“GEORGE WASHINGTON’S ONE-MAN ARMY: The Life, Legend, and Battles of Peter Francisco,” by John T. Palmer (April 7, 2026). Contemporaries called him the Virginia Giant, the One-Man Army, the American Hercules. He fought in an honor roll of Revolutionary War battles, including: 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 was lost to history—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. Indentured to 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. Wounded at Monmouth the following summer, 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 enemies; a battlefield monument honors him as “perhaps the most famous Private soldier of the Revolutionary War.” Nearly killed at Guilford Courthouse, he returned 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 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.
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