LONDON \u2014 A letter signed by George Washington accepting the British surrender, which helped pave the way for America\u2019s independence, will go on display for the first time in London on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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The letter, written in October 1781 and showcasing the Founding Father\u2019s faded cursive handwriting, will be featured as part of the \u201cRevolution 250: America\u2019s Independence Story, 1763\u20131783\u201d exhibition at The National Archives. <\/p>\n
The note was dictated and signed by Washington and given to Charles Cornwallis, Britain\u2019s Lieutenant General commanding the southern campaign, in Yorktown, Virginia, following the British request to end hostilities to agree the terms of their surrender. <\/p>\n
Washington replied stating his \u201cardent desire to spare the further effusion of blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the war, Cornwallis took Washington\u2019s letter home with him to Essex, where it remained in the family archive before being presented to the Public Record Office, a predecessor of The National Archives, in 1880.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor such a short, succinct, and to the point message, this note had tremendous consequences for generations to come,\u201d said Sean Cunningham, historian and curator of the exhibition, in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the moment the British realized they would have to give up the Thirteen Colonies that would become the United States of America; the moment that Britain finally accepts the reality of the declaration of independence drafted five years earlier,\u201d Cunningham added. <\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing Washington\u2019s acceptance of British surrender up close is a powerful encounter with a turning point in history,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 A letter signed by George Washington accepting the British surrender, which helped pave the way for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-721193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}