Publisher's Synopsis
We all know about Washington's crossing of the Delaware and Betsy Ross's stitching together the Stars and Stripes, but how about a little-known, valid reason for the war itself and why General George was able to survive a plague that wiped out many of his fellow countrymen? History buff Tim Rowland provides an entertaining look at happenings during and surrounding the Revolutionary War that you won't find in history books. He digs into the war's major events and reveals the unknown, bizarre, and often wildly amusing things the participants were doing while breaking away from Great Britain. For example, conventional wisdom says that no taxation without representation was an important reason for the revolution, but not in the way we've been told. Strange but true, the spark that touched off the revolution was in fact a tax cut. During the French and Indian War and then again in the first year of the revolution, the British were accused of biological warfare. So feared was the disease that soldiers began to illegally inoculate themselves. Washington himself was immune, thanks to a Caribbean trip taken as a young man when his brother Lawrence sought a cure for tuberculosis.
