END OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
a.d. 1782
JOHN ADAMS BENJAMIN FRANKLIN JOHN JAY
HENRY LAURENS JOHN M. LUDLOW
Concerning the momentous consequences of the American Revolution, not only for America herself but for the whole world, history has raised no question of doubt. Regarding its causes and its justification there has been substantial agreement of both learned and popular opinion in all progressive countries. But various and often contradictory are the judgments pronounced upon the course and conduct of the war itself, even among American writers.
Until recently it has been impossible that either in the United States or Great Britain a wholly dispassionate view of the War of Independence should be shared by both critical students and general readers. In America it has been the fashion to glorify indiscriminately the actors on the colonial side and all their achievements. The provincial note of national heroics has been transmitted from one generation to another, and the breath of the school children has been carefully laden with it from tenderest years. On the English side, the quite natural early resentment against the lost colonies—mainly confined to official circles and hereditary interests—may be said to have been later softened into "a certain condescension," such as Lowell pointed out in foreigners generally toward America.
But that condescension, like the earlier acrimony, is a thing of the past. Here, as elsewhere, history is being rewritten. American self-glorification, as well as wounded English pride, gives way to better teachings, and the larger lessons of humanity, which is more than nationality, are giving to all nations clearer visions of a federated world.
The growth of this new historic sense, informed with clearer knowledge and a more discriminating love of justice, is well illustrated in the following critical examination, wherein Ludlow, a living English historian, carefully considers the various factors at work in the Revolution, and the personal forces through which its results were produced. Prefixed to this is the official statement of the American peace commissioners—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens—to Robert R. Livingston, then superintendent of foreign affairs, of the conditions of the preliminary treaty, which ended the war in 1782. This was followed by the definitive Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783.