New York Augt 27th 1790
My dear Sir,
I have been duly favoured with the receipt of your obliging letter dated the 12th of June last. I am also indebted to you for a long letter written to me in the course of last year_and should have had the pleasure sooner to express my acknowledgments for the tender interest you take on account of my health & administration but such is the multiplicity of my avocations and so great the pressure of public business as to leave me no leizure for the agreeable duty of answering private letters from my friends – and although I shall at all times be happy to hear from them, yet I shall be but an unprofitable correspondent, as it will not be [several words illegible] to make those returns which under other circumstances I should have real pleasure [illegible]
It is unnecessary to assure you the interest I take in whatever nearly concurs you. I therefore very sincerely condol with you on your late, and great losses; be as the ways of Providence are as inscrutable as just it becomes the children of it to submit with resignation & fortitude to its decrees as far as the feelings of humanity will allow and your good sense will, I am persuaded, enable you to do this. Mrs. Washington {joint M T Lee} sentiments and with great esteem & regard.
I am, My dear Sir,
Your Affecte. & obedt. Servt
G. Washington
[written next to Washington’s signature: “The death of My wife & son”]
Source: The Archives of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation, Papers of the Lee Family, Box 2, M2009.074, Jessie Ball duPont Library, Stratford Hall
Transcribed by Colin Woodward, 2016 March 17
