In 1848, the journalist Benson Lossing made a pilgrimage to the sacred sites of the American Revolution. He was preparing his two-volume Pictorial Fieldbook of the Revolution, a combination of a historical account and a patriotic travelogue. He visited Boston, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, but also battlefields in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In Williamsburg, he paid his respects at the site of the Capitol and stopped in at the Raleigh Tavern.
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