General William Alexander could be described as “America’s forgotten hero.” In choosing to attack a British army that overwhelmingly outnumbered his small company during the Battle of Brooklyn, he may well have saved the American Revolution. At the time, he was fifty-one —an old man for the period. A life-long New Yorker with a huge estate in New Jersey, he had been an early supporter of the Revolution. When the British fleet moved into New York harbor, he had been put in charge of its defenses. Nine forts were built, two along the shores of Manhattan, one in what is now Battery Park, and six at various strategic points in Brooklyn.

After his release by the British following the Battle of Brooklyn, Alexander fought with Washington throughout the war, playing important parts in the battles of Trenton and Princeton, Brandywine and Monmouth, and led a raid on Staten Island. He was with the Army at Valley Forge, took over command of West Point after Benedict Arnold turned traitor, and when Washington led his army south to chase Cornwallis, Alexander was named General of the Army of the North. He was an important second-tier general who was respected and recognized by his peers. After the Battle of Brooklyn, several correspondents described him as “the bravest man in America.”

But he was more than a soldier. From the time of his birth in 1726 he and his family had played important roles in New York’s development. His father, James, who had immigrated to America in 1715, was soon named surveyor of the Colony of New York, and shortly thereafter became the same for the Colony of New Jersey. He also became an attorney and married into the powerful DePeyster family. He began buying land, which as surveyor he was often the first to see, and eventually became one of the richest men in all the colonies.

James was also active in politics, and as a Whig, lobbied for more independence for the colonies. During the period from 1735 to 1737, he joined with two other attorneys to defend John Peter Zengler, editorof The (New York Weekly) Journal against the charge of libeling the king and his representatives. Zengler could have been hanged for the crime, but he was acquitted when the jury over-ruled the judges, and the decision established the right of free-speech in the colonies.

Young William was well-educated and prepared for a leadership role in New York. Over the course of his life he would undertake many commercial ventures, none of which would be especially successful and many of which were brutal failures. He also married well—into the Livingston family—and had two daughters, Mary & Catherine.

In 1757, he began to pursue a golden opportunity. He and his family believed that he was the rightful heir to the estate of the Earl of Stirling. Stirling is part of Scotland, north of Edinburgh, and it had been given to one of his relatives in 1603 for service to the then king, George II. The issue of importance here is that the king also gave the new Earl possession of half of Long Island, and all of Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which by 1760 were immensely valuable.

Alexander spent the next four years in Great Britain chasing this inheritance by gaining the recognition of first the family in Scotland, then the Scottish courts and parliament. He lived in London among the leaders of society as he lobbied Parliament for recognition of his claim. Eventually, and at the cost of much of his fortune, he realized that his efforts would be futile. There was little chance that the King or Parliament would give away so valuable a prize, no matter what might be the validity of his claims.

By the early 1770’s Alexander was bankrupt. Only his position in society kept him afloat despite expensive failures in mining operations and a failed sale of lottery tickets for his huge and heavily mortgaged real estate holdings. In the end, only his leadership in the Revolutionary army kept him out of jail. When he died in Albany in 1783 of gout, still commander of the Army in the North, his creditors stripped his mansion and his estates and put his wife out on the street. She lived out her life in a Manhattan rooming house.

His grandson’s later served, respectively, as chief justice of the supreme court of New York and president of Columbia University. His descendents still live in the City of New York. (From the curriculum guide for the film,‘THE BRAVE MAN”).