This is CBS, I Am the World. I'm John Batsowith, Professor Benjamin Carp, a book in college

of the CUNY Graduate Center. His new book, The Great New York Fire of 1776, A Lost Story

of the American Revolution. This is like an inquiry hundreds of years later. All the

principles, all their children, all the memoirs, the historians have written about this, celebrated

or made accusations, people who wander away from it, and we're still looking at facts

that can be gathered to ask accident or design in the burning of a city where I note as

the professor did. This city was a leading part of the trade for the North Atlantic, prospering.

Boston and Philadelphia identified as rebel cities were envious of New York, and men who

know New England were the continental army, men in Philadelphia were the Congress were

responsible for the raising of the Pennsylvania regiments that will, and Maryland regiments

that will be responsible for fighting the war as it goes forward. We're inquiring about

who ordered this if it was ordered and what to make of the accusations afterwards that

we continue. Three captains, and this helps a deal because the professor identifies these

men and their fates as not persuasive, persuasive. It's all circumstantial. Unless you get a video

of somebody setting a match to Trinity Church, you're not going to get anything stronger

than circumstantial. We begin with Captain Amos Fellows. He is jailed immediately afterwards,

and he suffers grievously in jail. Many of the prisoners who were on either prison

barges or in jails afterwards died of disease. Who was Amos Fellows and how does he contribute

or puzzle us to this day, professor? Well, Amos Fellows was a captain from Tallend,

Connecticut, and he was a elected, you know, as a field officer by his men, and he is

part of the Continental Army. He is supposedly captured. He may have been the person that's

mentioned in a newspaper account as having been the New England captain that was caught

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