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Show hirst AP AAKTirf ftAVM 1 i ' i . J ;'' v " N N l" JJ "1 4 ,a .x x x' s x . ' 1 , - V 1 dv s x - 4- i - X xx j ii ? 61 - A , y 1 i " s X x N " t V , xx n , , " : Washinqton Resiqninq His Commission, Dec. 23, 1783 ctrumbulo ' ELMO SCOTT WATSON S THE eleventh hour of the ! eleventh day of the eleventh month I ia the year 191S the guns, which for more than four years had been roaring In western Europe all along . the line from Switzerland to Holland, Hol-land, were silenced and to a waiting wait-ing world was flashed the welcome . message "The Armistice has been signed !" That is the event which ; each year on November 11 and .srd as the "end of the World war." r of fact, it wasn't The World war :'or us officially until nearly three True, actual hostilities ended on ' ; .!, 1918, but there still remained the see treaties with our late enemies ; j ! Versailles with Germany on June - Treaty of St Germain with-Austria ere it 10, 1919 ; the Treaty of Neuilly ;t ion November 27, 1919; the Treaty 1 Trianon with Hungary on June 4, nily the Treaty of Sevres with Tur- it 10, 1920. ... 1 these treaties signed, the actual : war" was still a year away. For -s must be ratified by the United ! and because the Treaty of Ver-. Ver-. M a provision for American mem-' mem-' newly organized League of Na-L! Na-L! Mte on March 19, 1920, rejected the ' President Wilson had presented to -tlon. Immediately thereafter Sena- f C, Knox of Pennsylvania Intro- :i Mon repealing the declarations of -ving to the United States all the A - It In the Versailles treaty. This f ;Sied bath houses of congress In - . 1920, but on May 27 President , 'Mt as "an Ineffaceable stain upon ' j nd honor of the United States." , the Treaty of Versailles had been j 'many and the principal allied pow- ; . league of Nations had come Into ( ' when Woodrow Wilson retired j House, a broken man with his -f, 11 project rejected by the country, k 'tcs was still outside the League of K !reaty 'as still unratified and, ofii-: ofii-: ; 3 still at war with the Central ' "barren G. Harding became Pres-v Pres-v 'x resolution was revived In con-;'' con-;'' , teed and on July 2, 1921, Presi-y, Presi-y, -' signed it. So July 2, 1921, rather ';r U. 1918, marked the official "end W for the United States, ride 3 Interesting parallel between the oni 8 which elapsed from the cessa-,yji cessa-,yji jts to the official end of the world r period In bringing to a conclu- 'ar in which we, as a nation, ever -" volution. Ask the average Amer- ' Revolution ended and he will V( ' "Why, when Cornwallls surren- e!" But In saying that he is just -"" s he Is in regarding November 11, -011 curtain on the drama of the 1T81, a British army marched town, 'a., to the tune of "The : Inside Down" and handed over e combined French and American " j lli by Count de Rochambeau and Kington. Within 2-1 hours cou-, cou-, i 0n swift horses wore speeding s,nS "every village and farm" N H word "Cornwallis is taken!" e nowa was received with delight 'V 'adwith dismay by the Loyalists '''onintu celebrations in honor of s were organized in many places, , hysteria and wild Jubilation . :. ; v''.:ijle country on November 11, - " 1!R to October, 17S1. ,srilIh, telephone or radio or other 4 'wniunication there was 10 way ; ' : - Dews simultanooiisly throughout if .' ,, n tIlen comprised the nation, j J 'as given over everywhere to s?a Ulere was lli years ago this inlet I1"", it was not until October o Jr the surrender, that there ap-eriif ap-eriif ., reets of Philadelphia, only 200 , mi: ",'r'n, a broadside which said : ..Rumination Aide de Camp to his Es- cellency General Washington, having brought official accounts of the SURRENDER of Lord Cornwallis and the Garrisons of York and Gloucester, those Citizens who chuse to ILLUMINATE on the Glorious Occasion, will do It this evening at Six and extinguish their lights at Nine o'clock. Decorum and harmony are earnestly recommended to every ev-ery Citizen, and a general discountenance to the least appearance of riot. Although the school book histories give us the impression that the Revolution ended abruptly ab-ruptly with the surrender of Cornwallis, it was far from being as simple as all that. Charleston and Savannah were still held by the British. So was New York where Sir Henry Clinton, although al-though outwitted by Washington In his quick dash to trap Cornwallis, still had a stroug army that was n perpetual threat against the American Ameri-can line of defense along the Hudson. The surrender at Yorktown was a stunning blow to British prestige, but It did not mean that the stubborn Briton was ready to give up yet. True, as our school book histories tell us, Lord North, upon receiving news of the disaster, "threw up his arms as though struck by a cannon ball and cried out: 'My God, It Is all over! It Is all over!'" But when parliament convened, King George III made a speech which indicated his determination to continue the war, and, hearing of this, Washington knew that his task was far from being ended. So he sent urgent appeals to the states not to relax their efforts, made plans for a stronger army than ever before be-fore and, after a brief stop at Mount Vernon and a short stay in Philadelphia where he conferred with a committee from congress on the measures necessary for the next campaign, marched his Continentals back to Newburgh on the Hudson, where for the next few months he lay watching Clinton in New York. But Clinton showed no desire to make a move and for the next year the two armies adopted' a policy of "watchful waiting." During this time there was some raiding by marauding bands of Tories and Patriots, but there were no major military movements In the northern theater of war. The conflict there had become a stalemate. Down in the South a bitter partisan warfare was Ftill being waged. After Yorktown, "Mad Anthony" Wayne had been sent to help Gen. Kathaneal Greene regain South Carolina nnd Georgia from the enemy and in a series of minor skirmishes be defeated the Creek Indian allies of the British, scattered parties of Tory raiders and ousted several small British garrisons from the towns they were holding. Then he marched against Savannah, forced the British to evacuate evacu-ate it in July, 17S2, and joined Greene In the siege of Charleston which the British gave up in December. So In both the North and South hostilities had virtually ceased by the middle of the year. But out In the West the war was still raging In a fearful form unknown on the Atlantic seaboard except In the blood-drenched Mohawk valley of New York. Indian scalping parties, led by British Brit-ish and Canadian officers, were assailing the Pennsylvania nnd Virginia borders and the Kentucky Ken-tucky settlements. In August, 17S2, the men and women of Bryant's Bry-ant's Station successfully withstood such nn attack at-tack only to have their victory followed by the disaster at Blue Licks on August 19 when the llower of Kentucky's man power was destroyed in this "Last Battle of the Revolution," so called because It was the last pitched battle between forces of any considerable size. On September 11 a wave of savage fury once more beat against the palisaded walls of Fort Henry (Wheeling, W V'l ) where Betty Zane won Immortality with Her dash through a hail of bullets to carry nowder to the defenders of the fort This attack was also repulsed as were others against other outposts of the frontier, but for many months afterwards there hung over the West tiie shadow of fear of tho redskins, a kind of fear which the Redcoats had never beeu able to Inspire in the East 'in 'the meantime the march of events ncross the Atlantic was rapidly bringing tho war nearer and nearer to an end. Even before Yorktown the English nation was tired of a war which gave It more debts than victories and which had been denounced more than once by members of the Whig party. After Yorktown King George was about the only one who wanted to keep on wita the war, but eventually even he gave up all hope of subduing the Americans. However, he stubbornly stub-bornly insisted that he would never give up Georgia or Charleston or New York. On March 5, 17S2, parliament passed a bill to enable the king to make peace with America. Fifteen days later Lord North, bowing to the storm of opposition to the king's plan of renewing renew-ing hostilities, resigned, and the Whigs, under Lord Rockingham, formed a new ministry with the understanding that American Independence should be acknowdedged. Rockingham died In July and was succeeded by Lord Shelburne, who was also committed to a policy of making peace. Shelburne had been a friend of Benjamin Franklin, who was then our minister to France, and through his agent, Richard Oswnld, a Scotch merchant, the British minister opened negotiations negotia-tions with his American friend to discuss peace terms. Franklin had the assistance of John Jay, who had beeu In Spain seeking an alliance with that country ; John Adams, American minister to Holland ; and Henry Laurens, then a prisoner in England ; and during the summer of 17S2 their negotiations with Oswald proceeded smoothly. Finally on November 30, Franklin, Jay, Adams and Oswald signed a preliminary treaty of peace, which was not, strictly speaking, a treaty but a protocol, the articles of which were to be subsequently subse-quently incorporated in a formal treaty after Great Britain had come to terms with France, America's ally. This protocol of November 30, 17S2, is analogous analo-gous to the armistice of November 11, 1918, in that, under its terms, hostilities in America were to cease at once and upon completion of the treaty the British fleets and armies were to be immediately withdrawn from every place which they held within the limits of the United States. It is also analogous In that it was the first written writ-ten agreement between representatives of the two nations at war looking toward a formal treaty of peace. So November has a double significance sig-nificance to Americans as the "month of the armistice" the armistice of the Revolution and the armistice of the World war. Even with this Important step taken, nine months were to elapse before the final treaty of peace was signed nnd another nine months before ratification of the treaty definitely ended the war. On January 20, 17S3, the preliminary articles of the treaty of peace were signed In Paris. The news arrived in America on March 23, in a letter to the president of congress from Lafayette and a few days later Sir Guy Carleton, who had succeeded Sir Henry Clinton as British Brit-ish commander In New York, received his orders from the ministry to proclaim a cessation of hostilities on land and sea. A similar proclamation, made by congress, was formally announced to the army by Washington. He chose April 19, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, as the date for this historic announcement. an-nouncement. After this proclamation Washington granted furloughs to most of the army and the weather-beaten weather-beaten Continentals scattered to their homes and tried to adapt themselves to civil life again. On November 3 the army was formally disbanded and three weeks later Sir Guy Carleton's army sailed away from New York. On December 4 occurred that profoundly touching incident In 1'raunce's Tavern where Washington said farewell fare-well to his officers. He was on his way to Annapolis, An-napolis, where congress was in session, to resign his commission and on December 23 that historic scene, which has been Immortalized In Trumbull's Trum-bull's painting, was enacted. Then Washington hastened on to Mount Vernon, there to spend the first happy Christmas be had known for nine years. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, another important impor-tant episode in the drama of the Revolution had taken place. One September morning, to the lodgings in Paris of David Hartley, agent of the ' British who had succeeded Oswald, came his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The great philoso- ! pber-d'iplomat was accompanied by his little grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, by John dams John Jav and Henry Laurens. There on September 3, 17S3, the definitive treaty of peace , was signed. Early In 17S1 congress accepted the 1 treaty "nnd In May ratifications of it were ex- ; changed by Great Britain and the United Stata. The Revolution was over. - by Western Ncwapopor |