Did you see the Volunteers! Did you see the Volunteers! Marching to parade Their hearts are true Their facings blue They are six feet high without a shoe Did you see the Volunteers! This popular song of the late eighteenth century could apply to any number of rebel uprisings then taking place. From France to […]
Over the years, historians have located about thirty first-hand accounts of the American expedition into Canada in the fall of 1775. These accounts detail the hardships encountered as the Americans marched through the wilderness in an attempt to capture the British stronghold at Quebec. There may be other journals that have not yet been discovered; […]
At nine o’clock on the morning of May 6, 1778, Continental soldiers at Valley Forge emerged from their huts to hear their regimental chaplains announce the American alliance with France. This was followed by the troops forming in ranks for a review by General George Washington, the firing of muskets by Washington’s guard, a thirteen-gun […]
On July 2, 1778, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hanged Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner and Continental soldier Ezra Ross, together with British soldiers Sgt. James Buchanan and Pvt. William Brooks. They had been convicted of the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Joshua Spooner, in “the most extraordinary crime ever perpetrated in New England.”[1] The trial was the first […]
The Revolutionary War was fought on a global scale, with six nation states engaged in battles across three continents and two oceans. Volunteers from many European nations came to the United States to fight alongside the American insurgents: Antoine Félix Wuibert and the Marquis de Lafayette from France, Jordi Farragut from Spain and Thaddeus Kosciuszko from Poland, to name […]
The Sugar Act of 1764 levied taxes on imports to British colonies in North America. In doing so, the act marked a change in British colonial policy—an empire-shaking change—from commercial and trade regulation only, to taxation by Parliament. There was an earlier Sugar Act that established a foundation for the act of 1764. The First […]
Through four months in the summer of 1787, passionate arguments over political principles filled the Pennsylvania State House while hard-nosed political horse-trading buzzed in the taverns and drawing rooms of Philadelphia. Fifty-five American politicians were writing a new charter of government for the United States, the Constitution. They produced the longest-surviving constitutional republic in human […]
George Washington surrounded himself with the best and the brightest young men involved in the revolutionary cause. Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, Robert Harrison, the Marquis de Lafayette, James McHenry, and John Fitzgerald were a few of the talented people that served alongside Washington in his “family” at various times. One of them, John Laurens of […]
Books are an important resource for any researcher. As approaches to the interpretation of history change and new primary source material comes to light, books can become dated. However, some books have value much longer than others. With this in mind, we asked JAR contributors: “Which book published between 1800 and 1950 do you still […]
On my way to Boston’s Logan Airport a while ago a taxi driver pointed towards Boston Harbor and started telling me about a Revolutionary War monument located behind South Boston High School. As an Irish-American transplant from Chicago, green-colored Red Sox hats and the reputation of the South Boston Irish are very real manifestations of […]
Eric Sterner is a writer and historian living in Northern Virginia, who has worked primarily in the fields of national security and aerospace policy for both the government and private sector. He served at the Department of Defense and NASA during the Bush Administration and held senior staff positions for the Committee on Science and […]
During the American Revolution, hundreds of civilians and military men on both sides were killed or injured by accidents. A number of these occurred during occasions which were supposed to be joyous. One of the earliest was Robert Jewell. Samuel Rowland Fisher heard of his death in 1781, and remembered he had been keeper of […]
