Peter Francisco was said to be the most famous private soldier in the Continental Army. Commander George Washington claimed he couldn't have won the war without him. Yet today, few Americans have heard of this remarkable soldier. A finely dressed little boy named Peter who spoke no English was abandoned on a Virginia wharf, where the Appomattox and the James rivers meet, near a town now called Hopewell. Where had he come from? Why was he abandoned? Peter Francisco's is a model American story. Cast ashore with nothing, literally, but the clothes upon his back he learned a trade as a...