As with most Dane and Bones adventures, Liberty contains quite a few real historical references interspersed with the fiction. Some of you may be wondering what is fact and what is the product of our imaginations.
The U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1987. Edmund Randolph, George Mason, and Elbridge Gerry did refuse to sign, each with concerns about the role of the states. Randolph changed his mind soon thereafter and helped convince the legislature of his native Virginia to ratify it. Gerry later became a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, serving a district with borders so brazenly based on political considerations that the term gerrymandering is derived from his name.
The clandestine meeting on September 16th between Ben Franklin and the others, all of whom were real historical characters, is entirely invented. But early on September 17th, five hundred copies of the proposed Constitution were printed and then scrapped, to be replaced with another run of five hundred later in the day. We know this because a bill for this initial print run was submitted. This makes it less likely that the replacement was due to printer error, although a government contractor billing for its own errors is not unheard of. In any case, no copy of this abandoned effort has ever come to light, nor does the historical record contain any explanation for it.
The battle at Gettysburg is one of the most well-known events in U.S. history. Josiah Hawthorne and the late night meeting in the latrine with Lee are fiction, but the rest of the story is true. General Robert E. Lee was quite ill the night before the unsuccessful assault known as Pickett's Charge. That attack was one of the few moves Lee ever made which was both a tactical and strategic error. The result was a retreat with massive casualties and possibly the turning point in the war. No consensus exists among historians regarding how such a brilliant general made this key mistake. As mentioned in the story, West Virginia was about to join the Union, but there is no evidence that this impacted Lee's decision.
The Marshall family was in fact one of the biggest landowners in the town of Hamiltonban, Pennsylvania at the time of the Civil War. But the characters and descendants from that family in this story are invented, as is the burned out house and the hint of scandal.
The original Library of Congress was indeed lost during the war of 1812. By most accounts, it was burned by the British, but several pieces of testimony suggest that some if it was removed to a hidden location before the British flames consumed the rest. No trace of it has ever been found.
The Zoo Balloon is one of the Philadelphia Zoo's best known attractions, although to best server the story we took some minor liberties with the specifics of its setup. Both the Christ Church Burial Ground and Wissahickon Valley Park are real. Wissahickon was a popular area for both mystics and grist mills during the eighteenth century, and today is a key piece of the vast Fairmount Park system. It was also the subject of the Poe short story “The Elk.” All the places mentioned in Wissahickon are real, including the Rosicrucian cave. The lost Library of Congress is not located there as far as we know.
The Celtic Cross is a real symbol dating to the first millennium, although its origins are unknown. It has been associated with various groups and conspiracies, including neo-Nazis and the Zodiac killer.
The Society of Cincinnatus was founded during the American Revolution and counted George Washington and Ben Franklin, among others, as members. Both Franklin and Washington developed doubts about the organization, which at one point proposed to serve as a hereditary nobility which could steer the country in the proper direction. The national symbol of the eagle has part of its origins in the logo of this society. It is also true that Ben Franklin once called the turkey a more noble bird than the eagle.
As for the lost Ben Franklin document, that is pure fiction. If such a document were to be discovered, though, we have no doubt that the disruption it would cause more than two centuries later would be very real.