moar MoAR!: The Slavery Issue

Is there anything more fitting than visiting the Museum of the American Revolution (again) on Memorial Day? I certainly can’t think of anything, for without the people and events exhibited within, we wouldn’t even have a Memorial Day.

Tomb of the Unknown (RevWar) Soldier, Washington Square, Philadelphia. The Tomb’s inscription reads, “Beneath this stone rests a soldier of Washington’s army who died to give you liberty.”
 

This was my second trip to the MoAR, and I was determined to focus on content and not exhibit design. I would like to report that I was much more successful this time than last at staying on task, although I did still have an urgent and visceral need to touch every surface I passed.

[EDIT: So concerned am I that I sound ill-informed on this topic that I went to the library and got several books about slavery and the Revolutionary era. Stay tuned…]

Books!: Geo. Washington’s Secret Six

One of my recent areas of fascination, in addition to everything else, and inspired almost wholly by AMC’s (fantasmagorical) TURN: Washington’s Spies, has been the story of the Culper Spy Ring (link 2) (link 3). I wrote a thing a while ago about the cinematography of the show, which for me is a huge part of the attraction, but the storylines are pretty compelling as well.

Thus, imagine my excitement when, at the library, I came across this book titled George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution. It is not the book on which the show is based, but had a short line between this book and the basis for the show, with a lot of artistic license thrown in for cinematic reasons.

To the best of my ability, I will refrain from doing a comparison with the show, because the show and this book aren’t really related outside of the fact that they occupy the same realms. It would be like me trying to evaluate you based on a run-in with one of your cousins, and that wouldn’t be fair to anybody.

Without further ado, the book: