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Washington's Vision (reproduced as the example below) is a narrative presented as the 1859 reminiscences of 99-year-old Anthony Sherman, who was supposedly present with George Washington's army at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 and overheard Washington tell an officer that an angel had revealed a prophetic vision of America to him. The passage of more than 150 years has since obscured the origins and purpose of this narrative, leading many who encounter it now to believe that it is a true account of an incident from Washington's life rather than a fictional tale created for political purposes long after Washington's death: The tale of Washington's Vision was penned by Charles Wesley Alexander (1836-1927), a Philadelphia journalist who published The Soldier's Casket, a periodical for Union veterans of the Civil War. Writing under the pseudonym Wesley Bradshaw, Alexander authored several fictional vision or dream pieces featuring historic American figures which were published as broadsheets and in various newspapers during the Civil War and were later offered for sale through advertisements in the pages of The Soldier's Casket, with the artificial separation between the real Charles Alexander and the pseudonymous Wesley Bradshaw allowing the former to unashamedly laud the latter's works. The meaning of Washington's Vision was apparent to Alexander's contemporary audience. First published in April 1861 (at the outbreak of the Civil War) and full of references to Union and Republic, this account of Washington's praying to God in secret for aid and comfort during the darkest days of the American Revolution and being visited by an angel who revealed to him a vision of the United States victorious was an obvious allegory for Unionists whose America was facing its greatest crisis since the revolution: a civil war pitting one half the country against the other in a struggle that threatened the existence of the Republic. During the war Alexander penned several similar tracts featuring both historical and contemporary American figures (e.g., Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant), including General McClellan's Dream, a narrative in which the general-in-chief of the Union Army fell asleep at his desk and was awakened by a vision of George Washington, who admonished the general for sleeping at his post and revealed to him secret rebel plans which he urged McClellan to act on quickly in order to prevent Washington, D.C. from falling into Confederate hands. Alexander also published even more fantastical tales, including several about female Union soldiers with supernatural powers and one of a demonic Englishwoman who fought on the side of the Confederacy. As the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research noted of Washington's Vision and General McClellan's Dream in 1917: (Although an officer named Anthony Sherman did serve in the Continental Army, he was at Saratoga under the command of Benedict Arnold at the end of 1777 and therefore wasn't with Washington's forces at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78, so it's likely mere coincidence that Alexander chose that appellation for the name of his fictitious narrator.) Alexander's expression of the theme that America can never be conquered by external enemies but can be brought down only through the failings of its own citizens gained renewed currency in 2001 among Americans in need of booster shots of patriotism after the events of September 11, and it is reminiscent of thoughts delivered for real by a revered American historical figure: Abraham Lincoln's address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, on 27 January 1838:
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