Beschreibung:

HAMILTON, Alexander (c.1757-1804). Letter signed ("A. Hamilton") as Secretary of the Treasury to William Goddard, [New York], 3 September 1790. One page, 255 x 205mm. (Minor loss at left margin affecting one word of text.) Hinged to a mat and framed. Hamilton advises printer William Goddard on the feasibility printing official publications for the federal government. Responding to Goddard's "offer of your Gazette for the publication of Laws, Notifications &ca. from the Treasury," he advises that the responsibility for publishing the Acts of Congress, as well as official proclamations, fell upon the Secretary of State. Publications for the Treasury Department, Hamilton concedes, "are so infrequent that they would yield you very little emolument." Noting that Treasury Department publications for the region were handled by the Collector of the Port of Baltimore, he advises that it would "be perfectly agreeable to me that he should make use of your Gazette for the purpose whenever he thinks is as good a channel, considering the matter to be notified, as any other." At the time Goddard was the publisher of the Maryland Journal, a publication he had established in 1773. Goddard, whom Isaiah Thomas described as "a good printer, an able editor; but he, in many instances, was unsuccessful." (History of Printing in America, 1970, p. 534). Goddard took on several partners over the years before he left the printing business in 1792, most notably his sister Katherine Goddard, who is best known today for her printing of the first broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence to list all of the signers (January 1777). Not published in the Papers of Alexander Hamilton. Provenance: William E. Simon – by descent to the consignor.