The New Nation 8 items

1.
  • Letter from Charles Thomson (1729-1824) to Hannah Thomson, July 6, 1783

Curator's note:
  • “When I look forward I see a dark cloud and gloomy prospects for America,” Charles Thomson wrote to his wife Hannah from Congress’s exile in Princeton. As secretary of the Continental Congress, Thomson had a front-row seat to the Revolution’s ups and downs. By 1783, the loss of a common enemy in Britain had left the states bickering among themselves. Thomson feared the union might splinter, warning that “the fabrick of her liberty will be stained with the blood of her sons.”
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2.
  • Click to view full content. By His Excellency Elias Boudinot, Esquire, President of the United States in Congress Assembled. A Proclamation, June 24. 1783

Curator's note:
  • Though victorious on the battlefield, the patriots still faced a massive fiscal crisis. Congress lacked the authority to tax and struggled mightily to fund the Continental Army. In June 1783, several hundred soldiers surrounded Independence Hall with fixed bayonets to demand their back pay. Shaken and humiliated, Congress left Philadelphia—in part to publicly demonstrate the need for a stronger national government. With this proclamation, Elias Boudinot, Congress’s president, adjourned the delegates to Princeton, where he was a college trustee.
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3.
  • Letter from George Washington (1732–1799) to James Madison, Class of 1771, November 30, 1785

Curator's note:
  • During the war, Washington grew exasperated by the states’ reluctance to support the Continental Army beyond their individual borders. Such frustrating sectionalism only increased after 1783. In this letter to James Madison, Washington criticized Virginia’s hesitancy to augment Congress’s powers. With Congress unable to regulate trade, Washington feared foreign powers would exploit the states’ competing economic interests. He bluntly named the nation’s defining crisis under the Articles of Confederation: “We are either a United people, or we are not.”
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4.
  • Letter from Samuel Beach (1761-1793), Class of 1783, to John Croes, July 9, 1783

Curator's note:
  • Trying to persuade a friend to join him in attending the college at Princeton, Samuel Beach, writing from Nassau Hall, described the official Fourth of July festivities in 1783, just days after Congress took up residence in town: “The anniversary of our independence was celebrated here last friday, with speaking, firing of cannon, throwing rockets, fireworks, eating and drinking, &c. The day terminated as usual, some were drunken and all were tired.”
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5.
  • Libertas Americana, 1783

Curator's note:
  • In October 1783, the Congress at Princeton learned that British and American negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris. Back in France, Benjamin Franklin sponsored the creation of this medal to celebrate the alliance that had helped secure U.S. independence. One side represents Liberty as a woman with free-flowing hair. On the other side, Minerva (France) protects the infant Hercules (the United States) from two snakes and an attacking leopard (Great Britain). Franklin distributed some 300 examples to members of Congress, the French king and queen, and other supporters of the American cause.
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6.
  • A Map of the United States of America Agreeable to the Peace of 1783

Curator's note:
  • After two years of negotiations, news of peace with Great Britain was rushed to Nassau Hall. The United States now possessed all of the former British land claims between Canada, Florida, and the Mississippi River. This map was among the first to visualize the new borders. The war was won, but it begged new questions: how could these vast claims—already densely populated with Native nations—become a part of the republic?
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7.
  • The Apotheosis of George Washington, circa 1785

Curator's note:
  • From handkerchiefs to curtains, British textiles were a major trade commodity in 18th-century North America. Following the end of the Revolutionary War and the 1783 Treaty of Paris, independence-themed textiles gained in popularity. This print represents half of a larger scene, “The Apotheosis of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin,” in circulation by 1785. In this fragment, Washington rides triumphant in a leopard-drawn chariot, accompanied by allegorical figures: a female representation of America proclaiming independence and Indigenous figures waving the 13-stripe U.S. flag and the Gadsden flag. Textiles at this scale were often used to decorate bedrooms.
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8.
  • Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union Between the States of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina and Georgia

Curator's note:
  • Congress’s evacuation to Princeton was already a sign of problems. When disgruntled, underpaid soldiers rioted outside the Pennsylvania State House, the national government had no defense. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was a tenuous link between states, barely able to tax or regulate commerce, let alone control the military. The system carried them through a revolution, but cracks began to show. As the delegates convened at Nassau Hall, they faced a pressing question: could they unify the nation without creating another king?
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