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PICKERING, TIMOTHY

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PICKERING, TIMOTHY
(1745 - 1829) American politician and Adjutant General of the Continental Army, Secretary of War (1795) and Secretary of State (1795-1800). Very fine content A.L.S. 1p. 4to., Washington, Feb. 27, 1811, to James McHenry concerning his lingering feud with John Adams, soon after the Senate censured him for reading secret documents before Congress without the President having declassified them. In part: ""...I have before me your note of yesterday. Whatever our recollect to have been omitted in your letter of 22d.& 23d. be pleased to write down, & retain until I call upon you; when, if more convenient you can incorporate the same in your letters already written. I troubled you for information, to refresh my memory, which is not tenacious; and it had that effect; enabling me to note to you...several things which otherwise I should not have recollected. I wish to provide myself with every weapon for the combat which may ensue between the man at Quincy & myself: for his atrocious conduct calls for a severe scourging which he shall receive. He little imagines that I know & have long been possessed of the Secret of my dismission [sic]; but which I should have permitted to have sunk into oblivion, had he not become an open apostate, and a malignant slanderer of Hamilton..."". Clearly Pickering felt that Adams was behind this move as well as charges of embezzlement of public funds made a year earlier. John Adams, suspecting that Pickering and McHenry were conspiring with Alexander Hamilton against him over his policies toward France, dismissed them from his cabinet in early 1800. Pickering, an extreme Federalist, entered the Senate in 1804, opposing the Louisiana Purchase and Jefferson's embargo for which he was hung in effigy in Philadelphia. Pickering fumed over his dismissal to the end of his days. Usual folds, otherwise fine condition.