This year, the Vision Forum Ministries Faith and Freedom Tour travels to Philadelphia, Princeton, and upper New York for an historic journey from the settlement of the middle colonies, through the Great Awakening, the French and Indian War, the road to freedom, the battles of the War for American Independence, the Constitutional debates, and the establishment of the American Presidency. We conclude with the death of Washington at the turn of the century. Vision Forum staff historian Bill Potter joined my son Joshua and me for a reconnaissance mission in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where today we retraced the Battle of Brandywine.

This region of America is famous for generating some of the most remarkable romantic painters of Americana, including Howard Pyle (1853-1911) and his student N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945). The best collection of their works in America can be found at the Brandywine River Museum, where we stopped today. Pyle was fascinated with American history, myth, and landscape, and his work ranks among the most memorable patriotic images since Copley. The image above of “The Nation Makers” simply does not do justice to beauty of the richly textured original which we saw today.

This is the original building used by America’s great friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, during the Battle of Brandywine.

Remarkable. You are looking at something which was alive during the American War for Independence. If only trees could talk.

The girth of the colonial tree was enormous as you can see from this image.

Outside the Brandywine River Museum.

A symbol of a nation which once recognized that virtue and liberty are inextricably linked. May it be so again.