Alexander Hamilton

Four pages (13 x 8 in.; 330 x 203 mm) on a bifolium, n.p. [Westchester Court], October 1786, being Hamilton's defense against a complaint filed by Glode (or Claude) Requau against Peter Post, for causing loss and damage to his Philipsburgh property in 1779; slight toning to the upper third of the verso of the second leaf, otherwise in a perfect state of preservation.

Four pages (13 x 8 in.; 330 x 203 mm) on a bifolium, n.p. [Westchester Court], October 1786, being Hamilton's defense against a complaint filed by Glode (or Claude) Requau against Peter Post, for causing loss and damage to his Philipsburgh property in 1779; slight toning to the upper third of the verso of the second leaf, otherwise in a perfect state of preservation.
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Hamilton defends a Tory client, in one of forty-five such cases he handled under the Trespass Act. In March 1783, the New York legislature enacted the Trespass Act, a statute which allowed patriots who left properties behind enemy lines to sue anyone who had occupied, damaged, or destroyed them. In this instance, Post (along with a detachment of British regulars under the command of one Emerick), did proceed "to the said dwelling house of the said Glode ... to burn and destroy and the goods and chattels of said Glode there these being to take, carry away and destroy ... Wherefore the said Glode saith that he is injured and damnified to the value of 400 pounds." 

Hamilton expounds the supreme doctrine of judicial review, which he later expanded upon in the Federalist Papers. Judicial review provided high courts with the right to scrutinize laws and if necessary declare them void.  In this brief, Hamilton invokes the Treaty of Paris signed 3 September 1783 and ratified by Congress at Annapolis on 14 January 1784. On the basis of the articles of the Treaty, one of which provided for the "restitution of all estates, rights, and properties, which have been confiscated belonging to real British subjects" and another that the United States will prevent future confiscations of the property of Loyalists. All of which Hamilton thus interpreted: "[T]he said proclamation requiring and enjoining all Bodies of Magistracy, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, all persons bearing office Civil and military of whatever rank, degree, powers and all others the good Citizens of the said States of every vocation and condition, that reverencing those stipulations  ... they should carry into effect the said definitive articles and every clause and sentence thereof strictly and completely ... that there should be no future confiscations made nor any prosecutions commenced against any person or persons for or by reason of the part which he or they might have taken in the war between the parties aforesaid and that no person should on that account suffer any future loss or damage either in his person, liberty or property and that those who might be in confinement on fresh charges at the time of the ratification of the treaty in America should be immediately set at liberty and the prosecution so commenced be discontinued."

Thus, Hamilton's defense of Loyalists had several consequences: the supremacy of national law over state legislation was asserted and affirmed, Tory businesses and services that contributed so significantly to economic vitality at large were protected, and none too altruistically, litigious retribution against Tories proved a boon to Hamilton's law practice. For as he reported to Gouverneur Morris in 1784, "a legislative folly has afforded so plentiful a harvest to us lawyers that we have scarcely a moment to spare from the substantial business of reaping" (Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed., Syrett, 3:512). However, the backlash was that many patriots condemned him as an avaricious upstart and traitor to the Revolution.