My mission is to share with you some of what I’ve learned and experienced as I’ve read firsthand accounts of the American Revolutionary War. I’ve always liked history, but I never really got into it until somebody gave me some Library of America volumes: writings of Thomas Paine, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and the many debates about ratifying the U.S. Constitution. From that moment, I knew that I had found my niche in life.
I began reading the letters and writings of these men, and I began to get to know them personally. Of course I already knew their names and some important facts about them — things I had been taught — but as I read what they wrote, what they said, I began to form my own opinions. I began to know them — as people, not merely as historical figures; as human beings, not as flawless marble statues; as fallible people who could and did make mistakes and sometimes learn from them; as people whom I can respect and sometimes admire while acknowledging their imperfections.
I have never found as much enjoyment in reading books about history as I have in reading the words of the people who lived it. It’s harder to get all the facts straight that way — a historian who has spent months or years researching a particular event will be able to give you more details than a single eyewitness can — but for me, the historical documents bring to life the people who lived then and the times they lived through. They didn’t see themselves as living in a documentary any more than you and I do, but little things about their daily lives — things they took for granted — peek through what they had to say about events that have since become historic or even legendary.
The old saying, “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes,” applies just as much to people who lived centuries ago as it does to your next-door neighbor. If you want to get to know someone, you shouldn’t just read a book about them; you need to spend time with them, to walk beside them as they go through life, as they deal with their challenges (we all have them), as they make their choices, as they fall down and get up. That’s what I’ve done, in a small way, and that’s what I hope to share with you.