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Unlike other Founders, Benjamin Franklin's fortune increased rather than decreased during the American Revolution.

Early map of Manhattan In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan. In 1775, George Washington set out from Mount Vernon in his chariot for a five-day journey to attend the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In 1776, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first to renounce allegiance to King George III. In 1776, Washington felt the war stretching in opposite directions. In New York, he manages encampments delayed b

“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to known.” Silence Doogood (aka Benjamin Franklin)

Nassaue Hall The College of New Jersey (Princeton University) would close in 1776 when the war reached Princeton. The British would occupy the college and burn its fine library. Many of the books in this library were brought to Princeton from Scotland by Reverend Witherspoon. Witherspoon would attempt to restore the library but would die before it was completed. His own personal papers were destroyed as well. The college would reopen in November of 1778.

“If your cause is just, you may look with confidence to the Lord and entreat him to plead it as his own… I willingly embrace the opportunity of declaring my opinion without any hesitation that the cause in which America is now in arms is the cause of justice, of liberty, and of human natures… The knowledge of God and his truths have from the beginning of the world been chiefly, if not entirely, confined to those parts of the earth where some degree of liberty and political ju

Mrs. Emma Clarissa Clement In 1776, Washington was managing an overworked army. He directs brigade majors to ensure every regiment shares equally in duty. In 1776, Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander in chief of the Continental Navy, writes from Providence, thanking him for the temporary use of army men. Hopkins says he will send them back to New York in the sloop Providence, but he also reports that the fleet remains “sickly onboard all the Vessels” and cannot yet put to s