"Freedom Is A Light For Which Many Men Have Died In Darkness"

The Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier lies within Washington Square, one of the five public parks drawn up by William Penn in his 1682 blueprint for Philadelphia.

After walking through the square, John Adams wrote this in a letter dated April 13, 1777:

"I have spent an hour this morning in the Congregation of the dead. I took a walk into the 'Potter's Field,' a burying ground between the new stone prison and the hospital, and I never in my whole life was affected with so much melancholy. The graves of the soldiers, who have been buried, in this ground, from the hospital and bettering-house, during the course of last summer, fall and winter, dead of the small pox and camp diseases, are enough to make the heart of stone to melt away! The sexton told me that upwards of two thousand soldiers had been buried there, and by the appearance of the grave and trenches, it is most probable to me that he speaks within bounds. To what causes this plague is to be attributed, I don't know--disease had destroyed ten men for us where the sword of the enemy has killed one!"