It is well to remember, in these days, that George Washington was in
reality an Englishman who fought a German king whom chance had seated
on the throne of England. And it is well to recall also that George the
Third, though obstinate and wrong-headed enough, gave in at last with
a better grace than might have been expected. To John Adams, our first
minister to England, he said: _Sir, I will be very free with you. I was
the last to consent to the separation, but the separation having been
made ... I have always said and I say now, that I would be the first to
meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power._