Jim Kaplan‘s annual dead-of-night July 4 walking tour of lower Manhattan is officially sold out, but below are excerpts from and links to his recent articles in Last Exit magazine on Horatio Gates and Thomas Paine, both of whose lives he celebrates on the tour; Jim claims Gates is the greatest of the Revolutionary War generals:

Although most people do not consider New York as important a Revolutionary War site as Massachusetts or Virginia, New York was actually equally if not more important than those places in the revolution. Furthermore, contrary to the belief of most New Yorkers, the American Revolution was critically important to what New York is today. Two of the major battles of the Revolution—the Battle of Long Island and the Battle of Saratoga—were fought in New York. The Lower Manhattan hosts the graves of three very significant Revolutionary War generals: Richard Montgomery, hero of the battle of Quebec; Alexander Hamilton, the commander of the final assault at Yorktown; and Horatio Gates, commanding officer of the victorious American troops at Saratoga.

For the full article, click on the following link: J. Kaplan—Horatio Gates, New York’s Forgotten Revolutionary

***

On June 8, 1809, a 72-year-old man died in poverty and relative obscurity in a rooming house on Grove Street in Greenwich Village. His name was Thomas Paine, and 33 years earlier in 1776 he had been the most important political theoretician in the country. The New York Post on June 9, 1809, one of the few papers even to note his passing, stated that he “lived long, did some good and much harm.”

Despite his modest obituary, Paine has not been forgotten, although many think he still has yet to receive full recognition for his achievements. In the last ten years there have been more than five full-length biographies of Paine, most of which argue that he was one of the most important men in modern history. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death, I will be giving a walking tour on Sunday, June 7 sponsored by the Fraunces Tavern Museum that examines Paine’s underappreciated impact on the growth of New York City, where he resided at the time of his death. In a sense it is to refute the New York Post obituary of 200 years ago.

For the full article on Paine, click on this link: J. Kaplan—Thomas Paine’s America