Rare 240-year-old George Washington war letter comes up for sale

On April 26, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, a large British raiding party attacked the American supply depot at Danbury, Connecticut, burning houses and barns and destroying stores of shoes, tents, medicine and food.

It seemed like a huge loss for the American forces under Gen. George Washington, who had been leading the battle for independence from Britain for almost two years.

But on May 7, Washington wrote a letter to a worried subordinate, saying the raid had not been a disaster.

“The loss … at Danbury is to be regretted,” he wrote. “But I cannot consider it in the important light you seem to.”

The British force had been repeatedly attacked by American militia as it retreated. Despite the raid, Washington realized that the British force, which included pro-British loyalists, had inflamed the countryside against them.

“I am inclined to believe [in the future] they will pursue such measures with a great degree of caution,” he wrote.

The letter, more than 240 years old, is written on both sides of a single sheet of paper roughly 8 by 12 inches. It is stained and discolored in many places and has what looks like a grimy fingerprint near Washington’s ornate signature. On Wednesday, an Ardmore, Pennsylvania, firm that buys and sells historical documents announced that it had acquired the rare letter and was putting it up for sale on Presidents’ Day. Price: $150,000.

“The letter is just so evocative of the spirit of 1775,” said Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, based outside Philadelphia. “You had average citizens coming together to fight off an invading and, in their minds, oppressing army.”

It gives the feeling of the minutemen, “forming a militia, grabbing their muskets, their arms,” he said. “A letter like this with this powerful, evocative statement reflecting on the essence of the American Revolution, they are very, very hard to find.”

Raab said his firm bought the letter from a private collector in New England. “We keep our buyers and sellers anonymous, across the board, as a matter of policy,” he said, adding later that he did not know where the seller acquired it.

Washington likely dictated the letter to an aide - as he did with most of his wartime letters - and then signed it with his ornate signature, Raab said. The future president wrote his letter from his headquarters at Morristown, New Jersey, to Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons.

Other letters or documents signed by Washington have come up for sale or auction in the past, often with a hefty price tag.

In 2022, Freeman’s auction house in Philadelphia sold a letter Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson for $2.4 million. In 2023, Raab sold another Washington letter for $250,000, and currently has two more for sale, for $65,000 and $35,000.

The April 1777 Danbury raid was a relatively small expedition in the bloody, drawn-out war for independence that would go on for six more years. Almost 2,000 Red Coats under the direction of Maj. Gen. William Tryon, the royal governor of New York, sailed across Long Island Sound from British-controlled New York and landed near Westport, Connecticut, according to ConnecticutHistory.org.

Since the start of the war in 1775, Washington’s Continental Army had suffered repeated setbacks. But in the winter of 1776-1777 it had delivered sharp defeats on the British and their German allies in New Jersey - once at Princeton and twice at Trenton.

The supply depot at Danbury was 25 miles inland from Long Island Sound, and the Americans believed it was safe from seizure, the historian Richard Van Wyck Buel Jr. wrote on the ConnecticutHistory.org website.

But it was only lightly defended, and the British saw it as an easy target.

After the British landed, the alarm was spread and some of the supplies at Danbury were moved to safety, according to a report in the Hartford Courant newspaper a week later.

But plenty was left behind. Thousands of barrels of beef, flour and rice, as well as rum, sugar, molasses and coffee were destroyed, according to a British report posted on the history website.

The British piled the American supplies in the streets and burned them. They also burned about 20 houses and stores in the town, the Courant reported.

The American defenders were relatively helpless. They numbered only about 100 and were short on ammunition. “It was not thought prudent to make a stand,” the newspaper reported. They retreated to safety.

But as the British worked on burning and destroying supplies, armed American units from the countryside began to assemble, according to historian Stephen Darley’s 2015 book, “Call to Arms: The Patriot Militia in the 1777 British Raid on Danbury, Connecticut.”

They were led, heroically, by Gen. Benedict Arnold, who would later join the British cause and work as a British spy. When Tryon, in command of the British, learned about the arrival of American reinforcements, he decided to leave Danbury and head for the safety of his ships, Darley wrote.

But the Americans tried to block their retreat at multiple points. Though the British eventually escaped, roughly 25 of their soldiers were killed. More than 100 were wounded, and about 25 were reported missing in action. The American losses were only slightly less.

But Washington knew the fight had given the British pause. As he wrote in his letter, should the enemy raid again, he was sure the American people would “recur to arms.”