Chapter Ten

CONTINUED

by: Stanley L. Klos   Published by ROI.us Corporation

Click Here to Purchase Elias Boudinot Coin
© Stanley L. Klos has a worldwide copyright on the artwork in this coin.
The artwork is not to be copied  by anyone by any means
without first receiving permission from Stanley L. Klos.

Presidential $1 Coin Controversy - -- Click Here
Forgotten Founders vs. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson 

March 4 Amends ordinance "for establishing courts for the trial of piracies." March 6-7 Receives report on funding the public debt. March 10 Debates commutation of Continental officers' half pay. March 11 Debates revenue proposals. March 12 Receives the preliminary treaty of peace. March 12-15 Reads treaty and foreign dispatches. March 17 Receives Washington's report on the army crisis at Newburgh. March 18 Debates report on the public credit. March 19 Debates proposal to censure ministers for ignoring negotiating instructions. March 20-21 Debates report on the public credit. March 22 Adopts resolve to commute Continental officers' half pay for life to full pay for five years. March 24 Recalls all Continental ships on cruise. March 27-28 Debates report on the public credit. March 29 Rejects proposal for increasing congressional oversight of the office of finance. March 31 Renews committee for overseeing the office of finance.

April 1 Recommends that states revise formula for setting Continental quotas; learns of call for an economic convention at Hartford; receives invitation to locate Continental capital in Kingston, N.Y. April 4 Orders suspension of enlistments in Continental Army; debates report on the public credit. April 7 Revises Continental quotas. April 11 Adopts cease-fire proclamation. April 15 Ratifies preliminary treaty of peace. April 17 Orders sale of Continental horses. April 18 Asks states for authority to levy revenue duties. April 23 Authorizes Washington to discharge Continental troops. April 24 Directs Washington to confer with Gen. Guy Carleton on the evacuation of New York. April 26 Adopts Address to the States on new revenue plan. April 28 Requests Robert Morris to continue as superintendent of finance until the reduction of the Continental Army. April 30 Rejects motion to hold debates in public.

May 1 Directs secretary at war to negotiate cease-fire with hostile Indian nations; authorizes American ministers to negotiate treaty of commerce with Great Britain. May 2 Appeals to states for collection of taxes for payment of discharged troops; recommends that states adopt copyright laws for protection of authors. May 9 Asks states to convene assemblies to adopt fiscal recommendations. May 15 Revises rules to appoint committees by secret ballot. May 19-20 Debates treaty article on restitution of confiscated loyalist property. May 22 Instructs Francis Dana on negotiating treaty with Russia. May 26 Instructs American ministers on peace terms concerning evacuation of American posts and carrying off of American slaves; instructs Washington on furloughing Continental troops. May 29-30 Debates treaty articles on British debts and loyalist property.

June 2 Appoints Oliver Pollock commercial agent to Cuba. June 4 Debates Virginia cession of western land claims; refers offers to locate the Continental capital at Kingston, N.Y., or Annapolis, Md., to the states (to be debated October 6). June 10 Receives report of the mutiny of a troop of Virginia dragoons. June 11 Directs furlough of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia troops. June 12 Instructs American ministers on avoiding treaties of armed neutrality. June 13 Receives "mutinous memorial" from Continental Army sergeants. June 17 Commends the conduct of business in the office of finance. June 19 Receives notice of the mutiny of Continental troops at Carlisle; appoints committee to confer with Pennsylvania officials on the mutiny. June 20 Debates Virginia cession of western land claims. June 21 Confronts mutineers of the Pennsylvania Line; authorizes president to reconvene Congress at Trenton or Princeton, NJ. June 21 President Boudinot issues proclamation reconvening Congress at Princeton. June 30 Reconvenes at Princeton, NJ.

July 1 Directs Gen. Robert Howe to suppress mutiny; adopts report explaining congressional response to the mutiny. July 2 Thanks New Jersey officials for their reception of Congress. July 9-11 Debates proposals for paying arrears due Continental troops. July 16 Orders recall of commissioners investigating British embarkations from New York; directs Secretary Thomson to maintain record of unrepresented states. July 23 Receives Philadelphia address inviting Congress' return. July 28 Returns noncommittal response to Philadelphia address; directs General Washington to attend Congress; relieves General Howe's detachment ordered to suppress Pennsylvania mutiny. July 29 Ratifies treaty of amity and commerce with Sweden. July 30 Directs superintendent of finance to publish regulations for receiving "Morris notes" in payment of taxes.

August 1 Rejects motion to adjourn to Philadelphia. August 6 Authorizes distribution of "necessities" to Delaware Indians and friendly "northern nations." August 7 Orders preparation of "an equestrian statue of the Commander in Chief." August 9 Authorizes furloughing additional Continental troops and continuation of subsistence for Hazen's Canadian regiment. August 13-14 Debates motion for returning to Philadelphia. August 15 Receives proceedings of the court-martial of the Philadelphia mutineers. August 18 Directs superintendent of finance to report estimate of the Continental debt. August 26 Conducts audience with General Washington. August 28 Debates ordinance for prohibiting settlement of Indian lands.

September 1 Receives Pennsylvania Assembly resolves for re turning to Philadelphia. September 10 Orders renewal of committees to oversee the executive departments. September 13 Adopts stipulations concerning the cession of Virginia's western land claims; confirms acquittal of leaders of the Philadelphia mutiny. September 16-19 Debates Massachusetts' call for retrenchment of Continental expenses. September 22 Adopts proclamation regulating the purchase of Indian lands. September 24 Adopts secret order authorizing Washington to discharge Continental troops "as he shall deem proper and expedient." September 25 Reaffirms commitment to commutation of half pay claims; proclaims treaty with Sweden; debates report on federal jurisdiction over site of congressional residence. September 29 Lifts injunction of secrecy on most foreign dispatches. September 30 Promotes Continental officers not promoted since 1777.

October 1 Debates instructions for ministers abroad. October 3 Debates Indian affairs. October 6-9 Debates location of the Continental capital. October 8 Receives Quaker petition for suppression of the slave trade. October 10 Resolves to leave Princeton; debates location of the capital. October 15 Adopts resolves regulating Indian affairs. October 17 Debates location of the capital. October 18 Adopts Thanksgiving proclamation. October 21 Adopts two capital locations-Congress to meet alternately "on the banks of the Delaware and Potomac." October 22 Orders distribution of the peace treaty to the states. October 23-24 Debates peacetime military arrangements. October 27-28 Fails to convene quorum. October 29 Adopts instructions for negotiating commercial treaties. October 30 Authorizes Pennsylvania to negotiate Indian lands purchase. October 31 Ratifies fiscal contract with France; holds audience with Dutch minister van Berckel.

November 1 Orders Post Office theft inquiry; adopts rules to improve congressional attendance. November 3 Convenes new Congress; elects Thomas Mifflin president (elects Daniel Carroll chairman in the president’s absence).

After the Presidency, Boudinot resumed his law practice. In 1788, after the ratification of the constitution, he was elected to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd congresses, serving from March 3, 1789, until March 3, 1795. He was appointed by Washington in 1795 to succeed Rittenhouse as director of the mint at Philadelphia, and held the office for ten years, resigning in July 1805. Elias Boudinot passed the rest of his life at Burlington, New Jersey, and devoted his retirement years to the study of biblical literature. He had amassed a modest fortune and chose philanthropy in his later years as a permanent endeavor.

Boudinot was a trustee of Princeton College and in 1805 endowed it with a collection of natural history, valued at $3,000. In 1812 he was chosen a member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to which he gave £100 in 1813. He assisted in founding the American Bible Society in 1816, was its first president, and gave that organization $10,000. He was interested in attempts to educate Native Americans, and when three Cherokee youths were brought to the foreign mission school in 1818, he allowed one of them to take his name. This boy became a man of great influence in his tribe At the age of 25, he became the first editor of the bilingual English/Cherokee newspaper Cherokee Phoenix, that had begun publication in the Cherokee Nation East in 1828. Cherokee Boudinot was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota, which ceded Native American Lands to Georgia and was primarily responsible for the “Trail of Tears.” On June 10th, 1838 Cherokee Boudinot was assassinated along with two others by Native Americans west of the Mississippi for their support of the Treaty.

Dr. Boudinot was also interested in the instruction of deaf-mutes, the education of young men for the ministry, and efforts for the relief of the poor. He bequeathed his property to his only daughter, Mrs. Bradford, and to charitable uses. Among his bequests were one of $200 to buy spectacles for the aged poor, another of 13,000 acres of land to the mayor and corporation of Philadelphia, that the poor might be supplied with wood at low prices, and another of 3,000 acres to the Philadelphia hospital for the benefit of foreigners. Dr. Boudinot published "The Age-of Revelation," a reply to Paine (1790); an oration before the Society of the Cincinnati (1793); "Second Advent of the Messiah" (Trenton, 1815); and "Star in the West, or An Attempt to Discover the Long-lost Tribes of Israel" (1816), in which he concurs with James Adair in the opinion that the Native Americans are the lost tribes. He also wrote, in "The Evangelical Intelligencer" of 1806, an anonymous memoir of the Rev. William Tennent.

In closing one should note that the US Mint, in 1999, began to release a redesigned quarter under “The 50 State Quarter Program.” The US Mint’s website states:

The 50 State Quarters™ Program is ‘changing’ the ‘state’ of coin collecting. Approximately every 10 weeks, from 1999 to 2008, there will be a new state quarter to collect. Each quarter’s reverse will celebrate one of the 50 states with a design honoring its unique history, tradi­tions, and symbols. The quarters are released in the same order that the states joined the union.

On January 1, 1999 the United States Mint, despite my protests, unveiled its first George Washington State Quarter with the mark of Delaware on its reverse. The Delaware Quarter was released first because the U.S. Mint, by virtue of an Act of Congress, recognized Delaware as the first state due to its ratification of the U.S. Constitution on December 7, 1787. As pointed out in Chapter One the U.S. Congress, on this particular fact, is quite mistaken. The United States was formed by the Articles of Confederation; Delaware actually joined the Perpetual Union on its rat­ification date of February 1, 1779. Delaware was the 12th state to join the Union, ten years before its ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The 1st State was actually Virginia who ratified the Perpetual Union on December 16, 1777.

On July 4, 1861, eighty years after the formation of the Perpetual Union, President Abraham Lincoln used the Articles of Confederation's language against South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia's attempt to secede from the United States. It was the unanimous "Perpetual Union" verbiage in the 1st U.S. Constitution that provided President Lincoln with the legal author­ity, not granted in the US Constitution, to Preserve the Union.

"The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual is most conclusive." - Abraham Lincoln's Address to Congress in Special Session 4 July 1861.

It is a particular embarrassment that the U.S. Congress and President Clinton utilized the U.S. Mint to perpetuate the "Delaware 1st State Myth" as the mint's third Director, Elias Boudinot, was the 4th President of the United States under the 1st U.S. Constitution. One would think that a Government Institution conceived by 1st U.S Constitution's Superintendent of Finance and head­ed by a former confederation U.S. President would have objected vehemently to blunder of hail­ing Delaware the 1st State in the Perpetual Union.

Virginia not Delaware has the "bragging rights" to being the first state in the "Perpetual Union" of the United States of America and the U.S. Congress must correct this glaring error memorialized in the Washington Quarter. Perhaps after the last state is honored under the current minting, a new quarter could be issued honoring each of the forgotten Presidents. I am sure Washington wouldn't mind a 10-year rest on the head of the U.S. Quarter while Congress corrects the histor­ical record. The U.S. Mint could start off with the correct 1st state, Virginia, on the verso with the First President of the United States, Samuel Huntington, on the head. Additionally, a special event at the U.S. Mint would be most definitely in order when former President and Mint Director, Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, is rightfully honored as a temporary head of the 4th Confederation U.S. President Quarter, with his home State of New Jersey on the verso. The cor­rect order of US State ratification and entrance into the Union is as follows:

US Statehood Order
Articles of Confederation - 1 to 13 States
US Constitution - 37 to 50 States

Sources: The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Vol. 1: Constitutional Documents and Records, 1776-1787, ed. Merrill Jensen, Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976; Encyclopedia of American History: Bicentennial Edition, ed. Richard Morris, New York; Harper & Row, 1976; Documents of American History, ed. Henry Steele Commanger, Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice-Hall, 1973

Elias Boudinot died on October 24, 1821 at the age of 81. He is buried at Saint Mary's Episcopal Churchyard in Burlington New Jersey and his tombstone reads:

"Here lies the remains of the honorable Elias Boudinot, L.L.D. His life was an exhibi­tion of fervent piety of useful talent and extensive benevolence. His death was the tri­umph of Christian Faith the consummation of hope, the dawn and pledge of endless felicity. To those who knew him not no word can paint and those who knew him know all words are paint. Mark the perfect man and behold the upright for the end of that man is peace."

Start your search on Elias Boudinot.

Medallions of the Forgotten Capitols &
Constitution of 1777 U.S. Presidents
Click Here

Keynote Address on the 2003 Re-Internment of Samuel and Martha Huntington

Unauthorized Site: This site and its contents are not affiliated, connected, associated with or authorized by the individual, family, friends, or trademarked entities utilizing any part or the subject's entire name. Any official or affiliated sites that are related to this subject will be hyper linked below upon submission and Evisum, Inc. review.

Copyright© 2000 by Evisum Inc.^TM. All rights reserved.
Evisum Inc.^TM Privacy Policy