George Washington
From the painting by Charles Willson Peale.
In June, 1783, Washington spent some time in Princeton, New Jersey, whither the Continental Congress had adjourned from Philadelphia in consequence of a mutiny among the unpaid troops stationed there. On leaving Princeton the American Commander-in-Chief donated 50 guineas to the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. The trustees spent the money on this portrait and had it put in the frame formerly occupied by a picture of King George III, which was destroyed by a cannon ball in the Battle of Princeton. This canvas still hangs in the Princeton Faculty room.
By Courtesy of Princeton University
From governments accustomed to trust rather to artifice, than to force or to reason, and influenced by vindictive passions which they have not strength or courage to gratify, hostility may be expected to exert itself in a cruel insidious policy, which unfeelingly dooms individuals to chains, and involves them in ruin, without having a tendency to effect any national object. But the British character rather wounds by its pride, and offends by its haughtiness, and open violence, than injures by the secret indulgence of a malignant, but a paltry and unprofitable revenge: and, certainly, such unworthy motives ought not lightly to be imputed to a great and magnanimous nation, which dares to encounter a world, and risk its existence, for the preservation of its station in the scale of empires, of its real independence, and of its liberty.
But, in believing the views of the British cabinet to be unfriendly to the United States, America was perhaps not entirely mistaken. Indeed, dispositions of a different nature could not reasonably have been expected. It may be denied, but can not be disguised, that the sentiments openly expressed by a great majority of the American people, warranted the opinion that, notwithstanding the exertions of the administration, they were about to arrange themselves, in the war, on the side of France. In a government like that of the United States, no firmness on the part of the chief magistrate can long resist the current of popular opinion; and that opinion, without professing it, unquestionably led to war.
If the character of the British minister at Philadelphia is to be collected from his intercourse with the executive of the country to which he was deputed, there is reason to suppose that his communications to his own government did not diminish the impression which the evidence furnished on this subject, by the American people themselves, was calculated to make. It is therefore not improbable, whatever may be the permanent views of England respecting the commercial prosperity of the United States, that the measures of the British cabinet, about this time, were taken in the belief that war between the two nations was a probable event.
Report of the secretary of state in relation to the commerce of the United States.
Early in the session a report was made by the secretary of state, in pursuance of a resolution of the house of representatives passed on the 23d of February, 1791, requiring him "to report to congress the nature and extent of the privileges and restrictions of the commercial intercourse of the United States with foreign nations, and the measures which he should think proper to be adopted for the improvement of the commerce and navigation of the same."
This report stated the exports of the United States in articles of their own produce and manufacture at nineteen millions, five hundred and eighty-seven thousand, and fifty-five dollars; and the imports at nineteen millions, eight hundred and twenty-three thousand, and sixty dollars.