The Virginia Gazette

To the writer of an anonymous letter in the Baltimore Advertiser of the 29th of June 1779, and which has since been republished in the Virginia Gazette the 17th of July.

SIR,

As you have endeavoured secretly to assassinate my character, while absent, and in the service of my country; I take this opportunity of declaring, that if you (being a person worthy of notice) shall think proper to indulge the publick with your name and place of abode, I shall then conceive it my duty to animadvert on your currilous letters but it cannot be expected by men of reason and sound judgment, that I should descend to the pitifulness of disputing with an obscure partizan and desperate scribbler, when they recollect that few characters have escaped the tongue of malicious envy; and learn that, from the commencement of hostilities, I have been almost constant in the army, and at all times, invariably have endeavoured to serve my country. Nor did I know, till after my arrival in this state, that my patriotism had ever been called in question. I am, therefore, the more at a loss to know what you can mean Sir, by saying - I fled from Virginia to avoid the vengeance of my countrymen. If you have poetically put yourself for my countrymen, and mean by this dark expression, that I fled to avoid your vengeance, you are most egregiously mistaken. I am ready and willing, at any moment (though labouring under a violent rheumatism which I caught in camp) to meet you either at the tribunal of justice, the bar of the publick, or at—if you please. For being conscious of my innocence, and thoroughly persuaded of the good intentions of my countrymen, to whose judgment I cheerfully submit the decision of my cause. I not only despise your calumny, but bid defiance to all the machinations of my insidious foes.

I am &c.

HEZ. FORD.

WILLIAMSBURG, August 22, 1779