April 29, 1783: How Ipswich Celebrated the End of the Revolutionary War

On Sept. 27, 1782, John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin began formal negotiations with Great Britain to end the Revolutionary War. Earlier that year, Franklin had rejected informal overtures that would have granted the colonies partial autonomy. On April 11, 1783, the Confederation Congress proclaimed “the cessation of arms” against Great Britain, and approved the preliminary articles of peace four days later.

General George Washington’s order declaring an end to hostilities was read to the Continental Army on April 19, eight years to the day after the Battle of Lexington. Instructions were given: “An extra ration of liquor is to be issued to every man tomorrow to drink to Perpetual Peace, Independence, and Happiness to the United States of America.”

The celebration in Ipswich was recorded in “The Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL. D“:¹

“April 29, Tuesday. This day was appointed to celebrate the return of Peace. The whole town being desired to assemble at Mr. Frisbie’s² Meeting House (First Church) in Ipswich, at 10 o’clock, and a committee having waited on the several ministers, desiring their attendance, I set out from here at 8 o’clock, in company with Captain Dodge and thirty or forty of the parish, who waited on me for this purpose.

“At 10 o’clock the people assembled in the Meeting House, which was exceedingly crowded. The Proclamation from Congress being read, Mr. Cleaveland³ made a short prayer, an anthem was sung, and an elegant oration delivered by Mr. Frisbie, after which an anthem was sung, and the congregation dismissed. Thirteen cannons were fired.

“At 2 o’clock an elegant, plentiful collation of cold hams, bacon, tongues, fowls, veal, etc., was spread on two very long tables on the green, at which all the people partook. This collation was a free donation of the people, which everyone through the town, who pleased, sent ready cooked. There was also given a great plenty of spirits and other liquors. When those who came first to the table had dined, thirteen toasts were given by the High Sheriff, and thirteen cannons were discharged for several of the first, and for the rest a smaller number.

“In the evening very handsome fireworks were played off — a large number of sky-rockets, serpents, crackers, wheel- works, etc. Many gentlemen illuminated their houses, which appeared very beautiful, and the whole exercises of the occasion were performed with the greatest good order and decorum. Every countenance was smiling, and no intemperance was perceived even among the lowest class. And thus this joyful day concluded, without the smallest accident, to universal satisfaction, and much to the honor of the town. There was given, of the article of meat, between twenty-one and twenty-two hundredweight, and one hundred dollars in money. This day was eight years and ten days from the commencement of the war.”⁴

On Sept. 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, in which “His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States.” The Treaty of Paris was ratified by Congress on January 14, 1784, a date known as “Ratification Day. ” This officially ended seven years of war.

After the Revolution

The United States was in a dire economic condition. The war had exhausted state treasuries, which were left with massive war debts and a shortage of hard currency. By 1781, a paper Continental dollar was worth about five percent of its face value, with no reserve bank. Individuals were unable to meet repayments due, and for several years, a flood of cheap British manufactured imports competed with local manufacturers. The country and its states were bankrupt with tremendous debts owed, along with rampant inflation.

Thomas Franklin Waters wrote: “The immediate cost of the Revolutionary War in life and permanent disability from wounds and in the vast expense of eight years of warfare was a great price for the liberty that was gained at last. But the true significance of the mighty struggle was yet to be realized. An oppressive volume of debt was everywhere in evidence. Massachusetts owed £250,000 to the Revolutionary soldiers, and her share of the Federal war debt was £1,500,000. Every town was deeply involved and every man owed more or less. Before the war, Ipswich had enjoyed a flourishing trade in fish with the West Indies, but her vessels had been driven from the sea and now, there was no market for the products of the fisheries. There was a great scarcity of specie and the paper currency was sadly depreciated. An Import and Excise law was enacted in 1783 to provide funds for the State Treasury. It required that a stamp should be affixed to newspapers and there were frequent allusions to it, as the “Stamp Act.”

Shays’ Rebellion

Responding to the state government’s increased efforts to collect taxes on individuals and tradesmen, an armed uprising known as Shays’ Rebellion took place in Western Massachusetts and Worcester from 1786 to 17871. Made up primarily of ex-Revolutionary War soldiers who had returned to farming, the rebels staged a series of violent attacks on courthouses and marched in 1787 on the federal Armory in Springfield in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government.

Thomas Franklin Waters wrote, “The popular unrest assumed a violent phase when delegates from fifty towns in Hampshire County met in Convention at Hatfield on August 22, 1786. Governor Bowdoin was obliged eventually to summon the militia. In January 1787, an army of 4400 men, rank and file, was ordered to rendezvous on Jan. 19th near Boston for 30 days of service. Essex County furnished 500 men, including 25 from Ipswich. Col. Nathaniel Wade commanded one of the regiments and Robert Farley served as Aide-de-Camp to the Commander, General Benjamin Lincoln. A march was made to Worcester and Springfield in weather of great severity. After a short but severe campaign, the insurgent forces were scattered, at the cost of only a few lives and law and order again prevailed.”

Notes:

1. Manasseh Cutler (May 13, 1742 – July 28, 1823) was influential in the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and as a member of the United States House of Representatives wrote the section prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory. From 1771 until his death, he was pastor of the Congregational church in Hamlet Parish of  Ipswich until 1793, now the town of Hamilton. During the War of Independence, he served as chaplain to the 11th Massachusetts Regiment, General Jonathan Titcomb’s brigade, and was with General John Sullivan’s expedition to Rhode Island. In December 1787, a group of Revolutionary War veterans and adventurers organized by Cutler set out from Ipswich on an 800-mile journey through the wilderness by horseback and rafts to establish the first settlement in the Ohio Territory.
2. Rev. Levi Frisbie, born at Branford, Conn. in 1748, entered Yale College, in 1767 where he remained for three years, then graduated at Dartmouth, in 1771, with the first class to graduate from that institution. He was ordained a missionary to the Indians in 1772 but was prevented from performing this service by sickness and the Revolutionary War. He was installed at Ipswich, on the 7th of February 1776, successor of Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, and was an able and successful minister, and an earnest patriot. When the tidings of peace came, in 1783, he was selected by the town to deliver an oration, which was published, as was his Eulogy of Washington, in 1800. Mr. Frisbie died on February 25, 1806, aged 58 years.
3. Rev. John Cleaveland (1722-1799) was an early leader in the “Separatist” Christian movement, an evangelical revival born out of the First Great Awakening of the 1730s-40s. Refusing to repent for attending a Separatist meeting, he was expelled from Yale College in 1745. Subsequently, he served at the Separatist church in the Chebacco precinct of Ipswich, also known as the Fourth Church in Ipswich, at which he was ordained in 1747. Rev. Cleaveland also served as a military chaplain in 1758-59 at Ticonderoga and Louisburg during the French and Indian War, and later with American forces during the Revolutionary War. He passed away in 1799, having pastored the Chebacco Church for 52 years.
4. The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America and Canada on September 3, 1783, officially ended the American Revolutionary War
5. Featured image: “Celebrations of American Independence in Boston and Watertown, Massachusetts,” by an unknown artist.

Further Reading: