BOOK REVIEW: The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America by Kostya Kennedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2025) The story of Paul Revere’s ride through the Massachusetts countryside on the night of April 18-19, 1775, to warn that British troops were on the march, is so familiar that people might believe there […]
The Revolutionary War in the Ohio and Upper Mississippi River Valleys is generally looked upon as a side show to the main conflict along the Atlantic Seaboard. However, the impact of the forces in the Old Northwest Territory was much greater than their small size could have anticipated. Historian Pauline Peyton posited that had the […]
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence charted a new autonomous path for thirteen of Britain’s North American colonies. One of the document’s many allegations was that British authorities had “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.”[1] While its context largely pointed towards Native Americans, another inspiration for this grievance may have been the embodying of Loyalist regiments […]
BOOK REVIEW: Threshold to Valley Forge: The Six Days of the Gulph Mills Encampment by Sheilah D. Vance (Havertown, PA: Brookline Books, 2025) $24.95 Paperback. As the crow flies, the region west of Matson’s Ford and known as “The Gulph” loomed a mere dozen miles northwest of Philadelphia. The nearly weeklong encampment of George Washington […]
As part of the British empire, none of the thirteen American colonies maintained a standing army of the sort Great Britain and the other European powers had. American colonists looked to their own militia and when necessary, the British army and navy, for their defense. The French and Indian War of the 1750s and 1760s, […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Jude Pfister. The Federalist Papers stand amongst the most important documents from the Revolutionary era, and they are being reevaluated for a new era. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, […]
In New York City, at nine o’clock in the morning on Thursday, April 30, 1789, Americans of diverse Christian denominations filed into their churches in and around Broad Street. Once settled, their respective clergymen led them in prayer, asking for “the blessing of Heaven upon the new government.” These well-wishers also pleaded for divine “protection […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4-13, 1781 by Matthew E. Reardon. (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2024.) Hardcover $35.95 Matthew E. Reardon gives scholarship on the traitor Benedict Arnold a new addition with his 2024 work, The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, […]
Following the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed three Acts that would become known as the Coercive Acts. The first was the Boston Port Bill; it ordered the port of Boston to be shut down until all of the damages incurred at “the Party” were paid for in full. This bill was introduced in the House […]
The American Revolution ended many lives and cut short many promising futures. A few of the fallen became celebrated martyrs in the cause of liberty, but most died in obscurity and are unremembered today. Thomas Williams, Jr. of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was one who died, after considerable military service, less than a week after the Declaration […]
BOOK REVIEW: Robert Rogers, Ranger: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon by Martin Klotz. (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2024). $32.50 hardcover. In 1940, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies released “Northwest Passage,” a rather loose adaptation of Kenneth Roberts’ book by the same name.[1] In it, well-liked and respected hero-figure Robert Rogers leads a skilled and disciplined […]
Following the ratification of the Franco-American Alliance on February 6, 1778, France informed Great Britain that it had joined forces with America in its war with England. As an integral part of this arrangement, France and the United States had agreed that neither would form a treaty with Britain without the approval of the other. […]
Although a genuine folk hero, little has been published about Elijah Clark (often spelled Clarke) beyond well-intended historical fiction.[1] Like his contemporaries Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark, he should be remembered as an important frontier leader. Clark’s first biographer, Absalom Harris Chappell, wrote in 1874 that he would never have been known if he […]
BOOK REVIEW: An American Triumph: America’s Founding Era Through the Lives of Ben Franklin, George Washington, and John Adams by Tom Hand (Americana Corner Press, 2023) $35.00 Hardcover. Tom Hand’s An American Triumph examines the lives of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and John Adams. Hand, a West Point graduate, created the website “Americana Corner” in […]
Aside from the commercially inspired Mount Vernon Compact of 1785, the first public acknowledgement of the enormous inability of Congress to govern the peace in the new United States was the calling of the Annapolis Convention for September 1786. William Grayson, writing to James Madison that May, sounded upon the grievances of an ineffective Congress, […]
There is a coatee from the collection of the Bayville Historical Museum that is presently stored within the Oyster Bay Historical Society Archive that appears to be a genuine uniform from the American Revolution. It is speculated to have belonged to a soldier from the Loyalist militia of Queens County, New York and possibly that […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793 by Patrick Spero (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024) $34.95 Hardcover Dreary as they may have been, the COVID lockdowns had a few positive consequences; they did give some historians, among them Patrick Spero, the Chief Executive Officer of the […]
George Washington was famously taciturn, often a man of few words in public gatherings. And though his published works are sparse in comparison to many of his fellow founders, he nevertheless left a voluminous written record of correspondence and diary entries that is still being parsed today.[1] It was while commanding the Continental Army that […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Andrew Lawler about Virginia Royal Governor John Murray, Lord Dunmore’s decision to begin arming enslaved men in service to the Crown. Murray’s actions sent shockwaves across the colony. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), […]
On September 15, 1787, as the Constitutional Convention drew to a close, James Madison noted that George Mason, a fellow delegate from Virginia and the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, had a specific objection to the intended manner in which the Constitution would be amended. Specifically, Madison observed Mason: Thought the plan […]
BOOK REVIEW: Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic by Lindsay M. Chervinsky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024) $34.99 hardcover It was the January term of my final year at Pacific Lutheran University. Thoroughly over the college experience (man cannot live on Hot Pockets and Diet Mountain Dew alone), […]
In researching the little-known Battle of Cricket Hill/Gwynn’s Island that took place on July 9-10, 1776, in what was then Gloucester County and today Matthews County, Virginia, available surviving records document only one Patriot casualty. While this is not unusual for many of the smaller, lesser known and infrequently studied engagements, the details of this […]
In the chaotic aftermath of the American Revolution, the boundaries between heroism and villainy were often obscured by economic hardship, social instability, and territorial disputes. One figure who epitomizes this ambiguity is Samuel Mason, a Revolutionary War captain who later became infamous as a river pirate preying on trade along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. […]
BOOK REVIEW: Washington’s Marines: The Origin of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775-1777 by Jason Q. Bohm. (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2023) $34.95 hardcover “In December [1776] he [Major Samuel Nicholas] was ordered to march with three companies of Marines to the Jerseys to be under his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, and continue […]
From time to time we ask our contributors a question about some aspect of the American Revolution and the founding era (circa 1765-1805). This month’s question was: What is the most underrated event that occurred in 1775, and why should it get more attention? John Ferling In December 1775 a French army officer disembarked in […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Robert J. Walworth on the competing claims of New York and New Hampshire settlers in the region that ultimately became Vermont. The dispute gave rise the the Green Mountain Boys who defended the New Hampshire Grants against more recent claims from New York. New episodes […]
As the American Revolution morphed into a world war with the entrance of France and Spain, the diplomatic attempts to settle it became more complex. Europe became a hotbed of diplomatic activity, conducted by both state-sanctioned negotiators and freelancers of various sorts, all with their own agendas for negotiations. There was a series of third-party […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, & Liberty: A Philosophical Analysis by M. Andrew Holowchak (Vernon Press, 2024). In The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, & Liberty: A Philosophical Analysis, author M. Andrew Holowchak situates Thomas Jefferson’s political ideology within a philosophical framework and positions Jefferson as a great philosopher of […]
In May 1780, British Maj. Patrick Ferguson outlined a plan for constructing fortifications and securing the province of South Carolina. His proposals hinged on fortifying the junctions of major land and water routes from Charlestown (today Charleston) to prominent villages across the interior. Although known primarily for his design of a breech-loading rifle, Ferguson had […]
European colonial powers often employed enslaved Black soldiers in the New World to combat their enemies. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, Spain freed, trained, and armed fugitive slaves from Georgia and the Carolinas. Britain was an exception. Except for employing enslaved Jamaicans in the failed 1741 effort to conquer the Spanish city of […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution by Andrew Lawler (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025) $30.00 Hardcover Andrew Lawler’s recent text artfully focuses on an important and understudied American Revolutionary period, Virginia in 1775 and 1776, and topic, slavery. The title, A […]
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 […]
