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| Photo Credit: History.com |
Alexander Hamilton letter stolen decades ago from the Massachusetts state archives will be put back on public display. The letter written in 1780 by one of America’s founding fathers has been missing for decades and will be the featured piece at the Commonwealth Museum’s annual July Fourth exhibit, Secretary of the Commonwealth Williams Galvin’s office says, according to The Associated Press.
The letter
will be featured alongside Massachusetts’s original copy of the Declaration of
Independence.
Alexander
Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury. He wrote the letter to eh
Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who served as a general in the
Continental Army in July 21, 1780.
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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The letter
details an imminent British threat to French forces in Rhode Island.
“We have
just received advice from New York through different channels that the enemy
are making an embarkation with which they menace the French fleet and army,”
Hamilton wrote. “Fifty transports are said to have gone up the Sound to take in
troops and proceed directly to Rhode Island.”
The letter
was forwarded by Massachusetts Gen. William Heath to state leaders, along with
a request for troops to support French allies, Galvin’s office said, according
to The Associated Press.
The letter
is believed to have been stolen during Second World War by a state archives
worker and later sold privately. An auctioneer in Virginia received it from a
family that wanted to sell it, The Associated Press reported. The auction house
determined it had been stolen and reported to the FBI. The letter was returned
to U.S. state of Massachusetts following a federal appeals court ruling in
October which said the letter belonged to the state.