Exclusive Preview of War of Lies: When George Washington Was the Target and Propaganda Was the Crime
Who forged George Washington's 1776 letters? Solving a 245-year-old history mystery through my new book.
My new book, War of Lies: When George Washington Was the Target and Propaganda Was the Crime, is now available for pre-order. It will be released Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in plenty of time for Father’s Day. Below is an exclusive preview excerpt for you.
A true story “history mystery,” War of Lies is one of several different types of books (nonfiction, mystery, fiction, children’s, and so on) that I am writing to help prepare Americans to celebrate America’s 250th birthday in 2026. Signed copies are available on my website shop.
Valley Forge Awakening
Great Awakenings. Sometimes awakenings happen all at once. A single shocking, nightmarish jolt is enough to awaken some souls from hazardous slumber. At other times, an awakening comes from restless sleep, with revelations arriving in bits and spurts, such as a lie here or a jealous jab there. These needles may trouble a conscience, but their punctures aren’t quite enough to keep some from snoring or dreaming through the tickling torment. When dawn comes, if their own sin is causing the trouble, they can seek peace by praying to God for forgiveness.
But what happens when the sins of others—whether rulers, trusted colleagues, or vicious enemies—are the cause of sleepless nights? What happens when deceivers spin a web of lies or leave a trail of corruption, falsehoods, betrayals, treason, disinformation, or death? Many souls are tossed and turned when clouds of injustice hover over head. What do the masses see during such moments? Tyranny. What do souls seek during these types of great awakenings? Independence. Liberty brings justice, integrity, forgiveness, and peace in its wake.
The Pennsylvania plateau known as Valley Forge was originally a sleepy countryside amplified by the slapping of a river on one side, the rustle of grass on the hilly second side and the fluttering of birds along the tree-lined ridge on the third. New sounds overtook the valley in the winter of 1778. This natural triangle was transformed by the hacks of axes and the grunts of men as they built twelve hundred log huts arranged in neat military rows. The sky was obscured by smoke from continuous camp fires, which they used to keep warm and cook tasteless flour fire cakes, the only food available when they first arrived.
That winter, Valley Forge was transformed into the camp of the Continental Army’s main division, which included twelve thousand poorly clad, hungry soldiers and four hundred women and children. These awakened patriots were united in fighting the tyranny imposed on their homeland by the British lion.
Throughout his reign, different actions taken by King George III had awakened British subjects throughout His Majesty’s thirteen American colonies. They saw tyranny as he pursued policies that taxed them without allowing them representation in Parliament, corrupted their governors and judges, abolished their local legislative bodies, and implemented martial law. The kinetic jolt had come in April 1775, when the authoritarian British general governing Massachusetts had ordered his red-coated soldiers to seize the colonists’ weapons and ammunition stores at Lexington and Concord. From the patriots’ point of view, the general’s officers had fired the first shots in the War for Independence.
Congress had quickly responded by naming George Washington of Virginia as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.
By May 1776, newspapers reported that patriots in Virginia had concluded that King George III and Parliament had responded to their petitions, protests, and objections with “increased insult, oppression, and a vigorous attempt to effect their total destruction.”
These Virginians had authorized their representatives to call for independence from England at a meeting of the Continental Congress. Their sentiments, which matched those of thousands throughout the colonies, came to fruition when Congress issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
By December 1777, after a few victories, even more defeats, and just as many retreats, General Washington had strategically chosen Valley Forge for the Continental Army’s winter encampment. Valley Forge’s location and natural barriers would give his army what it desperately needed: protection from the enemy, the better-trained British military and their hired Hessians occupying Philadelphia two dozen miles away.
Valley Forge was far enough away to prevent the Redcoats from launching a surprise attack as they had at Whitemarsh weeks earlier, but it was close enough for Washington to keep an eye on their movements out of Philadelphia. Fortunately, the valley had yet to hear the cacophonous cannonade of combat. Washington was determined to keep it that way. Though highly concerned about their need for clothing and food, Washington was also focused on taking advantage of winter’s slumber in the velvet valley to retool his soldiers’ skills.
Yet as St. Valentine’s Day approached in February 1778, Washington was hoping for the best surprise of all, the safe arrival of his wife, Martha. Near the huts at the confluence of Valley Creek and the Schuylkill River, he had rented a two-story stone house to occupy with Martha, while also sharing the parlors and living areas with two dozen officers and assistants. Such a claustrophobic arrangement would not surprise her. After all, Mrs. Washington had joined her husband in camp under similar circumstances the previous winters, in New Jersey in 1777 and Massachusetts in 1776. Washington had relied on her to entertain the officers, which enabled her to evaluate their loyalty and motives.
He knew that Martha was a good judge of character, as was Alexander Hamilton, a young upstart and new secretary. As much as he admired Hamilton’s zeal for the cause, from Washington’s perspective, this energetic officer had recently become concerned—too concerned—about a pesky internal matter called a cabal.
Captain Hamilton was one of Washington’s aide-de-camps. A few months earlier in the fall of 1777, Washington had lost the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania while Major General Horatio Gates had won the Battle of Saratoga in New York. Washington had sent Hamilton to Gates in New York in November with an order for Gates to send troops to him in Pennsylvania.
“General Gates had influence and interest elsewhere; he might use it, if he pleased, to discredit the measure there also. On the whole it appeared to me dangerous to insist on sending more troops from hence while General Gates appeared so warmly opposed to it,” Hamilton had written Washington about Gates’s defiance of Washington’s order to send him men. A conspiracy may have also led Gates to stall.
While in New York, Hamilton had also caught wind of a secret coup to replace Washington with Gates as Commander-in-Chief. Though Washington had confronted Gates and those involved in his polite and honorable way and believed that they were now more loyal to him than ever, Hamilton remained worried. He still feared that this monster of a cabal wasn’t unmasked but was merely hiding its head.
By February 14, 1778, Martha had not yet arrived. Instead, the post brought Washington a different kind of surprise, one that awakened him to a new danger. This correspondence involved Martha, though it was hardly a valentine. Instead, Washington received a handbill published in New York. Circulating among taverns and shops, this flyer featured a letter said to be from Washington to Martha dated June 24, 1776. One line was particularly salacious, especially for the well-mannered Washington and the prim petite Martha.
“How could you imagine that I distrusted either your prudence or your fidelity?” the letter asked. Was this true? Did George Washington doubt his wife’s loyalty to him or to the cause?
Another damaging assertion was also implied in the letter: Had the commanding general told Martha that his real devotion was to King George III and not to America?
“You, who know my heart, know that there is not a wish nearer to it than this is. . . Pity this cannot be accomplished without fixing on me that sad name, Rebel,” the typeset letter declared. “I love my king. A soldier, a good man cannot but love him.’
Shortly after Martha’s arrival at Valley Forge, Washington showed her the published letter so she could “see what obliging folks there were in the world.” His sarcasm was as strong as his sense of honor and candor in this moment.
“It is no easy matter to decide whether the villainy, or artifice of these letters, is greatest,” Washington declared.
Then the problem grew worse. Washington learned that this fake letter was not only circulating throughout New York City, where the British military had their headquarters, but it was also published in a newspaper there. Next, he discovered that extracts of this same letter had also been republished in the Pennsylvania Ledger. He soon learned that friends in Virginia had also seen it.
Next, Washington was awakened to even more terrible news. There was more than one letter. In fact, like a gunner firing cannon rounds, a New York newspaper editor with the surname of Rivington was publishing a new letter said to be from Washington to members of his family once a week. How long would this go on? Unlike the general public, the British military, and some of his officers, Washington instantly recognized these letters for what they were.
Forgeries. Washington knew these letters were fake.
“Not one word of which did I ever write. The enemy are governed by no principles that ought to actuate honest men—no wonder then that forgery should be amongst their other crimes,” Washington fumed privately, though he kept mum publicly. A mysterious passage from the Martha letter provided a clue to the counterfeiter’s intention.
“My attention is this moment called off to the discovery, or pretended discovery, of a plot. It is impossible to develop the mystery of it. No doubt it will make a good deal of noise in the country; and there are those who think it useful to have the minds of the people kept constantly on the fret by rumors of this sort. Thus much only I can find out with certainty, that it will be a fine field for a war of lies on both sides.”
The war of lies was fought through these letters, a disinformation or propaganda campaign using paper and a printing press as weapons. The real question was this: who wrote these letters? Who was behind this plot of forgery, this “fake news,” this new monster? Was this a propaganda tool of the British elite, or was this part of the internal cabal to remove Washington as Commander-in-Chief?
Who had the motive, proximity, and skill to make these letters credible? How would Washington respond? Was this the first time that he had faced false reports against his personal character in newspapers? War of Lies will answer these and other questions that have lingered for more than 247 years.
There seems to be nothing new under the Sun when it comes to American politics. I have read some of the fliers and newsprint produced back then and find much of it as mean spirited as most things we see today. Today it happens faster.