How funny that I just ran a across a website that reminded me of the discussion here of late. I have been reading this little book that was my father's, called "A Short History of the Revolution" by John Hyde Preston, and decided to do a google search on it. I came up with this page. Here's a quote: >Now it is very hard indeed to get at a clue to the actual character >of the enlisted men. Literacy was so rare among the common men in >the Midlands, native or foreign, that from the whole of the >Pennsylvania Line only one apparently authentic account survives, A >History of the Life and Services of Captain Samuel Dewees, who was >an enlisted man, not an officer, when he served in the foreign >brigades. This book appeared in 1844, and was written - edited, it >is claimed - by one John Smith Hanna, and as sixty-three years had >passed since the revolt of the Line, its accuracy is open to >question. Aside from this, there are the host of books published in >the first five decades of the nineteenth century and a considerable >number of manuscript papers and letters. But all of these books are >open to question; they are poorly written, full of homilies, and >without exception contain no real people. In the Parson Weems >tradition, they simply make the problem of investigation more >difficult. The manuscript papers are better, but they rarely >originate in the Pennsylvania Line. http://www.trussel.com/hf/reply.htm The Preston book, by the way, is quite amusing. Julianne