When Washington loses it, on September 15th-this day, two hundred and forty-nine years ago-it will stay in British hands for seven years and two months and ten days, because November 25, 1783, is Evacuation Day, the day the British finally fucking leave New York.
Some are instantly recognizable-Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson--while other figures will be less familiar. Standing beside George Washington is a man he enslaved, Harry Washington, for whom no image exists. Altogether, the figures represent different sides of the war, of the period's political ferment, and of early American society itself, and convey the ambition of this special issue: to capture the Revolutionary era in all of its complexity, contradictions, and ingenuity.
Three miles south of Windsor Castle, in the western exurbs of London, stands a 25-ton equestrian statue of King George III, cast from old cannons in the decade after his death in 1820. Dressed as Marcus Aurelius, in toga and laurel crown, he sits astride his charger, regal and oversize, honored if not revered for a reign that lasted almost 60 years, from the creation of the first British empire in the Seven Years' War through the final defeat of Napoleon.
Flintlocks and muskets are among the earliest firearms and were used from the 1600s through the early 1800s. A flintlock is a type of firing mechanism that uses a piece of flint striking steel to ignite gunpowder, while a musket refers to the long gun itself, typically smoothbore and loaded from the muzzle.
