George Washington's One-Man Army

From Valley Forge to Yorktown, follow the astonishing real-life journey of the Revolutionary War’s most mythic warrior.

Contemporaries called him the Virginia Giant, the One-Man Army, the American Hercules. He fought in an honor roll of Revolutionary War battles: Brandywine, Germantown, Camden, and Guilford Courthouse. He wintered at Valley Forge and witnessed the surrender at Yorktown. He was reputed to wield a massive broadsword. Four states honored him with special days; the nation celebrated him with a postage stamp. Cloaked in myth and legend, the true story of Peter Francisco has never been told – until now.

Pedro Francisco was born to a noble family in the Portuguese Azores in 1760. Five years later, he appeared on a Virginia dock, the victim of kidnapping. Adopted by a relative of Patrick Henry, Pedro became Peter, grew to a massive six-and-a-half feet, and took up blacksmithing. When the Revolution erupted, Francisco joined the Continental Army’s Virginia Line and fought near Philadelphia at Brandywine and Germantown before spending the bleak winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge. Severely wounded at Monmouth the following spring, Francisco nevertheless participated in “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s bold attack on Stony Point along the Hudson River a year later. Here he was part of the assault’s spearhead, was the second American to enter the British fort, may have captured the enemy’s flag, and received a gash across his stomach. 

From there Francisco continued his exploits in the southern theater. At Camden, South Carolina, in 1780, legend has him carrying a half-ton cannon on his shoulder (a moment depicted on a 1975 U.S. postage stamp). At Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, in 1781, he killed eleven enemy, helping turn the tide; a battlefield monument honors him as “perhaps the most famous Private soldier of the Revolutionary War.” He may have fought at Cowpens before going home to Virginia to recover from his wounds. There, on a night in July 1781, in what has become known as “Francisco’s Fight,” the young soldier claimed that he singlehandedly took on a patrol of Banastre Tarleton’s feared British Legion.  Months later, he would arrive at Yorktown too late to fight but in time to witness the British surrender. 

In a riveting narrative that separates fact and fiction, John T. Palmer tells the true story of the adventures of this larger-than-life soldier, a giant of the Revolution.