In late November 1775, just as the bone-chilling New England winter started to settle upon Massachusetts, British General Howe loaded three hundred poor, sick inhabitants of Boston onto transport ships with no provisions or firewood.[1] They were landed on windswept Point Shirley peninsula, a narrow, beachy finger of land situated in between the gentle waves […]
On the Topographic-Bathymetric Series Map, Eastern United States, 1:250,000, Wilmington: NJ 18-2 (1972) prepared by the United States Geological Survey located at grid WU5.5, 8.0 is a symbol for a landmark labeled, “Pulaski Monument.” This monument indicates the site of the “massacre” of the Pulaski Legion in the pre-dawn hours of October 15, 1778.[1] In […]
What if another Continental general had changed sides at the same point in the war as Benedict Arnold? During the Revolutionary War, and as late as 1991, there was speculation that Robert Howe, one of five generals from North Carolina in the Continental Army, was a traitor. Did the general attempt to change sides in […]
As a British colony located on the Atlantic Ocean, Rhode Island’s wealth grew by utilizing the ocean’s vast resources. Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay is roughly two hundred and fifty square miles, which includes small islands and bays. Hundreds of ships carrying both raw materials from the colonies and manufactured products from England traveled through Narragansett […]
This September we welcomed two new writers—Bradley Sussner and Tom Shachtman—and published a flurry of fascinating articles. We are all anxiously awaiting the publication of our latest book series book, John Adams vs Thomas Paine: Rival Plans for the Early Republic by Jett B. Conner. Below are the top 10 most popular articles of September: Roger Sherman: The […]
Thomas Jefferson stood outside the halls of congress late one afternoon. And with the hand that penned the Declaration of Independence, he pointed across the steps and said in a loud voice to those assembled around him “There goes a man who never said a foolish thing in his life”.[1] The Federalist Fisher Ames once […]
This is the story, such as it can be told, of one long forgotten woman in the midst of the revolutionary war, a weaver of homespun cloth who, burdened with crushing grief and guilt, showed a spark of decency, if only for one brief moment, following a deadly skirmish on a hot July day in […]
Just as Nathan Hale is the best known spy of the American Revolution, so James Lafayette is the best known African-American spy of the conflict. However, the “facts” so often repeated in histories of the era regarding both these individuals are heavily based on folklore and oral stories passed along with little or no documented […]
Thomas Penn, the son of founder William Penn, inherited majority control of the proprietorship of the colony of Pennsylvania in 1746. At the time the colony’s legislative body was called the Assembly; it was unicameral, made up of thirty-four popularly elected members and had been autonomous for the first half of the eighteenth century. Penn […]
Book Review: The Dog Head Sword of Succasunna: Forgotten Family Patriots and Loyalists in the Revolutionary War by John Lawrence Brasher (Shelby Printing, 2016) [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] Artifacts hold a special place in our appreciation for history. When we see, or better still, touch, an object that came from another era, we feel connected to that […]
Generals appointed by the Continental Congress often owed their commissions to their state of residence as the congressmen tried to ensure that the rank of general be equally spread among the colonies based upon population. Five generals were appointed from the state of North Carolina during the Revolution: Francis Nash, James Moore, Robert Howe, Jethro […]
While France and the United States have always exchanged gifts representative of their support of democratic ideals, not all the gifts were between statesman or quite as intentional. The romantic and intimate relations between a French Army officer and a young American woman during the winter of 1782 provided the young U.S. with an excellent […]
In 1871, Jacob Mendes Da Costa published a study of a condition he termed “Irritable Heart” that described a series of symptoms observed among soldiers during the American Civil War that he believed were the result of a cardiac condition stemming from combat.[1] The symptoms that included nightmares, palpitations, headaches and digestive problems were later […]
Lt. Col. Anthony Walton White of the 3rd New Jersey Regiment had a very rocky 1776. His service was peppered with several episodes more indicative of a trouble-making non-commissioned officer than the second highest ranked officer in the regiment. He was a primary instigator of a duel between two junior officers. Granted the duel was […]
Book Review: A Tale of Three Gunboats: Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War Heritage by Philip Lundeberg, Arthur Cohn, Jennifer Jones, et al. (Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 2017) [BUY NOW] Sitting on the shore of Lake Champlain a few miles south of Burlington, Vermont, is the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (LCMM). Like […]
More often than not, the horrific realities of warfare are shielded by bland accounts and cold statistics. When it comes to the Revolutionary War, affairs on the frontier suffer egregiously in that regard, and the grim cost of the conflict is often overshadowed by the epic sweep of affairs on the eastern seaboard. But in […]
In popular understandings of the three Atlantic Revolutions of late eighteenth century, the American Revolution (1765-1783) is often regarded as the least radical and transformative. If the American Revolution was, as Carl Becker put it in 1909, just as much about “who should rule at home,” as it was “home rule,” observers were quick to […]
It was the letter that forced Washington to give up his dream of recapturing New York. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, encamped with his French army at Phillipsburg on the Hudson River, received it on August 14, 1781 and showed it immediately to Gen. George Washington, whose headquarters was nearby. Written on […]
In the prior year there have been several articles in the Journal of the American Revolution reappraising certain participants involved with the southern campaign. One article included mention of Patrick Ferguson but that piece was general in nature and could not go into detail as to how conclusions were drawn or what evidence might exist […]
Book Review: Fire and Desolation: The Revolutionary War’s 1778 Campaign as Waged from Quebec and Niagara Against the American Frontiers by Gavin K. Watt (Dundurn, 2017) [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] With the thousands of works written on the American Revolution, there are still areas where, remarkably, the surface has hardly been scratched. Increasingly, modern studies […]
Jacob Rogers was scared. So scared, in fact, that he—a Loyalist and former lieutenant in the Royal Navy—traveled twelve miles to the Continental Army camp in Cambridge in a frantic bid to gain the protection of Gen. George Washington. In a distressed series of letters, he implored the Committee of Safety and the Massachusetts General […]
What do an American Revolution prisoner of war accused of being a spy, a first born scion of an established wealthy New England family, and Machias Seal Island, a lonely, wind-swept chunk of rock in the Gulf of Maine all have in common? The American Revolution in Maine has been described as a quasi-civil war […]
Pierre-Augustin de Caron, better known by his stage name, Beaumarchais, was a French playwright, financier, and confidant of King Louis XVI. In the spring of 1775, he travelled to London to take care of some business for Comte de Vergennes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and spend some time with his friend John Wilkes. […]
Book Review: Strong Ground: Mount Independence and the American Revolution by Donald H. Wickman and The Mount Independence Coalition (The Mount Independence Coalition, 2017) [BUY NOW] During colonial times, both British and French settlers perceived Fort Ticonderoga as the most strategic fortification protecting the Northern frontier. On the shores of Lake Champlain in upstate New York, Fort […]
We’re back! After celebrating our 1000th article and taking a summer break, we’re back in the saddle again with a healthy backlog of new articles and writers. Speaking of which, four new authors joined JAR in July and August: Daniel M. Sivilich, Joseph Lee Boyle, John Happ and Jeffrey Pennington. In July, we said goodbye to our […]
I had the opportunity to visit the grave of the Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de LaFayette recently. As the American colonists were seeking to take more local control over their own affairs from the British, fighting against “taxation without representation,” and fighting for “the separation of church and State,” many people outside of America […]
As the sun set, Saturday, August 24, 1776, three American schooners, a sloop-of-war, and six gondolas sailed north from Crown Point toward the widest part of Lake Champlain. Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold aboard the schooner Royal Savage had been ordered by Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates to position his fleet at a narrows on the lake […]
On March 14, 1778, Gen. George Washington sent the following recommendation to Congress concerning Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski, who on February 28 had resigned as Commander of Horse: The Count, however, far from being disgusted with the service, is led by his thirst for glory, and zeal for the cause of Liberty, to solicit farther […]
Book Review: Revolution Against Empire: Taxes, Politics and the Origins of American Independence by Justin du Rivage (Yale University Press, 2017) [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] The typical narrative of the American Revolution generally posits 1763, which marked the end of the Seven Years’ War, as the beginning of the end for the British colonies in America.[1] That […]
In the early morning of May 30, 1777, my distant grandfather Sgt. Simon Giffin of Wethersfield, Connecticut left his home and followed the dirt trail over Rocky Hill and down to the Village Green. After three months of training and recruiting he had been called to muster with his regiment, the 9th Connecticut commanded by […]
George Washington biographies abound and the number continues to grow with at least fifteen new memoirs published in 2017. In fact, historian and Washington biographer Ron Chernow estimates that over nine hundred George Washington biographies have been written since the first by Mason Locke (Parson) Weems in 1800, a year after the General’s death.[1] By […]
On September 25, 1777, the day before British Gen. William Howe’s army triumphantly marched into the newly designated American capital of Philadelphia,[1] two of his officers were upstairs at Hull’s Tavern in New York City, resolving differences they had developed during the course of a trans-Atlantic voyage that had only ended earlier that day. A […]
On an October day in 1820, a fourteen-year-old African American boy trudged along a rural lane near the town of Barkhamsted, Connecticut. Two hundred miles from home, in a strange place he had never visited before, the boy tugged at a string trailing behind him. Tagging along at the other end was his father, Bristol […]
There are a lot of big numbers that demonstrate our exciting growth since publishing our first article in 2013. Four hardcover book series books published (and one forthcoming) Four collectible hardback volumes published More than 3.15 million unique website readers More than 5.7 million website pageviews More than 165 writers More than 5,600 comments on our articles (and nearly […]
I recently attended the Third Annual Conference of the American Revolution Mohawk Valley Conference in Fort Plain, New York where I met an eighty-seven-year-old gentleman named Skip Barshied. Previously he had sent me a letter telling me of the large number of artifacts that he collected at the site of Fort Paris in Stone Arabia, […]
In a cemetery behind the Salem United Church of Christ, in Reamstown, Lancaster County, a boulder stands: This grinding bowl from East Cocalico is placed to Commemorate ITS MAKER THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND The Boulder, Three other local figures, who lived abreast of the loftier Traditions of their time, light and race: THE SOLDIER of […]
As events would prove, the autumn campaign was a very risky venture indeed, yet despite the operational difficulties attending it Cornwallis saw no option but to go on to the offensive after his victory at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina, on August 16, 1780. As he had explained to Clinton, “It may be doubted […]
About Joshua Shepherd Joshua Shepherd, a sculptor and freelance writer, has created over 20 public monuments. His articles, with a special focus on Revolutionary and frontier America, have appeared in publications including MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Military Heritage, Muzzle Blasts, and The Artilleryman. He lives in rural Indiana with his wife and children. What […]
Book review: Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era by Glenn Williams (Westholme, 2017) [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] In 1763, King George III issued a proclamation essentially declaring the regions west of the Allegheny off limits to settlement by whites. As it took responsibility for territories once claimed by France, Britain hoped to […]
