Busy, busy guys, yet they personally wrote gazillions of letters. Why didn’t they just dictate their letters?
Washington dictated letters. Writing letters was one of the jobs Alexander Hamilton did for him as part of his staff during the Revolution.
Writing long letters was also something that people did quite commonly and spent considerable time on. It wasn’t all dictation, particualrly with private letters.
Plus, it was a mark of particular confidence to get a letter written by Washington or Jefferson himself, rather than dictated to a secretary; the equivalent of the President today calling someone directly.
Secretary - in those days of moderate literacy - was an educated position. Someone who had good handwriting, knew the fancy words and phrases and what little grammar/punctuation rules existed at the time was likely above being a mere transcriber for someone else - especally as the government was not particularly rich for much of its early days.
I wonder how much of Washington’s dictation to Hamilton was straight dictation, and how much involved discussionand a moderat amount of collaboration during dictation?
Also sounds like a good way to get your foot in the door - more like personal assistant than simple secretary.
If they’re busy, I’m not sure how dictating would be faster than writing. Even with editing, you can usually write faster than you can speak.
Especially if someon interrupts to say “what?” every so often while they write your message. Actually, you can probably talk faster than you can write, but the upper limit is still how fast Alex can write. (Which is why ITGOD - In the Good Old Days, early 20th century - shorthand was a desired skill.)