, January 24, 1789

TO MADAME NECKER.

Paris, January 24, 1789.

I have received, Madam, with a great deal of sensibility, the letter of
the 22nd instant, with which you were pleased to honor me on the claims
of Monsieur Klein against the United States; and immediately endeavored
to inform myself of their foundation, by an examination of the journals
of Congress. Congress consisting of many persons, can only speak by the
organ of their records. If they have any engagements, they are to
be found there. If not found there, they can never have existed. I
proceeded to this examination, with all the partialities which were
naturally inspired by the interest you are so good as to take in
his behalf, the desire of doing what will be agreeable to you, and a
disposition to obtain for him the justice which might be his due. I have
extracted, literally, from those journals, every thing I find in them
on his subject, and I take the liberty of enclosing you those extracts.
From them, as well as from what I recollect of the ordinary train of
business about the years 1778 and 1779, I presume the following to be
very nearly the history of Monsieur Klein's case.

Congress were generally desirous of adding to their army during the war.
Among other methods attempted, it was usual for foreigners (multitudes
of whom went to ask command), when they found there was no vacancy,
to propose to raise troops themselves, on condition they should have
commissions to command them. I suppose that Messrs. Klein, Fearer, and
Kleinsmit (named in the resolution of Congress of 1778, and whom, from
their names, I conjecture to be Germans) offered to enlist a body of men
from among the German prisoners taken with General Burgoyne at Saratoga,
on condition that Fearer and Kleinsmit should be captains over them, and
Klein, lieutenant colonel. Three months seem to have been allowed them
for raising their corps. However, at the end of ten months it seems they
had engaged but twenty-four men, and that all of these, except five, had
deserted. Congress, therefore, put an end to the project, June the 21st,
1779, (and not in July, 1780, as Monsieur Klein says) by informing him
they had no further use for his services, and giving him a year's pay
and subsistence to bring him to Europe. He chose to stay there three and
a half longer, as he says, to solicit what was due to him. Nothing could
ever have been due to him, but pay and subsistence for the ten months
he