Browse Delaware Authors: Rawl, Michael

There was a time in our country's history when America stood on the brink of armed revolution. The time was not 1776, or 1860. It was 1932. Over three months during an explosively hot summer, driven to desperation by years of unemployment, tens of thousands of battle-hardened American veterans and their families descended on Washington, DC and refused to leave. Commanded by Walter W. Waters, an enigmatic man who rose from obscurity to the status of a national hero, this veterans’ army could have opened the door to communist or fascist forces overpowering the nation’s government. One night, on the steps of the Capitol building, it nearly happened. Determined to teach the veterans a lesson and to demonstrate the need for a strong armed force, Chief of the Army Douglas MacArthur and his top aides, mid-career officers Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, made secret plans to drive the veterans from Washington by force.

Learn about efforts underway to save the historic and environmentally important Fourth Street Preserve from local author and preservation leader Michael Rawl. In 1670 the first officially deeded land in Delaware was granted by the Duke of York to Lewes' earliest settler, Helmanias Wiltbanck. Thirty of the original 104 acres of Wiltbanck's beloved pra serve remain pristine and undeveloped today, right in the heart of Lewes. Three families owned this land for 312 of the past 355 years. Their tales involve attacks by Native Americans and the British, death and survival during the "fever years" and a prominent but forgotten judge who wrote the original Delaware constitution and funded its Revolutionary War troops.