He learned about it through a letter.

Now, George Washington got a lot of letters.

Even before he became our nation's first president, he was a very important man.

This was the guy who led a shabby, underfed army against the world's largest empire,

and won. But in early 1776, it didn't look like the revolution was going to pan out.

Most of Washington's troops didn't even have shoes, let alone the tools they needed to take

down the British. So, yeah, their fight against a superpower wasn't going all that great.

It seemed that the American dream was going to stay just that, a dream. As you can imagine,

most of his mail was depressing, usually just messages from angry politicians. But not this one.

This particular letter was essentially fan mail. Seriously, this writer

really liked Washington. He even addressed him as, Your Excellency. There was a lot of additional

flowery language thrown about, but the gist of the whole note was that he wanted to express his

support for the liberty of the colonies, or, as he put it, an indelible anxiety for the happiness

of his country. Now, the letter was anonymous, but it came from the very far edge of British North

America, specifically, Nova Scotia. At the time, Nova Scotia wasn't a part of Canada, because

Canada, as we know it today, didn't exist. It was just another

British colony, and the unsigned author of this letter was simply a patriot who also wanted to be

free from the shackles of empire. It was a somewhat popular sentiment, too. But Nova Scotia never

joined the rebelling American colonies in the Revolutionary War.

Plenty of folks there wanted to, but in the end, far more people were worried about the dire

consequences they might face if they lost the war.

So they stayed loyal to the crown.

...