Oil on canvas; 50.8 x 76.2 x 2.5 cm (20 x 30 x 1 in.) Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
Commemorates the moment when Washington resigned his commission before the Continental Congress, 23 December 1783, and entered private life.
See also the final draft of the speech that Washington delivered.
One of the most stubborn myths of American history is the idea that the frontier promoted equality of material condition. This national folk legend is, unhappily, ver much mistaken. With some exceptions, landed wealth was always highly concentrated throughout the southern highlands, as it would be in the lower Mississippi Valley, Texas and the far southwest. Inequality was greater in the backcountry and the southern highlands than in any other rural region of the United States.