Author: A tribute to redcoat may have paid off big

ALBANY - Did the money Massachusetts spent on a monument honoring a British officer killed in a forgotten skirmish 250 years ago pay big dividends two decades later when the deceased redcoat's brothers were poised to crush the rebellious American colonies?

The way military history author Stephen Brumwell sees it, the tribute the notoriously tightfisted New Englanders paid to Lord George Augustus Howe was well worth the expense, considering the role it may have played in the outcome of the American Revolution, when Howe's two brothers commanded British land and sea forces in North America.

“This gesture made a big impact on Howe's surviving younger brothers,” Brumwell said in a telephone interview from his home in The Netherlands. “It was a show of respect they never forgot.”