Like many another well-to-do young man of his day, Joseph Reed seems an unlikely revolutionist. His background, money, education, marriage—all these, one would suppose, would have placed him firmly on the side of the status quo, kept him loyal to the Crown. It did not turn out that way, of course; yet Reed was something of an enigma even to his contemporaries. Political radicals thought him insufficiently radical; many fellow officers considered him a reluctant soldier.

Reed’s ancestors had come to America from Northern Ireland, and the family was well established in these parts by the time Joseph was born in 1741. His father prospered as a merchant in Trenton, and Joseph attended the College of New Jersey at Princeton before reading law with Richard Stockton, the able, eloquent Princetonian who was generally acknowledged as one of the best lawyers in the province. Young Reed went to London for two years at the Middle Temple—during which time he regularly attended the debates in the House of Commons—and by the time he returned to America he was about as well prepared for public service as a colonial could be.

He married an Englishwoman and—back in Trenton—practiced law and engaged in the iron trade and real estate. He was sniffing around the edges of politics, too; in 1767 he was appointed deputy secretary of the colony of New Jersey. Trenton must have seemed small potatoes after London; certainly, bigger things were going on in Philadelphia; and Reed decided to move his law practice to the capital city of Pennsylvania, where, after several years’ residence, he became a leading member of the local committee of correspondence. In January, 1775, at the age of thirty-four, he was named president of Pennsylvania’s Second Provincial Congress. During this period of heightened political tension Reed’s views concerning the mother country had undergone a slow but definite shift: from a belief that reconciliation with Britain was both desirable and possible, he came to feel that independence was the only course for the colonies to take.

Those were desperately busy times for men who possessed unusual ability, and Reed, who had talent in abundance, suddenly found himself sought after as a military man. He was appointed a lieutenant colonel, and on June 19, 1775—four days after George Washington was elected commander in chief—he was invited to join the Virginian’s staff. In the course of the war Washington was to have thirty-two aides in his military “family,” and Reed was one of the best, setting a standard for those who followed. He had exceptional intelligence and sound military instincts, and he was a gifted writer. Yet for all his abilities, there was a curious in-and-out quality about Reed; it was as though some other voice were always calling, preventing him from devoting his entire attention to the task at hand. Three months after becoming Washington’s secretary—which, given the volume of correspondence the commander in chief was obliged to carry on, was easily the most demanding post at headquarters—Reed departed, pleading the