Would George Washington embrace the migrant caravan?

In a chapter of her new book, “These Truths: A History of the United States,” historian Jill Lepore writes about the day in November 1783 when the last British ship left New York harbor, ending the Revolutionary War. Soon after, Gen. George Washington rode back into town, a victorious return to a city he’d hastily abandoned seven years earlier. He and his troops celebrated in Fraunces Tavern on Broadway, where, as the Independent New-York Gazette recounted, Washington made 13 toasts. One of them was:

“May America be an Asylum to the persecuted of the earth!”

Today, President Trump has ordered more than 5,000 U.S. troops to repel a “caravan” of asylum seekers from Central America, telling Fox News’s Laura Ingraham “this is an invasion of our country.” But our first president offered asylum as one of America’s assets. Repeatedly.