Justin Conkey was too young to fight in the Revolution of 1776, but now it is 1787 and he is fourteen. Justin is ready to fight, even if he has only his father's old sword to protect him. But once on the battlefield, war is not what he expected. It is dangerous and frightening and nothing makes sense. Throughout a particularly bitter winter the young man is desperate to prove that he too can be a hero-not realizing that many times heroes turn out...

Eyewitness account of the American Revolution.

Letters, diaries, memoirs, interviews, ballads, newspaper articles, and speeches depict life and events in the American colonies in the second half of the eighteenth century, with an emphasis on the years of the Revolutionary War.

""The Rights of Man." What does that mean? In 1789 that question rippled all around the world. Do all men have rights--not just nobles and kings? What then of enslaved people, women, the original inhabitants of the Americas? In the new United States a bill of rights was passed, while in France the nation tumbled toward revolution. In the Caribbean preachers brought word of equality, while in the South Pacific sailors mutinied. New knowledge was exploding,...