TREATIES AND DEDICATIONS

The 19^th November, highlights two items of American historical significance, and the performance of writing. The first in 1794:

Jay's Treaty, 8 Stat. 116, also known as Jay's Treaty, The British Treaty, and the Treaty of London of 1794, was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain. Formally titled the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, it was signed on 19^th November, 1794, the Senate advised and consented on June 24, 1795, ratified by the President, and ratifications were exchanged February 29, 1796.

The Treaty is credited with averting war, resolving issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution, and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which had begun in 1792.

John Jay

Initially, to avoid war, first U.S. President George Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay, late in 1794, to negotiate with the British; The Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Alexander Hamilton, helped to draw up his instructions. The result was Jay’s Treaty, which, as the State Department says, "addressed few US interests, and ultimately granted Britain additional rights". The treaty was extremely unpopular, and the Democratic-Republicans opposed it for its failure to redress previous grievances, and for its failure to address British violations of American neutrality during the war. Indeed, early 19^th century historian Henry Adams ventured to remark, with typical American bravado,

Alexander Hamilton

"No one would venture on its merits to defend it now. There has been no time since 1810 when the United States would not prefer war to peace on such terms."

Later historians have remarked:

“For about ten years there was peace on the frontier, joint recognition of the value of commercial intercourse, and even, by comparison with both preceding and succeeding epochs, a muting of strife over ship seizures and impressment. Two controversies with France… pushed the English-speaking powers even more closely together”

“… a shrewd bargain for the United States. It bet, in effect, on England rather than France as the hegemonic European power of the future, which proved prophetic. It recognized the massive dependence of the American economy on trade with England. In a sense it was a precocious preview of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), for it linked American security and economic development to the British fleet, which provided a protective shield of incalculable value throughout the nineteenth century. Mostly, it postponed war with England until America was economically and politically more capable of fighting one."

The second in 1863 (also, see Buff's Stuff - 12 February 2011):

On the afternoon of Thursday, 19^th November 1863, at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg, United States President Abraham Lincoln made a short speech. It is now known as the Gettysburg Address and has become one of the most quoted pieces of performance writing in history. Legend has it that it was written on the back of an envelope on the train between Washington and Gettysburg, over a distance of 80 odd miles, a few hours journey at that time, an hour and 45 minutes today. It was just a matter of a few appropriate remarks.

Lincoln at Gettysburg 19th November 1863

Everett

Following the July 1–3, 1863 battle, reburial of Union soldiers from the battlefield graves began on October 17. The committee for the 19th November Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg invited President Lincoln to speak: "It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks." Lincoln's address followed the oration by Edward Everett, who subsequently included a copy of the Gettysburg Address in his 1864 book about the event (Address of the Hon. Edward Everett At the Consecration of the National Cemetery At Gettysburg, 19th November 1863, with the Dedicatory Speech of President Lincoln, and the Other Exercises of the Occasion; Accompanied by An Account of the Origin of the Undertaking and of the Arrangement of the Cemetery Grounds, and by a Map of the Battle-field and a Plan of the Cemetery).

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”