After reading The Year of the Hangman by Gary Blackwood, I had many unanswered questions about the sudden and harsh events throughout the story. In this adventurous, but somewhat unrealistic, novel, Gary Blackwood imagines what would’ve happened if the Americans lost the Revolutionary War. This novel is called The Year of the Hangman because in 1777 the three sevens in the date resembled the miniature gallows and because if all the British traitors hung. In this book some main events throughout included the death of George Washington, the death of Ben Franklin, and the seventeen year old Creighton’s father who was supposedly dead. I was surprised when I read that George Washington was killed by being hung, because I thought he probably died risking his life in war. Now I was confused so I decided to research it.
After all research was complete I found out that the book and I were wrong about George’s death. For being a United States president risking his life daily in battle or when not George Washington died on December 14, 1799 of a sore throat condition known as epiglottitis. Epiglottitis is an inflammation of the epiglottis, which is a flap located at the base of the tongue which stops food from going down the wrong way into the trachea. If the infection is untreated it can kill an infected person in only a matter of hours. It is very sad to know what painful infection George Washington had to go through that suddenly killed him later.
It is said the George Washington picked up the sore throat while he was riding his horse to Mount Vernon. He enjoyed riding there because it was very peaceful and it was a habit of his. But something was different the day he rode there. The day he traveled there it was very cold and raining. Later that night he felt ill and unusual. The very next morning doctors were sent over to try to cure him but what happened was far from a cure. The doctors supposedly took out about nine pints of blood out when he had only about twelve. He then grew weaker and died. The thing you need to understand is that there weren’t any hospitals back then or very well trained doctors with the right tools or learning