One of the best-known facts about his war service, the time he knelt in prayer at Valley Forge, was almost certainly untrue. A bestselling work of fiction in the 1800s, The Legends of the American Revolution, 1776, included a story called “The Fourth of July, 1776.” A quasi-angel—“a tall slender man…dressed in a dark robe”—mysteriously appears among the Founders in Philadelphia and delivers a five-minute speech (“God has given America to be free!”) that makes them finally stop arguing and sign the Declaration. Then he mysteriously disappears. Americans from across the religious spectrum chose
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