In the Old Senate Chamber of the Maryland State House hangs a painting commissioned by the Maryland Legislature often called the “Annapolis Portrait” of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale. The moment portrayed in the work is after the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1781. Two of the figures are easily recognized, […]
Since the dawn of humanity, thunder and lightning have both terrified and awed. Protection was sought from deities like Zeus and Thor; and in later ages God and St. Barbara. By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment had brought about a new sense of curiosity; reason began to replace superstition. There were […]
They’re everywhere now. On the pages of social media, displayed on bumper stickers, and in the speeches of political candidates, partisan factions claim a Founding Father by virtue of one of their Founding Sound Bites. But how many of those words were actually said, as written, by the person claimed? Very few, if any, one […]
It was November. Sergeant Williams was cold, and he knew it would be getting colder. He had no warm clothing, no money to purchase any, and he wasn’t able to get a part-time job to earn some extra cash. He needed help, and so he did the most sensible thing a man in his circumstances […]
On April 20, 1775, John Hunter Holt announced to the public his recent acquisition of the Norfolk newspaper, the Virginia Gazette or Norfolk Intellingencer. For a newspaper that had only been in print since 1774, this sudden change in ownership was more than just a business venture, it would serve as an open act of […]
In March 1778, George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental army, was in winter quarters with his men at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; Capt. James Cook was exploring the Pacific northwest of North America; and Voltaire, the famous French philosopher, was crowned as a poet laureate in Paris. But Chichester Cheyne, a fifteen-year-old Virginian, gave little […]
Barlow Trecothick was born in Stepney, England in 1720. At seven, his family moved to Boston where he became an apprentice for six years to Charles Apthorp, a local merchant. He lived in Boston until he was 22, then he moved to Jamaica where he represented Apthorp’s firm for five years. While in the West […]
In January of 1781, Loyalist Maj. James Dunlap raided the Long Cane settlement in South Carolina that included the homes of notorious rebel leaders James McCall and Andrew Pickens. Among the most respected of all the Whig military men, Pickens had only renounced his parole the month before. Lord Cornwallis’s response was to send Dunlap […]
The organization of the Militia in colonial Rhode Island[1] was established by law. Five county regiments and the number of companies in each town were specified.[2] Annually the General Assembly approved the locally elected officers for the trained bands (companies of militia) at its session in May or the next session in June. In 1771, […]
In 1775, the Continental Army was in dire need of engineers. The colonies did not have a War College or military academy like the Ecole Militaire in Paris or the Royal Military Academy in London. Gen. George Washington complained to Congress, “The Skill of those engineers we have … [is] very imperfect and confined to […]
Journal of the American Revolution, the popular online magazine and annual book, today announced its winner and runners-up for the 2015 Book of the Year Award. The annual award goes to the non-fiction volume that best mirrors the journal’s mission: to deliver passionate, creative and smart content that makes American Revolution history accessible to a […]
A Story of Resistance to the Universal Draft In Rhode Island, as in the rest of New England during the Revolutionary War, a key Patriot institution was the universal draft. Rhode Island required all white men between the ages of sixteen and sixty to serve in the militia, backed by state courts and other state […]
Thomas Paine’s sensational pamphlet Common Sense, published anonymously in January of 1776, has a singular place of importance in the literature of the American Revolutionary era. So famous was the title that Paine would adopt it as a sobriquet when authoring future works. The publication history of that wildly successful pamphlet is well established.[1] But […]
