Year: 2013

12
Interviews Posted on

The Time Travel Question

If you could time travel and visit any American city/colony/state for one year between 1763 and 1783, which city/colony/state and year would you choose? Why?   Blessed by 30 years of genealogical research performed by my mother, I actually lay claim to personal connections in all sorts of places in the colonies. However, the one […]

by Editors
2
Interviews Posted on

Needs Further Exploration?

What aspects of or questions regarding the American Revolution need to be further explored by historians?   All of them. I think a return to primary sources and close comparison to modern secondary sources yields some extremely interesting results in the evolution of modern history. Should much of what is now considered history be consigned […]

by Editors
5
Interviews Posted on

Washington’s Biggest Blunder?

In your opinion, what was George Washington’s biggest blunder of the war? Its impact, if any?   Washington’s whole approach to the defense of New York was one of history’s great debacles: lack of imagination about the British landing, failure to supervise subordinates in preparing the Brooklyn defenses, boxing himself into Brooklyn Heights with no […]

by Editors
4
Interviews Posted on

An Interview with Richard C. Wiggin

Richard C. Wiggin is the author of Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783. This book is a very detailed study of all the Revolutionary War soldiers from one American town, designed to preserve their names and biographical information. In the late nineteenth century, many town histories contained a chapter […]

by J. L. Bell
9
People Posted on

Benjamin Franklin: America’s First Whistleblower

Edward Snowden and the NSA documents. Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables. Daniel Elsberg and the Pentagon papers. Benjamin Franklin and the Hutchinson letters? Snowden, Assange, and Elsberg all considered themselves to be self-appointed whistleblowers. Individuals who wanted to open governments by disclosing sensitive government documents. Without a doubt, all three started huge controversies […]

by John L. Smith, Jr.
3
Arts & Literature Posted on

Washington’s Five Books

On 10 November 1775, slightly more than four months after he had taken command of the American troops besieging Boston, Gen. George Washington sent a list of books to an old military colleague in Virginia. William Woodford (1734–1780) had just been reappointed an officer for their home colony. Woodford complained about the “inexperience” of his […]

by J. L. Bell
2
The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

Raid Across the Ice: the British Operation to Capture Washington

In early February 1780, General George Washington’s main army was encamped at Jockey Hollow, New Jersey. But the general maintained his headquarters about three miles away in Morristown, at the house of the widow Theodosia Ford. That separation enticed the British high command into undertaking an operation that, if successful, would cripple the Continental Army […]

by Benjamin Huggins
2
People Posted on

Richard Winn at Fort McIntosh

In the autumn of 1776 loyalists from East Florida under Thomas “Burntfoot” Brown and Daniel McGirth frequently raided the southern parishes of Georgia keeping its citizens in constant disarray and disrupting rice and cattle production.   The very thin population in the area made defense a difficult proposition.  Trying to stop the raids and protect the […]

by Wayne Lynch
7
People Posted on

Charles Lee: Gift of Controversy

Until the capture of Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright in World War II, the highest-ranking American generals taken prisoner were Major Generals Benjamin Lincoln and Charles Lee. Lincoln was taken when his army was forced to surrender at Charleston in 1780 but the enigmatic, eccentric Lee was ignominiously kidnapped when he failed to billet himself within […]

by Jeff Dacus
Food & Lifestyle Posted on

Dessert: Send it to Table

What to serve for desert after a Thanksgiving meal? Pumpkin pie, obviously. Unfortunately for the revolutionary-era aspiring chef in America, pumpkins are plentiful but pie-making recipes using them have yet to be published. Indeed, one of the most widely-printed British cookbooks said that “The Pumpkin is a very ordinary Fruit, and is principally the Food […]

by Don N. Hagist
Critical Thinking Posted on

Birth of the “Caucus”

America’s Revolutionary decades produced a new republican system, and with it new republican language. One term that surfaced early in that period and remains with us today is “caucus.” The word’s origin is mysterious, but its meaning has stayed fairly steady and the earliest uses offer a good glimpse into pre-Revolutionary politics. The first form […]

by J. L. Bell
4
People Posted on

Before Washington: The Revolution’s First Commander-in-Chief

On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress officially announced the creation of the Continental Army, a military force representing all of the colonies resisting British authority in North America. The following day the Congress named the army’s commander. George Washington, a planter and Congressional delegate from Virginia, would become the commander-in-chief, taking command of […]

by Editors
4
Food & Lifestyle Posted on

Top 10 Marriages Gone Bad

Every now and then I meet someone who thinks that people “back then” were all highly religious and led straight-laced, pious lives. Those people haven’t read newspapers of the era. Legal notices appeared frequently in which husbands and wives absolved themselves of responsibility for the debts and dissipations of spouses who’d abandoned them. Sometimes competing […]

by Don N. Hagist