Legal scholar and teacher George Wythe influenced such figures as Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and James Monroe with his brilliant mind and Enlightenment views on government and the law. He was delegate to Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. In 1806 he died at age 80, potentially poisoned by his own grandnephew.

George Mason was an important Virginia statesman known for his writing of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which called for guaranteed liberties for the people and served as a model for the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was the lack of a Bill of Rights, among other issues, that motivated Mason to famously decline to sign the original Constitution.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in New York honors over 15,000 Americans who were held captive on British ships during the Revolution. Twice as many soldiers died in these conditions than in the battles of the Revolution, mostly of disease, starvation, and violence. After falling into disrepair in the 1930s, the Monument has since been restored and was rededicated in 2008.

Members of the Oneida American Indian nation served as scouts, guides, and soldiers in New York during the Revolution, including critically in the Battle of Saratoga. They earned recognition from the Continental Congress for their support. Despite promises to protect their land and autonomy, colonists took over their lands after the end of the war, pushing the Oneidas onto reservations.

In the earliest years of the U.S. government, the man whom many considered the second-most powerful man in the nation was neither a landowning Southern gentleman nor an experienced Northern statesman. Instead, the unofficial title belonged to Caribbean-born Alexander Hamilton. His career followed a steep trajectory as he progressed from George Washington’s trusted aide-de-camp to co-author of the Federalist Papers to the first Secretary of the Treasury. This ascent from obscurity to an intensive involvement in the formation of the new government provoked discord.

On August 27, 1776, the British handed the Continental Army a decisive defeat at the Battle of Long Island, effectively forcing General George Washington and his troops out of New York City until the end of the war. Of the approximately 10,000 Americans who fought in the two-day battle, more than 1,000 were captured. It was a monumental victory for the British, but it posed one problem—where would they keep all of their prisoners?