Description:

Pickering Timothy

 

 

Timothy Pickering Settles the Accounts of the Revolutionary Armies

 

This letter by the Quartermaster General and future cabinet officer for both Washington and Adams reflects the closing of the Quartermaster Department at the end of the Revolutionary War.

 

TIMOTHY PICKERING, Autograph Letter Signed, to David Wolfe, May 19, 1785, Philadelphia. 1 p., 6.5" x 8.25" Expected folds; some discoloration, not affecting text.

 

Complete Transcript

Philaa May 19, 1785.

Dr Sir

Colo Carrington is here with his Cash accounts, which will take up but a few days for examination; and I advise you of it, that you may suspend coming until you hear from

yr friend & servt

Tim. Pickering

QMG

Mr David Wolfe

 

Historical Background

In 1782, the Confederation Congress reduced the number of personnel and the salaries in the Quartermaster’s Department. They reduced Quartermaster General Timothy Pickering’s staff to ten officers, while reducing his annual salary to $2,000. Cuts to the salaries of his staff were so deep that Pickering complained it would be impossible to retain men of ability and integrity. By the end of 1782, the former state organization of the Quartermaster’s Department had virtually disappeared. Only in New York and Pennsylvania did a few assistants remain, and in the closing months of the war, the department’s total personnel numbered just 42, including Pickering.

 

From 1783 to 1785, Pickering devoted his attention to settling accounts and disposing of government property no longer needed by the Army. This letter illustrates the closing weeks of that process. Edward Carrington (1748-1810) served as quartermaster general in General Nathanael Greene’s southern army from 1780 to 1781 and again from 1782 until the end of the war. He commanded artillery at the siege of Yorktown in the fall of 1781. After the war, he served as a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress (1786-1788) and U.S. Marshal for Virginia (1789-1791). His friend President George Washington offered him the positions of Attorney General and Secretary of War, but Carrington declined both offers.

 

After reconciling Carrington’s accounts from the southern army, Pickering turned his attention to Wolfe’s accounts for the northern army. Pickering once complimented Wolfe for the correctness and clearness of his accounts. By the summer of 1785, Pickering recommended that the remaining duties of his office be assigned to Secretary at War Henry Knox, and Congress abolished the office of Quartermaster General on July 25, 1785.

 

 

Timothy Pickering (1745-1829) was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College in 1763. Admitted to the bar in 1768, he became register of deeds in Essex County. He represented Salem in the Massachusetts General Court and served as a justice in the County Court of Common Pleas. After leading a regiment early in the Revolutionary War, Pickering accepted George Washington’s offer to become adjutant general of the Continental Army in 1777. In August 1780, the Continental Congress selected Pickering as Quartermaster General, a position he held until July 1785, when Congress abolished the entire department. After the war, Pickering tried several business ventures without much success. In 1787, he was a member of the Pennsylvania convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. In 1791, President Washington appointed Pickering as Postmaster General, and he continued to serve in Washington’s cabinet and that of John Adams for the next nine years—as Postmaster General until 1795, as Secretary of War for a brief time in 1795, and then as Secretary of State from 1795 to 1800. After Pickering objected to plans to make peace with France, President Adams dismissed him in May 1800. A passionate Federalist, Pickering represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 1803 to 1811 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. Charged with reading confidential documents in an open Senate session, Pickering was censured by the United States Senate in January 1811. After failing to win re-election in 1816, Pickering retired to his farm in Salem, Massachusetts.

 

David Wolfe (1748-1836) was born in New York to an immigrant from Saxony and his wife. In 1775-1776, the younger Wolfe served as company captain and quartermaster of the 2nd New York City Militia. He later joined the Continental Army and served as Assistant Quartermaster General under Quartermaster General Timothy Pickering through the end of the war. He served in the administration of New York City and then owned his own hardware business there until retiring around 1816, when his son and nephew took over the business.

 

 

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