I hope you enjoyed Rachel and Nathan’s story! This is my first Revolutionary War story—my first story, actually, that isn’t set in Regency England—and I had a wonderful time researching and writing it.

The burning of the HMS Charon really happened. John Laurens, cinnamon bun that he was, wrote in his diary, “It was allowable to enjoy this magnificent nocturnal spectacle, as the vessels had previously been abandoned by their crews.” In my story I had him share that thought with his men.

Women in uniform were a reality in every eighteenth-century army and navy. The difference between men and women isn’t as wide or as fixed as we sometimes imagine, and people don’t pay that much attention to each other anyway. Plus, while soldiers and sailors lived in close quarters, they usually didn’t bathe much or have more than one set of clothes. Rachel’s role model, memoirist Hannah Snell, served successfully in the British marines for three years from 1747 to 1750.

Deborah Sampson served in the Continental light infantry for seventeen months. After the war she petitioned for and received a military pension, authorized a biography, and went on a successful lecture tour in 1802, as part of which she performed military drills in uniform. I highly recommend Alfred F. Young’s recent biography, Masquerade.

Many Jewish soldiers served in the Continental Army, both as officers and enlisted men. Fritz Hirschfeld’s George Washington and the Jews is a good starting place to learn more (not to mention a great name for a band). Haym Salomon, Nathan’s spy mentor, was real. He often gets referred to as “the financier of the Revolution,” and it’s true that his help as a broker was invaluable to finance superintendent Robert Morris, desperately wheeling and dealing in Philadelphia to keep the army afloat.

But what gets forgotten (maybe because most historians don’t see Jews as action heroes) is that before he fled New York for Philadelphia, Salomon was a spy who used his knowledge of German to turn disaffected Hessian officers. He was twice suspected of setting major fires in the city to sabotage the British occupation. He spent all his own money on the Revolution (he even paid James Madison’s personal bills) and died broke in 1785. If he had lived just a few more years, Alexander Hamilton’s insistence on full repayment to holders of Continental debt would have restored his fortunes.

Was Hamilton Jewish, as Rachel and Nathan wonder? The evidence is entirely circumstantial, but personally, I think there’s a case to be made. The story about him attending Hebrew school as a boy is true. It’s too complicated to get into here, but if you’re interested in learning more, visit the Hamilton’s Battalion’s DVD extras page on my website: I’ve written a long blog post about it.

Believe it or not, I didn’t make up the Great Yom Kippur Window Controversy of 1755 either! Solomon Hays (who sounds like a real jerk) was eventually readmitted to the synagogue after he apologized and agreed to stop writing a tell-all book. But I doubt people forgot. And Rachel was right that the grudges and loyalties formed during the Revolutionary War would never be forgotten either. When I read Thomas Fleming’s Washington’s Secret War, about the general’s struggle to improve conditions at Valley Forge while Charles Lee and Thomas Conway worked to undercut him, I was surprised at how many of the players were already familiar to me as Hamilton’s friends and enemies from his later political career—and how little the battle lines changed.

Antisemitism—to state the obvious—did not go away after the Revolution. It remains a frightening force today. However, the United States was the first Western country to grant Jews full national citizenship and legal equality.

Article Six of the Constitution clearly states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This meant that unlike in England, no one could be required to affirm their belief in specific religious principles (for example, disavowing the Pope or taking an oath “on my faith as a Christian”) before serving in the military, civil service, or government. In the 1788 parade in Philadelphia to celebrate the Constitution’s ratification, a rabbi marched with other city clergy, and the banquet afterwards provided a kosher table—unprecedented in Europe at the time!

(The “no religious test” clause only applied at the federal level; several states did exclude Jews, atheists, and/or Catholics from state office in their new constitutions.)

So, part of what Rachel and Nathan hoped and fought for was realized.

One day, may it all be. May no one be left in the wilderness. May justice and integrity and kindness be first in Americans’ hearts. May we fight to make it happen, and win.

As we say every Passover: Next year, may we all be free.