Month: September 2018

3
Diplomacy Posted on

A Loyalist’s Response to the Franco-American Alliance: Charles Inglis’s “Papinian” Essays

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 […]

by Jim Piecuch
11
Law Posted on

The Most Extraordinary Murder

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 […]

by Chaim M. Rosenberg
People Posted on

Our Man in Minorca: Lewis Littlepage, American Volunteer with the Spanish Armed Forces

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 […]

by Larrie D. Ferreiro
2
Constitutional Debate Posted on

Who Picked the Committees at the Constitutional Convention?

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 […]

by David O. Stewart
10
Memorials Posted on

The Glorious Career and Unfortunate Death of John Laurens

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 […]

by Jeff Dacus
Culture Posted on

The Dorchester Heights Memorial, South Boston, and the Celebration of Evacuation Day

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 […]

by John E. Happ
2
Features Posted on

Dying to Celebrate

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 […]

by Joseph Lee Boyle