Declaring Independence USA 250

Interesting small exhibition at the British Museum using the Washington Peace Medal to tell stories of the American War of Independence.

The medal was made in Boston by Paul Revere presented by the Revolutionaries to members of the Wabanaki Confederacy as part of a treaty of friendship and alliance against the British. Later in the war it was confiscated by the British and given to George III as a war trophy.

I have to say I’ve just learnt all that from the website for the show not the show itself whose other objects highlighted diplomatic gifts between indigenous people and British and Revolutionaries to emphasise the interaction of the three nations as part of the story which they’d failed to tell.

My fact of the day is that only two ceremonial handwritten parchment copies of the Declaration survive. The copy signed by the delegates to the Continental Congress in 1776 is on display in the National Archives in Washington D.C. The other is in Chichester in the West Sussex Records Office and will be on show in the exhibition in September.

Closes 29 November 2026