Washington had welcomed the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France. It must, he said, “chalk out a plain and easy road to independence.” That alliance had brought Rochambeau’s army and Admiral DeGrasse’s fleet to Yorktown. But with victory Americans began to look for ways to sever the alliance. John Jay, the peace negotiator in Paris in 1782, though instructed to take no decision without the “knowledge and concurrence” of France, opened a back channel to the British in violation of the alliance’s proscription against a separate peace. Jay confided to Benjamin Franklin, “Let us be grateful to the
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