Continental Army

Nathanael Greene

Continental Army general; key to winning the war in the South; 1742—86.

Alexander Hamilton

Washington’s aide-de-camp, lawyer, contributor to the Federalist Papers, Secretary of the Treasury; 1755/1757—1804.

Henry Knox

Continental Army general, chief artillery officer, first Secretary of War; 1750—1806.

John Laurens

Continental Army officer, aide-de-camp to Washington, son of Henry Laurens; 1754—82.

Charles Lee

Continental Army general, formerly a British officer; 1732—82.

Henry Lee III

”Light Horse Harry”; Continental Army officer, Virginia governor; 1756—1818.

Richard Montgomery

Irish-born Continental Army general, formerly a British officer; 1738—75.

Tench Tilghman

Washington, Lafayette, and Tilghman at Yorktown, 1784

Aide-de-camp to Washington throughout the Revolutionary War; 1744—1786.

George Washington

Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army; first President; 1732—99.

Anthony Wayne

Continental Army general, defeated the British at Stony Point; 1745—96.

Visitors to Monticello often wonder at its practical accessories. Jefferson labored a month to save a minute. His home was impractical from the start — by reason of its very site (on a mountain), by the height given the first version of the building (later disguised in a way that left useless spaces in and around its dome), by the perpetual course of its dismantling and reassembly. To make the house more convenient, he made his daughter and her children live for years in a chaos of artistic second thoughts, sometimes sheltered only by canvas as the roof rose, fell, and assumed new shapes in his mind.

— Garry Wills

Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1978)