On this day in 1783, nearly three months after the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the American Revolution, the last British soldiers withdraw from New York City, the last British military position in the United States. After the last Redcoat departed New York, U.S. General George Washington entered the city in triumph to the cheers of New Yorkers. The city had remained in British hands since its capture in September 1776.
Four months after New York was returned to the victorious Patriots, the city was declared to be the capital of the United States. In 1789, it was the site of Washington’s inauguration as the first U.S. president and remained the nation’s capital until 1790, when Philadelphia became the second capital of the United States under the U.S. Constitution.
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To Sir Horace Mann
Nov. 29, 1781
I mentioned on Tuesday the captivity of Lord Cornwallis and his army, the Columbus who was to bestow America on us again. A second army taken in a drag-net is an uncommon event, and happened but once to the Romans, who sought adventures everywhere. We have not lowered our tone on this new disgrace, though I think we shall talk no more of insisting on implicit submission, which would rather be a gasconade than firmness. In fact, there is one very unlucky circumstance already come out, which must drive every American, to a man, from ever calling himself our friend. By the tenth article of the capitulation, Lord Cornwallis demanded that the loyal Americans in his army should not be punished. This was flatly refused, and he has left them to be hanged. I doubt no vote of Parliament will be able to blanch such a - such a - I don’t know what the word is for it; he must get his uncle the Archbishop to christen it; there is no name for it in any Pagan vocabulary. I suppose it will have a patent for being called Necessity. Well! there ends another volume of the American war. It looks a little as if the history of it would be all we should have for it, except forty millions of debt.
The warmth n the House of Commons in prodigiously rekindled; but Lord Cornwallis’s fate has cost the Administration no ground there. The names of most eclat in the Opposition are two names to which those walls have been much accustomed at the same period - CHARLES FOX and WILLIAM PITT, second son of Lord Chatham. Eloquence is the only one of our brilliant qualities that does not seem to have degenerated rapidly - but I shall leave debates to your nephew, now an ear-witness: I could only re-echo newspapers. Is it not another odd coincidence of events, that while the father Laurens is prisoner to Lord Cornwallis as Constable of the Tower, the son Laurens signed the capitulation by which Lord Cornwallis became prisoner? It is said too, I don’t know if truly, that this capitulation and that of Saratoga were signed on the same anniversary. These are certainly the speculations of an idle man, and the more trifling when one considers the moment. But alas! what would my most grave speculations avail? From the hour that fatal egg, the Stamp Act, was laid, I disliked it and all the vipers hatched from it. I now hear many curse it, who fed the vermin with poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty and the innocent rue it equally hitherto! I would not answer for what is to come! Seven years of miscarriages may sour the sweetest tempers, and the most sweetened. Oh! where is the Dove with the olive-branch? Long ago I told you that you and I might not live to see an end of the American war. It is very near its end indeed now - its consequences are far from a conclusion. In some respects, they are commencing a new date, which will reach far beyond us. I desire not to pry into that book of futurity. Could I finish my course in peace - but one must take the chequered scenes of life as they come. What signifies whether the elements are serene or turbulent, when a private old man slips away? What has he and the world’s concerns to do with one another? He may sigh for his country, and babble about it; but he might as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories; the past is as important to him as the future.
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Horace Walpole
Major Archibald Robertson of Lawers - George Romney
1782
“Born to a Lancashire cabinet maker, Romney worked in his father’s business but was later indentured to the itinerant painter Christopher Steele in 1755. He moved to London in 1762 where his talent for making likenesses was soon recognized. It even led to a rivalry between him and the leading portraitist of the day, Sir Joshua Reynolds. He tired of making portraits, but his talents clearly lay in this realm.
The grand and dashing sitter here is the ambitious and successful Scotsman Robertson rose to the rank of Lieutenant General in 1805. He is pictured as a major, in the red uniform and black velvet facings of the Corps of Royal Engineers. In the background we see Havana Harbor, Cuba, with Castillo del Morro on the right and the Castillo de la Punta on the left. The setting alludes to the then Captain Robertson’s involvement in the Harbor’s capture by the British in 1762. Robertson also fought in the Revolutionary War.” (Seen at MoFA)
All the remaining shirts are on etsy now! Have a lovely Sunday.
