[Camp at Cambridge] August 5 [1775]
[Postscript]
We have Accounts this morning of two Explosions at the Castle, so that its Destruction may now be supposed certain. I have this morning been much alarmed with an Information, th'at two Gentlemen from Philadelphia, Mr. [Benjamin] Hitchborn and Captain White with Letters for General [Charles] Lee and myself and other Gentlemen have been taken by Captain [James] Ayscough at Rhode Island, and letters intercepted and sent forward to Boston with the Bearers as Prisoners. That the Captain exulted much of the discoveries he had made, and my Informer, who was also in the Boat but released, understood them to be Letters of consequence. I have therefore, dispatch'd the Express immediately back, tho' I had before resolved to detain him 'till [Josiah] Fessenden's return; I shall be anxious till I am relieved from the Suspence I am in, as to the Contents of these Letters.2
It is exceedingly unfortunate that Gentlemen should chuse to travel the only Road on which there is danger. Let the event of this be what it will, I hope it will serve as a general caution against trusting any Letters that way in future. . . .
1. Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, III, 398, 399.
2. The letters were of little consequence, but one, from John Adams to James Warren, spoke of a "piddling genius," who had delayed progress in Congress, and who was easily identified as John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, with a resultant coolness between Dickinson and Adams.
