The founder’s letter will be the featured piece at the Commonwealth Museum’s annual Fourth of July exhibition, says the office of Commonwealth Secretary William Galvin. It’s the first time the public has had a chance to see it since it returned stateside after a long court battle. It will be presented with the original copy of the Massachusetts Declaration of Independence. Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary who has received renewed attention in recent years because of the hit Broadway musical that bears his name, wrote the letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who served as a general in the Continental Army. Dated July 21, 1780, it describes an imminent British threat to French forces in Rhode Island. “We have just received advice from New York through different channels that the enemy is making a boarding by which he threatens the French fleet and the French army,” Hamilton wrote. “Fifty transports are said to have gone up the Sound to pick up troops and proceed directly to Rhode Island.” Hamilton’s letter describes an imminent British threat to French forces in Rhode Island.iStock/Getty Images It is signed “Yr. Most Obedt, A. Hamilton, Aide de Camp.” The letter was forwarded by Massachusetts General William Heath to state leaders, along with a request for troops to support French allies, Galvin’s office said. The letter is believed to have been stolen during World War II by a government records official and then sold privately. It resurfaced several years ago when an auctioneer in Virginia picked it up from a family that wanted to sell it. The auction house determined it had been stolen and contacted the FBI. A federal appeals court ruled in October that it belonged to the state. The Commonwealth Museum is open from 9am to 4pm on Mondays.
