Apr 07, 2022 - Sale 2600

Sale 2600 - Lot 26

Price Realized: $ 21,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--1783.) Robert R. Livingston. Letter announcing the cessation of hostilities with Great Britain. Letter Signed "RR Livingston" to Lyman Hall as Governor of Georgia. One page, 13 x 8 inches, plus integral blank with docketing "Cessation of Hostility, Treaty of Peace"; partial separations at folds, uneven toning, moderate dampstaining. Philadelphia, 12 April 1783
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"A national character is now to be acquired. I venture to hope that it will be worthy of the struggle by which we became a nation."

The Declarations for Suspension of Arms and Cessation of Hostilities which ended the war was signed by British and American officials at Versailles in January 1783, and news crossed the Atlantic by April. This circular letter was sent to the various American governors along with a copy of the treaty (not present). The author, Robert R. Livingston (1746-1813), had helped draft the Declaration of Independence, served as the first United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and was Chancellor of New York for 24 years.

"Permit me to offer you my congratulations on the important event announced by the United States in Congress in the enclosed proclamation for the cessation of hostilities, an event which is not only pleasing at it relieves us from the accumulated distresses of war in the bowels of our country, but as it affords the fairest and most flattering prospects of its future greatness and prosperity. I need not, I am persuaded, Sir, use any arguments to urge your Excellency and the State in which you preside, to the most scrupulous attention to the execution of every stipulation in our treaty, which may depend on you or them. A national character is now to be acquired. I venture to hope that it will be worthy of the struggle by which we became a nation."