The worldwide implications of the American War for Independence are made clear on February 17, 1782 as the American-allied French navy begins a 14-month-long series of five battles with the British navy in the Indian Ocean.

On March 8, 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen murder 96 Christian Indians—39 children, 29 women and 28 men—by hammering their skulls with mallets from behind as they kneel unarmed, praying and singing, in their Moravian Mission at Gnadenhutten in the Ohio Country.

On June 20, 1782, Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States after six years of discussion.

On July 11, 1782, British Royal Governor Sir James Wright, along with several civil officials and military officers, flee the city of Savannah, Georgia, and head to Charleston, South Carolina. As part of the British evacuation, a group consisting of British regulars led by General Alured Clarke traveled to New York, while Colonel Thomas Brown led a mixed group of rangers and Indians to St. Augustine, Florida. The remaining British soldiers were transported to the West Indies aboard the frigate HMS Zebra and the sloop of war HMS Vulture.

On August 7, 1782, in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, creates the “Badge for Military Merit,” a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece of silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched across the face in silver. It would come to be widely known as the Purple Heart.