From the time he was a young boy Anthony Wayne always wanted to be a soldier. He hated going to school and much preferred to be outdoors drilling and staging mock battles with his friends. One day his uncle, the schoolmaster, caught him in the midst of one of these battles and warned his father that unless Anthony mended his ways he could not remain at school. So, regretfully, Anthony put aside for a few years the idea of soldiering.
When he was through school, Anthony, like his future commander-in-chief, George Washington, became a surveyor and with his pretty wife Polly journeyed to help settle the wild land of Nova Scotia. It was not long after this that the American colonies revolted against the British, and war began. Now he was at last leading the dangerous, action-filled life that he loved and in which he excelled so magnificently. For the name of Anthony Wayne was famous in the great battles of the Revolutionary War—Brandywine, Monmouth, Stony Point, Yorktown—and in fact, for his boldness and courage, he came to be known as "Mad" Anthony Wayne.
In The Story of Mad Anthony Wayne Hazel Wilson has written a stirring biography of the great general who not only helped win our war of independence but quelled so successfully the warlike Indians in the western territories.
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