Although the bicentennial of American independence is just over a year away, it is the unhappy fact that the United States has not yet expressed the slightest appreciation to those who did the most to make that independence possible.

The foregoing assertion will of course evoke instant, loud, and repeated contradiction to the effect that we have memorialized every American hero of the Revolution from General Washington down to Sergeant Jasper of South Carolina; that foreign volunteers such as Lafayette and Pulaski have long been honored by place-names throughout the land; and that in Kentucky, Bourbon County (as well as the potent beverage named after it) and the cities of Louisville, Paris, and Versailles commemorate the French monarchy without whose aid we could not have won. But —and this is the present point—we have not yet extended even minimal recognition to those who really made the greatest contribution to the American victory: the British leaders whose thoroughgoing and indeed monumental incompetence made it possible for the American colonies to win a war that on paper they were certain to lose.

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