Creative History

  The nascent United States is nearly dead only a few years after it was first born--dead, not on the battlefield, but rather economically.  On the homefront, arable land is being destroyed left and right as the British and Continental armies fight back and forth across New England and the mid-Atlantic states.  The American dollar, created by Congress just after the Declaration of Independence was ratified, continues to plummet in value thanks in large part to a relentless campaign of British counterfeiting and a rate of inflation that by the end of the 1770’s increases at the staggering rate of 47% each month! This rate of hyperinflation has given rise to the commonplace term, “As worthless as a Continental,” in reference to the Continental dollar, a phrase that is used by both patriot and loyalist alike, to denote anything, be it literal or intrinsic, that is perceived as having no value whatsoever. And worst of all foodstuffs and basic necessities are becoming both mor...

            Around one in the morning on September 28, 1778 just a few miles across the border from New York in northern New Jersey six companies of British infantry stand in silence with bayonets fixed and at the ready. The redcoats wait in the pitch darkness without a sound.  A number of local Tory guides have led them to this spot on the side of a road in Bergen County.  The redcoats are under the command of Major Turner Staubenzie.  The Major has gained a reputation for brutality and he has ordered that his troops give no quarter and make no sound. Over the past three years no place in the whole of America has been more ravaged by the War for Independence than New Jersey.  British and American, patriot and loyalist alike, have fought a ceaseless struggle for supremacy and forage all across the Garden State from New York City to Philadelphia.  Both armies have laid waste to the land and occupied and vacated the same to...