A Year With George Washington
On March 26, 1783, General Washington received word of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the long and bloody War for Independence.
“His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States…to be free, sovereign and independent states.” So began the first sentence of Article I of the Treaty of Paris, which triumphantly ended the American Revolutionary War.
A new nation, conceived in liberty and unlike any other, was now free upon the world’s stage.
John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Laurens were the signatories for the United States, while David Hartley and Richard Oswald affixed their names to the hallowed parchment on behalf of Great Britain.
The Treaty itself remains the greatest diplomatic victory in American history. Though Adams and Franklin harbored personal animosity toward one another, each set their grievances aside and deftly negotiated what everyone agreed was an extraordinarily one-sided agreement in favor of the United States.
In the end, Adams and Franklin each acknowledged the other’s performance, but with the greatest praise reserved for the least known of the American diplomats, John Jay.
Both Adams and Franklin never failed to give Jay the lion’s share of the credit when recalling the historic event. Of course, the greatest debt we owe, but can never repay, is to General George Washington.
May we summon the lessons of the past in times such as these.
