As Nathanael Greene retreated from Ninety Six in late June 1781, following his unsuccessful siege there, Thomas Sumter was eager to campaign in lower South Carolina. This was a stratagem the Gamecock had employed before. Following Greene’s defeat at Hobkirk’s Hill on April 25, 1781, Sumter quickly opened a campaign against the British supply depots […]
The bus tour was in its final hour. Over 100 men and women had climbed back up the steps of the two buses for the last time that day. And it had been a long day. Beginning in the parking lot of Fulton-Montgomery Community College, on a plain just above Amsterdam, New York, the assemblage […]
The 38th Regiment of Foot disembarked in Boston in the summer of 1774, and spent the next nine years in America involved in some of the war’s most storied campaigns. There was considerable turnover of personnel during those years; the regiment had, nominally, thirty-five officers at any given time, but a total of eighty-eight men […]
Book Review: Hamilton: An American Biography by Tony Williams, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON Alexander Hamilton fever has certainly swept the country and revived the American public’s interest in Hamilton and the other Founding Fathers. Individuals who perhaps at one point showed little special interest in the founding of the country are […]
As a young country lawyer, John Adams thought he seemed to lack focus. “Ballast is what I want, I totter, with every Breeze. My motions are unsteady.”[1] History has shown that he eventually would find his “Ballast” in the steady personage of Abigail (Smith) Adams, his almost-equally-famous better half. Over the course of their fifty-four-year-long […]
Book Review: Unlikely General: Mad Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America by Mary Stockwell (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON Typically, biographies of Continental Army generals are almost entirely devoted to the subject’s participation in Revolutionary War campaigns and battles with only nominal descriptions of their post-war lives. Contrary to […]
David Wooster’s part in the American Revolution began in a slightly embarrassing manner. Wooster commanded the militia at New Haven, Connecticut. On April 22, 1775, just days after Lexington and Concord, hotheaded young Benedict Arnold was demanding the keys to the storehouse where the local company kept its gunpowder. The leaders of the community had […]
Maj. John Pitcairn of the British marines became notorious among New Englanders after the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress published depositions from dozens of men declaring that he had ordered light infantrymen to fire on the peaceful Lexington militia company. (Modern historians discount those claims, agreeing that […]
In a quiet Baptist cemetery in Hilltown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, repose the remains of Isaac Lewis. Lewis served under Gen. George Washington during the prelude to a critical battle of the American Revolution, one which kept open the path to American Independence. Lewis’s battle experience was brief but memorable. Isaac, son of Henry and […]
George Washington understood the importance of naval power. He recognized the futility of trying to defend New York City, surrounded as it was by water that the British Navy could use to maneuver around his flanks. “The amazing advantage the Enemy derive from their Ships and command of the Water keeps us in a State […]
Book Review: Crossroads of the Revolution: Trenton, 1774 – 1783 by Larry L. Kidder. (Lawrenceville, NJ: Knox Press, 2017) BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON Gene Procknow As there are hundreds of new books written each year on the people, battles and other events of the American Revolution, it is difficult to create a distinctive approach for a […]
There was a slight chill in the Massachusetts air on the evening of February 13, 1818, which caused frost to gather around the windows of the houses in Quincy. From one window on 1250 Hancock Street, a frail old man could be seen sitting in front of a roaring fire, leaning over a dark cherry […]
Author Roxane Orgill’s new book is Siege: How General Washington Kicked the British Out of Boston and Launched a Revolution (Candlewick Press, 2018), which takes the unusual approach of using verse to give voice to its characters. We asked the author about this book and the research behind it. Tell us a bit about your work in […]
For most of the American Revolution, a community of Lenape/Delaware, Munsey, Mahican, and Mingo Indians who had adopted the Christian faith lived along the Tuscarawas River in present-day Ohio with their missionaries from the Moravian Church.[1] The most famous of these were David Zeisberger (1721-1808) and John Heckewelder (1743-1823), who documented their experiences and studies […]
Mary Robie, a Massachusetts refugee living in revolutionary Nova Scotia, did not mince words when she criticized her friends for simply “passing thro life” in late May 1783. Despairingly, the nineteen-year-old mocked the tedium of her peers’ routines as fitting for those “whose views extend no higher” than the daily humdrum of Halifax. In Robie’s […]
