The day Washington sent the army home

Two discharges, one date

Washington's page records two certified soldier's discharges, both dated 8 June 1783. One, graded 6 for its autograph by PSA/DNA, sold for $15,250. The other, countersigned by his aide Jonathan Trumbull Jr., sold for $13,446.

The two certified cut signatures on the same page sold for $10,980 and $14,043. So for roughly the price of a signature cut out of something else, a buyer gets the whole document: the soldier's name, his regiment, how long he served, and the date. Here is what that date means.

Peace, but no treaty

By the spring of 1783 the fighting was over. Washington ordered the end of hostilities from Newburgh in April, and the army waited in its cantonment at New Windsor for a peace treaty that had not yet been signed.

Keeping an army costs money, and Congress had very little. On 26 May, on a motion from Alexander Hamilton, it told Washington to grant furloughs to the men who had enlisted for the duration of the war. They would be discharged properly once the definitive treaty was concluded. Hamilton had first wanted to discharge them outright, and Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance, said he would have preferred that too. Furlough was the compromise.

Early in June, the men began leaving. They went home with a fraction of their back pay. The rest came as notes worth little at the time, and many soldiers sold them.

What the paper says

Each discharge is a printed form, filled in by hand, headed from headquarters and signed "Go: Washington." The front certifies that the soldier has faithfully served the United States for a stated number of years and is "hereby DISCHARGED from the American Army."

The back takes some of that away. The printed text there says the certificate "shall not avail the Bearer as a Discharge" until the definitive treaty of peace is ratified, and that until then he is to be considered on furlough. The Treaty of Paris was signed that September and ratified early in 1784. So every one of these men left the army on a promise.

They usually carry Trumbull's countersignature, "By His Excellency's Command," and a regimental adjutant's note that the discharge was registered in the books of the regiment. Many also record the Badge of Merit. Washington created it on 7 August 1782 for soldiers who had served more than three years with good conduct, worn as a chevron on the left sleeve, one for every three years. A line reading "honored with the Badge of Merit for six years faithful service" means two chevrons. It is a different award from the Badge of Military Merit, the purple heart-shaped cloth badge for a single act of gallantry, and auction catalogues sometimes mix the two up.

The same day as the farewell

The discharges on the market are dated across several days in early June: the seventh, the eighth, the ninth. The 8 June ones share their date with Washington's Circular to the States.

That letter opens with him saying that the object of his command being accomplished, he was "now preparing to resign it into the hands of Congress, and to return to that domestic retirement." He then set out four things he thought the new country needed, starting with "an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head," and reminded them that he had pledged himself to the army that their country would do it "complete and ample justice."

So on the day Washington wrote the states about what they owed the army, he was also signing the papers of men leaving it without most of what they were owed. The Raab Collection repeats the story that he signed the discharges himself so that each soldier would know he was personally grateful. That story is hard to prove, but the signatures are his.

Does the date add anything?

Not much that I can see. Outside this index, a Heritage discharge dated 8 June sold for about $9,000 in 2019, and an RR Auction discharge dated 9 June sold for about $16,400 in 2024. Ours, at $13,446 and $15,250, sit between them. Buyers do not appear to pay extra for the eighth.

What they do pay for is the rest of the page.

Condition. These were working papers. Veterans carried them, folded them and later used them to prove their service when they applied for pensions, so many survive worn, split at the folds and repaired. A clean one is the exception.

The signature. One of ours carries a PSA/DNA autograph grade of 6. A bold, unrepaired "Go: Washington" is worth more than one an old mend runs through.

The soldier. This is where discharges get interesting. Sotheby's offered one for Brister Baker, a Black soldier of the Second Connecticut Regiment who served six years. The Raab Collection sold one for Albert Van Orden, whose service ran through Trenton, Valley Forge and Yorktown. A discharge is a record of a person, and the more that is known about him, the more it is worth.

The back. Some versos record what came next. One Heritage discharge carries a transfer of land from the soldier to another man, and a Cowan's discharge records the soldier signing over his land rights in 1784. Plenty of soldiers short of money sold what they had, and the back of a discharge sometimes shows it.

What to check before buying

Buy it certified. Washington discharges have been forged before. The Washington Papers project records that the forger Joseph Cosey made one, for a soldier named Edward Bear, complete with a Trumbull signature and stains he applied to age it. Goldin described one of the two discharges on this index as the subject of a notable fraud case. I could not trace that case anywhere else, so I would treat it as a reason to want strong paperwork rather than as a selling point.

Read the printed text. A genuine 1783 discharge carries the furlough wording on the back and the Badge of Merit line on the front, though the bottom of the front is often trimmed or lost.

Check the countersignature. Trumbull's "By His Excellency's Command" is normal. Its absence is not fatal, but it is a question to ask.

Look up the soldier. Regimental and pension records survive for many of these men. A discharge for a soldier with a documented story is a better buy than an anonymous one at the same price.

The thing worth sitting with

A Washington cut signature is a name with nothing around it. A discharge from June 1783 is the end of a war on a single sheet: a soldier, his years of service, a badge he earned, a promise on the back that the peace would come, and the commander's signature on the week he told the country he was going home.

On this index, those two things cost about the same. For my money, only one of them tells you anything.

We have looked at what the rest of Washington's paper costs in why his letter about raising the army outsold his signature eight times over, and at whether his presidency adds to the price in when "signed as president" is worth paying for. You can read how we work the numbers out.

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