I Arrived here last evening & find Congress had just sent to New Jersey requesting a Representation.(1)
I am just now applied too to know in what light the Prisoners from Jersey Confined in Carlile are to be Considered, whether Prisoners of War, or Traitors to the State of New Jersey. I mean those taken in Arms with Ricd. Stockton.(2) If they should be Considered by Jersey as offenders Agst. that State they should be sent for & tried, a determination in this affair will be Acceptable to Congress. I may be permitted to say I wish those Prisoners may be treated as offenders Against the Treason Act; I mean such of them as Joined the Enemy after passing such Act.
As I but just arrived here, I have no News to send your Excellency, Remaining Sir, Your Obedt. Humble Servt.
1 Congress had instructed President Laurens on December 9 to "write in pressing terms to the states of New Jersey and Delaware, who are unrepresented, to send delegates immediately to Congress," but Laurens did not send a copy of this resolve to Governor Livingston because of the arrival in Congress of Abraham Clark on December 11 and John Witherspoon on December 17. See JCC, 9:1013, 1017, 1032; and Henry Laurens to William Livingston, December 29, 1777.
2 Richard W. Stockton was a major in the loyalist New Jersey Volunteers who had been captured in February 1777 and imprisoned at Philadelphia and Carlisle. Edward A. Jones, "The Loyalists of New Jersey," Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society 10 (1927): 211-12.