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Good morning! Today is Friday, the third of July, 2026 and this is the Friday Edition of GEORGE as well as a special United States at 250 Issue.
It was just 250 years ago that the United States of America was being written into existence, word by word, declaration by declaration. It was no small feat to take the 13 colonies of Great Britain in the New World and convince their duly appointed representatives to the Continental Congress to agree on the principle underpinnings of a new nation conceived in liberty.
The 13 colonies were divided by stark geographic, economic, and social viewpoints. New England prioritized religious uniformity and town-hall democracy, the Middle Colonies championed cultural diversity and trade, and the South built an agrarian, aristocratic society dependent on slave labor and ties to the Church of England. What united them, however, was their shared outrage at British taxation without representation in government and at a series of economic controls, tax laws, and punitive measures passed by British Parliament between 1763 and 1774.
In today’s special issue, GEORGE’s @Bartleby On Language columnist examines how 35 words in the U.S. Declaration of Independence resonated like a shot fired across the globe, while our @Herodotus on History columnist looks at some of the stranger coincidences in presidential deaths and Independence Day.
Elsewhere in this special issue, our new food columnist, @Jane on Food, named after Jane Nickerson, the New York Times’ first-ever food editor, tells us how to party like it’s 1776. Meanwhile the @Claiborne on Dining Out columnist offers an appreciation of when and why Americans went to taverns and inns to dine and tells us what there was to eat there.
Finally, GEORGE’s @Friedell on Art and Society examines the types and variety of foods that early New Yorkers were feasting on,
GEORGE will return this weekend with a new editorial cartoon and more original dispatches and reportage.
Until then, remain curious!
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VOLUME VI… № 1,754
IN THIS ISSUE
@THE LEDE (above)
@THE SKETCH (above)
@INTERMEZZO I [[[Photo]]
@BARTLEBY ON LANGUAGE Words Matter. So Do Declarations.
@INTERMEZZO II [[[Photo]]
@HERODOTUS ON HISTORY Odd Coincidences in Presidential Deaths and the 4th of July
@INTERMEZZO II [[[Photo]]
@JANE ON FOOD How to Party Like Its 1776
@INTERMEZZO III [[[Photo]]
@CLAIBORNE ON DINING OUT Dining Out During the American Revolution
@INTERMEZZO IV [[[Photo]]
@FRIEDELL ON ART AND SOCIETY What Early New Yorkers Ate
@ABOUT GEORGE
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While there were tea parties and Paul Revere’s Ride, words were their weapon as much as were muskets. Indeed, the United States was perhaps more written into existence over a period of years than battled for, although both mattered.
“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem,” Walt Whitman wrote. Yes, but it was conceived in prose.
Look at one of the most important days on the official U.S. calendar: Independence Day, the Fourth of July. America’s Birthday. Other nations may have holidays that commemorate might and overthrowing bad kings (France, this humble scrivener has his sight-glass aimed in your direction), but sensible Americans, they have a holiday in honor… of a document, a written record that contains information, serves as proof, and represents ideas as well as ideals contained in mere sentences that fomented a revolution that unnerved Good King George all the way across the Pond.
While there is no question that the document itself is a masterpiece, it’s the second sentence – perhaps the one that’s the most well-known – that seems set to music without any instrument having been present in Thomas Jefferson’s study. The last three sentiments are meant to be shouted from the rooftops!
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Imagine it orchestrated for a four-part chorus!
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Founding Father Benjamin Franklin at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia
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Some Very Odd Coincidences in Presidential Deaths and Independence Day in the First 50 Years of the United States
American presidential history is full of very unusual coincidences.
Witness Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, elected to congress in 1846 and 1946 respectively and elected to the office of president in 1860 and 1960. It’s well known that Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater and Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln automobile manufactured by Ford. Both men were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson who were born in 1808 and 1908 respectively.
What is lesser known is that three of the country’s first five presidents – founding fathers all – died on the same month and date and two died within hours of each other.
John Adams, the nation’s second president, and Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president, died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the new nation’s Jubilee. Thomas Jefferson had been the document’s chief author, and John Adams its most effective advocate in the Continental Congress. The two were the only signers of the declaration to later be elected president.
The Declaration of Independence, formally titled The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the founding document of the United States of America. Its purpose was and is to explain to the world why the former Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent sovereign states that were no longer subject to British rule.
On July 4, 1776, it was adopted unanimously by the 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The congress had convened at what was then known as the Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall, in the fledgling nation’s capital at the time, colonial Philadelphia.
The Second Continental Congress, which first convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775 after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, succeeded the First Continental Congress that had convened from September 5, 1774, to October 26, 1774. The Second Continental Congress constituted a new federation that was first called the United Colonies and, in 1776, the United States of America.
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A Daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams, the first U.S. president to be photographed. This photograph was taken 14 years after Mr. Adams left office. He was the son of John Adams, who died on 4 July 1826.
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The Second Continental Congress functioned as a de facto federation government at the onset of the Revolutionary War. It raised militias, directed strategy, appointed diplomats, and drafted petitions including the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms as well as the Olive Branch Petition.
When Adams died, in Quincy, Massachusetts, his last words were an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival. “Thomas Jefferson survives,” Adams said in his final words, unaware that Jefferson had died a few hours earlier the same day at Monticello.
Daniel Webster’s eulogy for the two former presidents, delivered in Faneuil Hall in Boston, spoke to a point that many people believed: that something other than coincidence was involved.
“The concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions,” Webster said. “It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act, that they should complete that year, and that then, on the day which had fast linked forever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once.”
“They took their flight together to the world of spirits.”
Six years later, on the Fourth of July in 1831, James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, who was not, however, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, died in New York City.
The Frederick, Maryland, Town Herald newspaper marked the great stateman’s passing on July 9, 1831 with a mention of the “presidential coincidence”: “Thus have three of our revolutionary presidents departed this life on the anniversary of our independence; presenting the most remarkable tissue of coincidences that have marked the history of nations.”
The New York Post wrote the following regarding Monroe’s passing: “His death had for several days hourly been expected; but it pleased Providence to prolong the flickering flame until the fifty-fifth anniversary of that independence of which one of the principal founders and supporters, and by its extinction then, to add another impressive circumstance to those which [unreadable] the Fourth of July as the most memorable…”
Meanwhile, the only U.S. president to have been born on Independence Day was Calvin Coolidge, who was born on 4 July 1872. Born John Calvin Coolidge, he was the 30th president of the United States and served from 1923 to 1929.
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If you wished to dine away from home during the American Revolution, you would have been entering a world that bears surprisingly little resemblance to the one we know today. Most prosperous Americans entertained at home or accepted invitations to the homes and plantations of family, friends, neighbours, and business associates, where generous hospitality was considered both a social obligation and a mark of refinement. Inns, taverns, ordinaries, and coffee houses were patronised chiefly by travellers, merchants, politicians, military officers, and those conducting business away from home. In parts of New York City, London, and Tokyo today, there are people whose kitchens genuinely see more takeaway containers than saucepans. In 1776, by contrast, if you were not travelling, someone was almost certainly preparing dinner at home.
A mid-20th century fayx colonial tavern or inn menu manufactured by the Yorkcraft decorative arts company in Pennsylvania.
Taverns and inns were therefore much more than places to obtain a meal. They served as meeting places, post offices, courtrooms, concert venues, stages for travelling performers, and centres of political debate. Important business transactions were concluded over dinner, newspapers were exchanged, travellers gathered the latest intelligence from distant towns, and political arguments were as plentiful as the ale. The American Revolution itself was debated in countless taverns long before it was won on the battlefield.
Whilst printed menus were still uncommon, surviving tavern account books, innkeepers’ bills, newspaper advertisements, and household records provide a remarkably clear picture of what diners ordered and what they paid. The fare would have varied with the season and the day’s provisions, but a respectable tavern might offer roast beef, roasted fowl, pigeon pie, salmon, mock turtle soup, pickled oysters, brown bread, fresh butter, cheese, syllabub, apple pandowdy, and Indian pudding, accompanied by Madeira, claret, porter, cider, punch, or small beer. Unlike today’s restaurants, where diners often expect dozens of choices, many taverns simply served whatever the kitchen had prepared that day.
Perhaps the best-known surviving establishment from the period is Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, which first opened in 1762 and continues to welcome diners today. Long before George Washington bade farewell to his officers there in 1783, it had become a favourite gathering place for merchants, politicians, military officers, and the Sons of Liberty. Surviving banquet accounts reveal not only substantial quantities of Madeira and port but also a separate charge for broken wine glasses and a damaged pudding dish, suggesting that eighteenth-century celebrations could become every bit as spirited as their modern counterparts.
So what did a meal cost? Exact prices naturally varied from one colony to another, but surviving bills suggest that a hearty dinner of roast meat, bread, and ale might cost a few shillings, whilst a more elaborate supper with fine imported wines could amount to a respectable sum. Rather than converting these directly through inflation, historians generally compare their purchasing power. By that measure, a glass of Madeira might be thought of as roughly equivalent to $10 to $15 today, whilst a generous tavern dinner could easily approach the cost of a good modern restaurant meal. The prices in the accompanying table are therefore intended as approximate purchasing-power equivalents rather than precise inflation-adjusted figures.
The greatest surprise, however, is not what people ate nor what they paid. It is how seldom they dined away from home. For most Americans in 1776, the finest meals were served not by professional cooks in public establishments but by family, friends, and gracious hosts around their own tables. Taverns and inns were essential institutions of colonial life, but hospitality remained, above all else, a domestic art.
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The Washington Monument is a hollow Egyptian-style stone obelisk with a 500-foot-tall (152.4 m) column surmounted by a 55-foot-tall (16.8 m) pyramidion, built to commemorate the nation’s first president, George Washington.
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Long before New York became one of the world’s most celebrated culinary destinations, its table was already being shaped by Dutch, English, Native American, and African influences. Today’s New Yorker may choose between Michelin-starred restaurants, neighbourhood taverns, elegant hotel dining rooms, and cuisines from virtually every corner of the globe. Colonial New Yorkers had fewer choices, but their own table reflected a remarkable meeting of cultures whose influence can still be tasted today.
The Dutch influence was particularly enduring. Meals often centred on preserved foods that could survive long winters: smoked and salted meats, pickled vegetables, root crops, and sturdy loaves of bread. Pancakes, waffles, tarts, pies, and pastries appeared frequently upon the table, whilst beer and cider were often safer companions than untreated water. As food historian William Woys Weaver has observed, these Old World traditions gradually adapted to the ingredients of the New World, creating a cuisine that was neither wholly European nor wholly American.
Perhaps no ingredient better illustrates that transformation than maize. European settlers quickly discovered that corn thrived where familiar grains sometimes struggled, and cornmeal soon found its way into porridges, breads, puddings, and cakes. Pumpkins, once regarded with suspicion by newly arrived colonists, became staples of both savoury and sweet dishes. Native Americans also introduced settlers to beans, squash, and other crops that would become essential to colonial cookery. Oysters, fish from the Hudson and surrounding waters, venison, wild fowl, and game birds were plentiful, whilst orchards yielded apples, cherries, peaches, and pears that appeared in pies, preserves, and ciders.
The influence of enslaved African cooks was equally profound, although it often went unrecognised at the time. Employed in Dutch and later English households, they introduced techniques, flavours, and ingredients from West and Central Africa that quietly enriched the colonial kitchen. The food that emerged in New York during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was therefore not the product of a single culture but the result of centuries of exchange, adaptation, and ingenuity.
The seasons largely dictated what appeared upon the table. Spring brought fresh greens and herbs; summer offered berries and vegetables; autumn meant apples, pumpkins, and the slaughtering of livestock; whilst winter relied upon smoked fish, salted pork, dried beans, cabbage, onions, and root vegetables stored in cool cellars. Preservation was not merely convenient but essential, and a well-stocked pantry was a family’s insurance against the long months when little grew.
To modern diners accustomed to strawberries in January and asparagus in November, colonial New Yorkers would have found today’s supermarkets astonishing. Yet their own tables reflected something many of today’s finest chefs strive to recreate: local ingredients, seasonal cooking, and recipes shaped by the meeting of different cultures. The result was not merely the cuisine of early New York but the foundation upon which one of the world’s great dining cities would eventually be built.
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George delivers news for curious thinkers in a world of shortened attention spans.
Decades of research on how readers consume information when faced with Information Overload – led by George co-founder Jonathan Spira, one of the foremost authorities on the subject – ensures that each article gets straight to the point with no fluff and no bias.
George presents important news and events of the day clearly and concisely in a format better suited to the modern reader’s limited time and focus, without forsaking the founders’ traditional commitment to fact-driven news, commentary, and dispatches – all prepared by curious thinkers, for curious thinkers.
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Jonathan Spira, Alexander Khusid, Tim Perry, Christian Stampfer, Kurt Stolz, Anna Breuer, and Paul Riegler contributed to this issue of George.
The mark “George,” the tagline “A daily newspaper…,” and all of the newspaper’s content, images, photographs, and associated material are subject to copyright law.
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