As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week Jonathan looks at George Washington on the eve of his birthday in 1776. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors

In February 1798, President John Adams shocked the then-capital of Philadelphia when one of his terser letters leaked to a newspaper. “I have received your polite invitation,” he wrote, “and embrace the earliest opportunity of informing you that I decline accepting it.” Had the second president tried (and he may have), he couldn’t have found a less tactful way of announcing that he wouldn’t attend a ball in honor of George Washington’s birthday on February 22. Although the usually wise Abigail Adams insisted it would have been improper for her husband as the sitting president to celebrate a former president’s birthday, she got it backward: Among the many reasons to honor Washington was his resolution to retire to private life after two terms in office.