December 14, 2019
ERIC ZUESSE
The official celebration of America’s victory and Britain’s defeat in the Revolutionary War occurred on 25 November 1783, in Manhattan’s Fraunces Tavern, at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets. This was reported in Rivington’s New-York Gazette, the following day, and is described in Ray Raphael’s 2009 FOUNDERS: The People Who Brought You a Nation (p. 416). General George Washington was the hero on the occasion, and delivered the speech. It was “13 Toasts” (honoring the thirteen states). Numbers 9-13 asserted the basic values that the new nation was intended by the former colonists to have established in their new nation:
- May justice support what courage has gained.
- The vindication of the rights of mankind in every quarter of the globe.
- May America be an asylum to the persecuted of the earth.
- May a close union of the states guard the temple they have erected to liberty.
- May the remembrance of this day be a lesson to princes.
Everyone present was toasting those five goals — goals that were entirely consistent with the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and that may reasonably be considered to reflect the Founders’ vision, just as that Declaration had reflected.
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