Private Yankee Doodle
BEING A narrative of some of the adventures, dangers and sufferings of a revolutionary soldier, interspersed with anecdotes of incidents that occurred within his own observation.
April 1962 | Volume 13, Issue 3
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However, Martin continued to amuse himself by pen sketching and writing poetry and occasional lyrics for hymns. And he appears to have taken a proverbial second lease on life, for at seventy he wrote and published his Narrative and continued to be regarded by friends and acquaintances as an active and sociable companion when he was in his late eighties. Then he lost his vision and finally, in May of 1850, at the age of ninety, he died.
At Martin’s grave on a sunny knoll a short way upriver from the site of his first cabin on Fort Point, his town later erected a monument, and someone selected for it a most fitting epitaph, just exactly the words Joseph Plumb Martin himself might have chosen: “A Soldier of the Revolution.”
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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
