Previous: America Welcomes The Nation’s Guest
Lafayette (right) and Washington at Valley Forge. By John Ward Dunsmore (1907)
America stood poised on the cusp of celebrating the golden anniversary of its birth as a nation. With all the rising patriotism came a burst of nostalgia. America’s first and greatest generation—the heroes of the Revolutionary War—were fast leaving their mortal coil. The heirs of that founding cohort desperately wanted one last chance to hear the tales of that victory from those that were there.
Of all the people they might select to focus on, why choose a Frenchman born to the aristocracy?
Well, for one thing, his life story shows he had long ago shorn off the mantle of gentry. Indeed, he not only had the physical scars of Brandywine to prove it, he also had the Continue Reading “Lafayette’s Farewell Tour: Why Lafayette?”
Liberty Or Death: Which Would You Choose? (And Why?)
The crowd bustles in St. John’s Church. No scheduled sermon today, though, but they would soon get one. It’s Thursday, March 23, 1775, day four of the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond, Virginia. The air wafts thick with rebellion. Tensions between Great Britain and its American colonies could not have been higher.
Just ten days back, on March 13, British authorities under New York’s Cadwallader Colden, Continue Reading “Liberty Or Death: Which Would You Choose? (And Why?)”