A Failed Nation - A Rope of Sand

On December 23rd, 1783, in the Senate chamber at Annapolis, George Washington did the thing conquerors never do: he laid his commission at the feet of the Congress and went home to be a farmer — an act so astonishing that a stunned King George III reportedly called him “the greatest man in the world.” Three weeks later, in that very same room, that same Congress nearly failed to ratify the treaty ending the Revolution — not because an enemy stopped it, but because it could not get 9 states th...