In February 1779, a twenty-five year old Virginia lieutenant colonel stood on the eastern bank of the flooded Wabash River and made a decision that military logic said was impossible. Between him and a British fort two hundred miles away lay flooded prairies, chest-deep water, and February cold. He had 170 men, no artillery, no supply line, and no support from Washington or Congress. He ordered his men across anyway. The territory George Rogers Clark won on that eighteen-day march through the wilderness eventually became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Congress never properly paid him. He died broke and largely forgotten.

An American woman ran the most fashionable wax sculpture studio in London throughout the Revolutionary War. Lords, ministers, and members of the royal family sat for their portraits while she molded warm wax and listened carefully to everything they said. She passed what she learned to Benjamin Franklin in Paris — sometimes hiding written intelligence inside the wax figures she shipped across the Channel. She was never arrested, never charged, and never came home. The most notable of her surviving works stands today in Westminster Abbey.

In the spring of 1781, an enslaved Virginia man walked into the British camp and offered his services to Lord Cornwallis. Cornwallis accepted. What Cornwallis didn't know was that James was working for the Marquis de Lafayette — gathering intelligence about British troop movements, intentions, and the fateful decision to fortify Yorktown. The intelligence he provided helped close the trap that ended the war. He spent six years after Yorktown still enslaved before petitioning the Virginia legislature for his freedom. He took the surname Lafayette in honor of the general who had recognized his service when almost no one else would.

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The author of The Barber of Seville had a second career that history has largely forgotten. In 1776, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais created a fictitious trading company, filled it with French army surplus, and smuggled an estimated ninety percent of the gunpowder used by the Continental Army in the war's early years across the Atlantic. The Battle of Saratoga — the turning point that brought France openly into the war — was fought largely with weapons he supplied. He died still waiting to be repaid.

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August 1777. A relief column marching through the Mohawk Valley walks into one of the most brutal ambushes of the entire war. The general commanding it is shot from his horse early in the fighting — and directs the battle from under a tree, bleeding steadily, calmly smoking his pipe. The military outcome stopped the western prong of Burgoyne's invasion. The human cost went far deeper — at Oriskany, Mohawk warriors and Oneida warriors fought each other, and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which had maintained unity for centuries, fractured permanently.Thanks for reading and listening to Friends of Liberty!

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Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNWKH5DJ

In the spring 1775, John Wilkes—Lord Mayor of London—came close to treason.

He secretly helped supply French arms to American rebels, an act punishable by death. But Wilkes wasn’t a rogue actor. He was part of a transatlantic network of British radicals, reformers, and opposition politicians who risked everything to support American independence.

Their stories have been largely forgotten. Until now.

THE MINISTER WHO CHANGED HISTORY

When Welsh minister Richard Price published his pamphlet Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty in February 1776, it sold 60,000 copies in days—and 180,000 total. Americans devoured it. John Adams said it helped tip the scales toward declaring independence. Yale awarded Price an honorary doctorate alongside George Washington. Yet most Americans today have never heard his name.

THE WOMAN WHO DEFIED EVERY CONVENTION

Catharine Macaulay was England’s first female published historian, celebrated across Europe and America for her radical politics. She corresponded with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, and dozens of other patriots. After the war, she became the first English radical to visit the new nation—and spent time at Mount Vernon as Washington’s guest. He called her a lady “whose principles are so much and so justly admired by the friends of liberty.”

THE SPY IN LONDON

Arthur Lee practiced law in London while secretly serving as one of America’s first intelligence agents. He gathered information on British military plans, identified a British double agent, and—at a dinner party hosted by John Wilkes—made the connection with French playwright Beaumarchais that would help secure the alliance with France. It was espionage conducted in drawing rooms and coffeehouses, with the gallows as the price of failure.

THE PROPHET PARLIAMENT IGNORED

Edmund Burke delivered the most eloquent speeches of the age warning that war with America would fail—and that France would exploit the conflict. Parliament ignored him. Every prediction came true. When news of Yorktown reached London, Burke’s warnings stood as prophecy fulfilled, but he took no pleasure in vindication.

A REVOLUTION ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC

Friends of Liberty reveals that the American Revolution was never simply a colonial rebellion. It was a transatlantic movement sustained by networks of correspondence, friendship, and shared conviction. Letters crossed the ocean carrying intelligence and ideas. Pamphlets published in London were reprinted in Boston. Dinner parties in Mayfair connected American agents with French financiers. And through it all, British allies faced accusations of treason, social ostracism, and political ruin for supporting a cause they believed was right.

Drawing on letters, speeches, pamphlets, and contemporary accounts, historian [Author name] brings these forgotten figures to vivid life—their courage, their friendships with the Founding Fathers, and the real risks they took. This is narrative history at its best: character-driven, richly detailed, and illuminating a dimension of the Revolution that changes how we understand America’s founding.

Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, Friends of Liberty finally gives these remarkable British allies the recognition they deserve.

What readers will discover:

* The dinner party that helped secure the French alliance

* How a single pamphlet sold 180,000 copies