Since 2014, the Journal of the American Revolution has recognized the new adult nonfiction volume that best mirrors the mission of the journal with its national Book-of-the-Year Award. This year the editors are pleased to announce a winner and two runners-up. All three books are outstanding contributions to the history of the Revolutionary and Founding […]
The Journal of the American Revolution now will make its popular Dispatches program hosted by historian Brady Crytzer part of our new YouTube channel. The audio version of Brady’s interviews will still be available to listeners on various platforms, but now you can enjoy watching Brady and his guests. Over time we plan to add […]
The Virginia Continental Line had suffered with recruitment since the spring of 1777. Desertion, battlefield casualties, and competition with other state units prevented enough men being recruited to replenish the ranks of Virginia’s fifteen regiments. A new recruiting act, including a limited military draft, had produced fewer than 800 recruits for the Virginia Continental Line […]
Governance under the federal Constitution transformed the nature and style of American politics. The spirit of this transformation revolved broadly around fear of political corruption and the vaguely defined yet delicate balance between national authority and state and local power.[1] And while the new republic’s first elected officials deliberated the nation’s most pressing issues in […]
The pre-Revolutionary War history of Vermont centered on a border dispute between the colonies of New York and New Hampshire. It is a complicated but colorful history, one that has been populated through the years with stories of greedy royal governors, show trials by corrupt provincial officials, land hungry settlers, shady land speculators, lawless vagabonds […]
BOOK REVIEW: Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America by Tyson Reeder (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024) $35.00 cloth, $23.99 Kindle. Tyson Reeder, James Madison historian and history professor at the University of Virginia, explores the role of foreign empires/confederacies in his excellent book, Serpent in Eden: Foreign […]
The Fourth of July celebration of 1831 was shaping up similarly to the ones Americans had been commemorating for over half a century. A sizable crowd squeezed into the Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building to hear lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key deliver an Independence Day oration. In Boston’s Park Street Church the […]
Wars are seldom won or lost due to a single event. Rather, the ultimate result is often preceded by a series of (sometimes) lesser connecting events. Pennsylvania loyalist Joseph Galloway criticized Sir William Howe and Lord Richard Howe for many of their military strategies in a blizzard of pamphlets written between 1780 and 1782. In […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter by Dennis C. Rasmussen (University Press of Kansas, 2023) The Constitution stands as the foundation of the United States’ government and political system, a point on which all Americans can agree even as they dispute how the document should be interpreted. […]
Gen. Daniel Morgan’s defeat of Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton at the Cowpens is generally attributed to his arrangement of troops into three lines, with two lines of militia in front to wear down the advancing enemy. Morgan, however, mentioned only a single line, and he attributed his victory to a “fortunate volley.” Did Morgan not […]
George Washington was a colonel in the Virginia militia, master of Mount Vernon, founding father, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, first president of the United States, and Father of his Country. The nation’s capital, many other towns and thousands of streets carry the Washington name. Yet, George Washington “was far less powerful in the tiny […]
The 1st Rhode Island Regiment, famously known as the “Black Regiment,” is renowned for its key role in helping to repel three enemy charges at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. What is not widely appreciated is that Rhode Island’s two Continental Army regiments were multi-racial before the famous “Black Regiment” was […]
The saying that “an army marches on its stomach” has been attributed to both Napolean Bonaparte and Frederick II, King of Prussia, known as “Frederick the Great.”[1] If this observation is correct, it can be argued that nobody did more to keep the Continental Army on the move during perhaps its time of greatest travail, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Backcountry War, The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Sumter by Andrew Waters (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2024) $34.95 Cloth In his Epilogue to Backcountry War, The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Sumter, Andrew Waters states he wrote the book for himself to better understand his childhood exposure to […]
The British army did a lot of recruiting in 1775 and 1776. After the government committed to using force to quell the rebellion in America, the War Office increased the authorized size of each regiment deployed overseas by 50 percent—from 360 private soldiers to 540. Part of this increase was accomplished by transferring soldiers from […]
On March 7, 1774 the motion to consider the Boston Port Bill was presented to the House of Commons. On March 14, the first official reading of the bill took place. It was followed by a debate that lasted all day. During the debates members of the House mainly expressed their opinions for or against […]
BOOK REVIEW: Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution by Christopher R. Pearl (University of Virginia Press, 2024. $33.95 Paperback) Christopher Pearl’s Declarations of Independence seeks to highlight diverse experiences, motivations, and differing views on independence. Historians have examined these topics before from an ideological and theoretical point of view, […]
Military history has taken a variety of forms, one of which is the lasting trend of social or “from the bottom-up” history. One aspect of this brand of historiography that historians of the Revolution have not explored in thorough detail is the impact of religion on the daily lives of the war’s participants. Historians have […]
For Maj. Arent Schuyler De Peyster, his assignment as commandant of British forces at Detroit was growing increasingly frustrating. For years, British officers at Detroit had encouraged Indian allies to strike the American backcountry, rendering the frontier a scorched arc stretching from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. But by the late summer of 1782, De Peyster was […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR contributor Blake McGready on how Continental soldiers attempted to master the unfamiliar environment of the Hudson Highlands in order to secure the area from British control. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
Quotes about indigenous Native Americans are brimming with paradoxes. Benjamin Franklin praised their martial skills and the political structure of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy yet labeled them “ignorant savages.” John Adams chastised the French utilization of native warriors in the French and Indian Wars while Philip Schuyler wooed Oneida warriors with false promises of equality and […]
In the fall of 1776, Patriots were desperate for ways to defend the Hudson River from British attacks, entertaining even the wildest ideas. Henry Wisner, a member of the Continental Congress from Goshen, suggested revolutionary soldiers hurl stones at approaching ships from the cliffs north of Peekskill. “Ten men on the top,” he claimed, “might […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Paul B. Elmore about why James Easton attempted to discredit Benedict Arnold during the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, setting off a long-standing feud. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and […]
No front of the American War of Independence was more consistently violent than the northern frontier in what is today central New York State. Relative to the size of the forces involved, the costliest battle of the war took place at Oriskany near present-day Rome, New York, where the Patriot casualty rate exceeded 50 percent. […]
I recently came across the recollections of Simeon Thayer, who served from 1777 to 1781 as a major in Rhode Island Continental Army regiments. He was one of the outstanding military figures from Rhode Island during the war. His recollections start with him as a teenager during the French and Indian War serving in Maj. […]
The origins of the famous Pułaski Legion’s banner, a rare relic from the American Revolutionary War, reveal a significant yet overlooked Hungarian contribution to the fight for U.S. independence. Created under the guidance of Karcag, Hungary-born Colonel Michael Kováts, this flag not only symbolized the strength of an important cavalry unit of the American Revolution, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery by Cara Rogers Stevens (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2024. Cloth, $54.99) Thomas Jefferson, although a mind-bogglingly prolific writer, strangely published only one book during his lifetime: Notes on the State of Virginia. From this reviewer’s experience, every mention of this book has been about […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer presents a talk he gave on the great Indigenous leader Guyasuta, who witnessed the fall of Indian America—when Native Peoples lost their political influence to determine the course of North American expansion. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, […]
The adjectives leveled Benedict Arnold’s way by contemporaries and historians leave little room for doubt. Though he inspired devotion among those serving under him, the man rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Prickly, heavy-handed and arrogant, he seemed to thrive on personal confrontation with those who differed with him. The famous clash between […]
BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway: A Gordian Love Affair by M. Andrew Holowchak (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2024. $39.00 Paperback) Maria Cosway, the quickly recognizable name of the woman to whom widower Jefferson became attached, has appeared in many Jefferson works over the years. While scholars have tried to decipher the nature of […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and economist Robert E. Wright on how Great Britain sought to prevent economic expansion in the colonies by squelching their trade and denying them control of their own monetary policies, leading to bankruptcies—a much more powerful incentive for independence than previously thought. New episodes of Dispatches […]
There are seven parts in the process to approve a bill in England: the first debate and reading, the second debate and reading, the committee stage, the report stage, the third debate and reading, the agreement between both Houses to the same bill, and the royal assent. This article is about the first three stages […]
In June 1783, while a formal peace agreement was being negotiated in Paris, what British arms had not been able to accomplish was effectively achieved by the very soldiers who had sworn to protect and maintain the American government. A military insurrection unfolded on streets of the national capital of Philadelphia, the only successful insurrection […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Battle of Ridgefield by Keith Marshall Jones (Ridgefield, CT: Ridgefield Historical Society. $35.95 Paperback) The most recent text by Keith Marshall Jones titled, The Battle of Ridgefield, provides a great deal of detail in a well-researched narrative. The sources and documentation reflect wide reading and research by the author in assembling the […]
America will celebrate the Semiquincentennial anniversary of its independence from Great Britain in 2026. The causes of that world-changing event were many and complexly intertwined, so new conjectures unsurprisingly continue to emerge from the archival mists. Because disputed taxes were objectively light, the current consensus stresses a narrative rooted in ideas to explain why many […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR editor and distinguished historian Ray Raphael on his recent article about “kingly government,” Benjamin Franklin’s greatest fear for the new country. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. […]
When a country is losing a war, especially a war it was expected to win easily, explanations acceptable to the powers-that-be, and the general population, can be hard to come by. Often there is a primary protagonist, or antagonist, depending on who is seeking answers. In the American Revolution, one such person was Joseph Galloway, […]
Michael Cecere’s latest book, Spark of Independence: The American Revolution in the Northern Colonies, 1775–1776 has been published. Mike is a long-time contributor to JAR, in addition to being an author, historian, and reenactor. Spark of Independence is the final volume of his Independence Trilogy, and is the latest in the JAR Books Series. Its […]
June 9, 1776: The colonel and the preacher exchanged concerned glances as they crouched in the swamp. They were spattered in mud, exhausted, and cut off from their unit. Visibility was poor through the trees, but they could hear the crack of musket fire nearby . . . the enemy was getting close. They saw […]
