Our country has fought numerous wars over the last three centuries or so.

And generation after generation, the citizens of my home county, Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, which was established in 1706, have shown a willingness to serve.

Despite its distance from the front lines, Queen Anne’s County was a dangerous place during the American Revolution. British ships sailed the Chesapeake Bay, threatening depredation. Citizens organized armed militias. Tories, colonists loyal to the crown, resisted independence, and that faction of the populace agitated anti-patriotic sentiment.

Our Revolutionary record is strong, though. Five of Maryland’s delegates to the Continental Congress were from our county. Local men like Wye Island’s William Paca were leaders in the struggle for self-government. In 1776, county volunteers fought with other Marylanders in the battle of Long Island. Washington Irving wrote about the bravery of those forces in his classic George Washington biography.

The British Army came…