Free Republic

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times At Sotheby's on Tuesday, Terry McAllister, left, and James Parker moved the Connecticut regimental battle flag. Sotheby'sOne of the Virginia infantry flags believed to have been captured by a British commander, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, in a bloody battle in the Carolinas in May 1780. The war veterans who once revered them and followed them - and then lost them - are all long gone. But now, their battle standards, taken by the enemy, have at last returned to American soil after two and a quarter centuries. The flags are believed to date from...

The country is at war. New York City is threatened. A pastor exhorts young men to fight for liberty, be brave and prepare for the day of death. "Let a spirit of patriotism fire your breath," he says in a voice reaching out from 1776. In a remarkable discovery, members of the First Presbyterian Church in Greenwich Village stumbled upon two previously unknown sermons from the Revolutionary War, tucked between pages of an old ledger found during a cleanup of the church basement. Apparently written by the Rev. John Rodgers, the church's pastor from 1765 to 1811 and a staunch...