Gladly – thanks for indulging me, @inkafterdark!
The folding looks like a rush-job to me – the two sides pressed in, and then the top and bottom overlapped and sealed. It's not a particularly secure method (as in, it could both tear open accidentally and be opened covertly), but then this isn't a particularly important or secret letter. I suspect that it was sent under cover, probably via Henry (and thus the added protective layer would not require careful folding); however, the archive doesn't include any other Laurens letters as part of this captured ship's papers.
I'm also fascinated by the fact that he's using really fancy paper here; it might just have been what he had to hand, but other letters around that time are written on more ordinary paper (as far as I can see on the scans). I don't think it's hugely significant in the context of this letter, but it does speak to the regional availability of trade goods (or perhaps to the kinds of goods the army was commandeering from the region).
The fact that he leaves almost two pages fully blank is the most interesting part to me. The content makes it plain that this is not a love letter, but the format also reinforces this – the convention of the time was for love letters to spill over onto every available scrap and corner of paper, including the cover. Laurens also makes no attempt to update Martha on any news – and he had a lot to choose from, considering his own promotion, Henry's election as president, and all the various battles he'd been involved in just weeks prior. He also doesn't ask after her or his daughter's wellbeing. It seems the only thing Laurens wants to convey in this letter is his prohibition of her coming to America; although the "time allowed" requires him to be "laconic", he nevertheless spends it repeating what he has already communicated to Martha and her father several times prior. And even if he had sent other letters recently, it was still the convention to repeat key pieces of news as the chance of letters miscarrying was very high.
Overall, it just seems strange to me that he would go to the trouble and expense of sending this letter, and not making even a half-hearted attempt to fill up the space. I think he's trying to be kind and reassuring in his phrasing, but the words are undermined by the material reality of the document.
To some degree, we can take Laurens on his word that he was short of time – after all, this is November 1777, halfway between the Battle of Germantown and the Valley Forge encampment, so the aides were all undoubtedly busy. Still, it only takes fifteen or twenty minutes to fill another page with updates, and just a minute or two to fiddle with the most basic kind of letterlocks – so this all reads to me like he didn't put a lot of care into this piece of correspondence. John also wrote a (longer!) conversational letter to Henry that same day, updating him on some military news. So I think this brevity was a result of Laurens lacking interest and having other higher priorities than strictly one of time.
Of course, the additional consideration is that nobody at headquarters knew at the time that Laurens was married, so the haste could have been the result of writing covertly or at night. This explanation does seem to fit all the evidence...
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