we must wait some Days longer before we can judge whether he will fail in his Retreat. As to Arnold He is yet too safe. I shall have opportunity of writing again next Thursday and will forward any Intelligence that may happen to arrive before that Time. I wish you had been a little more diffuse as to the Calculation of Interest at yr. Treasury Office. I do not well comprehend your Hint in your Postscript. I will give you on the next page the Result of that Appointment of a Comtee of which you was one April 10.(1) It is only giving Good Words to some of the Staff.
You will find that we got very happily through a Resolve respecting Allen's Department at the Eastward. The Resolve has been transmitted.(2)
Yr. Friend and affectionate humb. Servt.
James Lovell
The Resolve was reconsidered and recommitted. I therefore tear it off.
1 Lovell is referring to the committee appointed on April 10, 1780, "to report a proper compensation to the staff of the army in consequence of the depreciation of the currency." Holten had been an original member, but James Duane and Jesse Root had been named to the committee in the place of Holten and Nathaniel Peabody after their departure from Congress; and at the same time, January 5, 1781, instructions from Massachusetts to her congressional delegates on this subject were also referred to it.
The committee's report, recommending limited compensation for depreciation, was adopted on March 7, but two days later Congress abruptly resolved that the resolution "be reconsidered and recommitted." A revised report was eventually taken
It was Lovell's belated discovery that the resolve of the 7th had been recommitted on March 9 that inspired the postscript to this letter.
2 For the transmittal of a resolve authorizing Col. John Allan to raise a company of Continental Artillery at Machias, see Samuel Huntington to John Hancock, February 17, 1781.