No. 220.
President Hayes to President Grévy.
Great and Good Friend: I have the honor to inform you that the Congress of the United States have adopted a joint resolution authorizing and requesting me to extend to the government and people of France a cordial invitation to unite with the government and people of the United States on the 19th day of October, 1881, in a fit and appropriate observance of the centennial anniversary of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.
It becomes therefore my agreeable duty to hasten, in the name of the government and people of the United States, to tender this invitation to the government and people of France. Our friendship with France, formed during the war of our revolution, rendered glorious by feats of arms performed by soldiers of the two nations on the same victorious fields, confirmed by a hundred years of peace, and now happily strengthened [Page 402] by our common enjoyment of popular institutions of government, has always been highly valued and cherished by the American people. I trust that the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of a victory which consecrated the early union of our arms may serve to draw still closer’ the bonds of fraternal regard and amity between the two republics.
I embrace this opportunity to repeat the assurances of my fervent desire for the prosperity and happiness of yourself and of the great republic over which you have so fortunately been called upon to preside.
Your good friend,
By the President:
Wm. M. EVARTS,
Secretary of State.