"For four eventful months in the summer and fall of 1783, Princeton served as the meeting place of the Continental Congress and the capital of the new American nation. Driven from Philadelphia by a Continental Army mutiny, Congress moved to Princeton in June of 1783, not long after one of its greatest triumphs - the ratification of a provisional treaty of peace with Great Britain ... Charles Thomson was superbly equipped to chronicle the story of the Continental Congress' stay in Princeton and its often uneasy relationship with the town. Thomson was one of the leaders in the revolutionary struggle against Great Britain in Philadelphia for almost a decade after the Stamp Act Crisis, and from 1774 to 1789 he occupied the strategic position of Secretary to Congress"--Jacket.