John Howe Spies on Concord, or Not
On this day in 1775, John Howe arrived in Concord to spy for British General Gage. He quickly gained the trust of the town's leading patriots. They took him to a storehouse, showed him the weapons stockpiled there, and dined with him. Howe recorded every detail in his private journal. The journal was published in the 1820s, and for the next century and a half, historians considered it a true account. There is just one problem: John Howe's journal was a hoax. In 1993 a skeptical scholar proved that if John Howe existed at all, he was not a spy for the British Army and that his journal was fabricated a half-century after the events it purports to describe.
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