PATRIOTS1

media type="custom" key="5081779"**Revolutionary War: 1775-1782** Published eight years after George Washington's death, David Ramsay's **Life of George Washington** achieved great popularity. A contemporary of Washington, historian Ramsay writes with the knowledge and insights one acquires only by being on the scene. Actually, Ramsay was an active player in the momentous events of America's unfolding drama. He was twice elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, and served as its chairman in a specially-appointed post. Ramsay's Life of George Washington — like his widely-acclaimed History of the America Revolution — is part of
 * Henry, Patrick (1736-1799), a American patriot lawyer of Virginia. He was educated in a country school and in a school kept by his father. Henry tried merchandising and farming, but lost money at both. He then turned his mind to the study of law, and was admitted to practice in 1760. Three years later he won reputation by the management of a famous law case, known as the Parson's Cause. At that day the clergymen of Virginia, like those of England, were entitled to salaries from public funds. Their salaries were reckoned in part, at least, in the currency of the day, namely tobacco. In 1758 the Virginian House of Burgesses ||  || ||

As the war began, Paul Revere printed the first Continental currency. On March 29, 1776, Revere became a member of the Committee of Correspondence. On April 10, he was commissioned a Major of the militia. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel that fall. In late 1778, he was put in command of three artillery companies of the Massachusetts State Train of Artillery at Castle Island in Boston Harbor. After participating in the Penobscot Expedition in July-August 1779, Revere was accused of disobedience, unsoldierly conduct and cowardice. On September 6, 1779, he was relieved of his command at Castle Island and placed under house arrest. A His owner consenting, Armistead enlisted and served the future hero of the French Revolution so effectively that after the war the general was to state that his spying activities were "industriously collected and more faithfully delivered." Armistead had carried out important commissions so effectively that the general recommended him as worthy of "every reward his situation could admit of." The brevity of Lafayette's testimonial understated his intelligent agent's resourcefulness. Taking advantage of British eagerness for Negro aid, Armistead had risked his life by pretending to supply Cornwallis with information damaging to the Americans -- a bit of playacting so perfectly performed that not until the defeated Cornwallis. ||
 * Trying desperately to raise four hundred laborers, teamsters, and badly needed cavalry mounts, Lafayette had advised General Washington that "nothing but a treaty of alliance with the Negroes can find us dragoon Horses [because] it is by this means the enemy have so formidable a Cavalry." And it was during this period, with Cornwallis still formidable and the Americans badly in need of intelligence as to his strength and strategy, that James Armistead sought his master's permission to join Lafayette.