On this day 250 years ago, George Washington wrote to Andrew Lewis that Lord Hillsborough, the former Secretary of State for the Colonies, had held a “malignant disposition towards Americans,” so Washington disregarded Hillsborough’s interpretation “that Provincial officers were not comprehended in that Proclamation” authorizing land grants to veterans of the French and Indian War. Washington reasoned that “the services of a Provincial Officer” were “as worthy as those of a regular one”, and that the Proclamation land grants could “only be withheld from him with injustice.”

Source: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/71162a0b-144f-48cd-b6da-567f105ba785/content at p. 94.