Digges, Thomas Attwood; Elias, Robert H. & Finch, Eugene D. [editors]. Letters of Thomas Attwood Digges (1742-1821). Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1982. First Edition. ISBN: 0872494128. [10158]
Green cloth, 9 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches, binding very good, dust jacket with darkened spine, now in a clear wrapper. Lxxxiv., 666 clean and unmarked pp., index, tight. Very good in good dust-jacket. Hardcover.
Charles Attwood Digges (1742-1821), a native of Maryland, born to a Catholic family who owned the estate across the river from Mount Vernon. He lived in Lisbon for many years was an intimate of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison. While residing in Lisbon during the American Revolution he promoted the patriot cause, and supported it by supplying the American patriot leaders with information from England and elsewhere, and by being a diplomatic courier for Franklin and others.
"Digges reported the news about the progress of the Revolution as received in London, and informed Franklin and Adams about impending motions in Parliament, the state of public opinion regarding the war, and the plans for military movements in the immediate future. As an agent of Franklin's to assist in the distribution of relief for prisoners, he was in continual touch with captured Americans and with those who escaped, and often helped them reach France or Ireland, or return more directly to the United States. Since he circulated freely among British liberals and American sympathizers as well as American Loyalists, his reports on politics and on the political and personal dissensions among American representatives on both sides of the Channel have an authenticity that gives them historical value." - publisher.