Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
King George III
A recent British ambassador to Washington takes a generous-spirited but clear-eyed look at the document that, as he points out, owes its existence to King George III
The guest at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., leaves his car and is ushered through a comparatively modest, low-ceilinged entrance hall.
What really happened when Thomas Jefferson met George III
On March 17,1786, Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, met his former sovereign. The occasion was George Ill’s levee, and it produced one of the most durable chestnuts in American history.
The bell is old and it is badly cracked and it has not been rung for years, nor will it ever be rung again. But although it is quite useless from a practical standpoint, it is perhaps the most prized possession we have.
Crowds on both sides of the Atlantic shouted “Wilkes and Liberty!” after he was jailed and tossed out of Parliament for defending the rights of Colonists and the “middling and inferior sort of people who stand most in need of protection.”
Not many political martyrs are born to the part; more often they are cast in it by government officials who are stupid or self-righteous or both.
A domino theory, distant wilderness warfare, the notion of “defensive enclaves,” hawks, doves, hired mercenaries, possible intervention by hostile powers, a Little trouble telling friendly natives from unfriendly—George III went through the whole routine
Cursed by ancestry,bedeviled by his posterity, beset by forces he could not grasp, George III is usually remembered as the ogre of Jefferson’s Declaration. An eminent English historian reassesses that strange and pathetic personality
Poor George III still gets a bad press.
Featured Authors
