“The King had evidently consented to the repeal, and then disavowed his Ministers.”—Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third In early 1766, in response to American violent resistance to the taxation levied by the Stamp Act of 1765, British leaders were concerned with determining “the best mode of restoring order & […]
The American Revolution was perhaps America’s first civil war—a dispute that forced neighbors to choose between country and King; to declare themselves Patriots or Loyalists. Modern Americans might be tempted to only focus on the Patriots’ side of events, but I have discovered that by investigating the Loyalists, an ensemble of characters with connections to […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2022) It is one of the great ironies of historical studies that the people who were most numerous are the ones about whom, as individuals, the least information survives. The ordinary […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor William W. Reynolds on his examination of the surrender documents from Yorktown discovering differences between the original papers and subsequent copies. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. […]
In 1776, John Cadwalader was a thirty-four-year-old merchant and prominent member of the Philadelphia gentry who had risen to command the volunteer militia known as the Philadelphia Associators. In his capacity as a militia colonel, he would play a distinctive—and today largely unappreciated—role in what historians have termed the “Ten Crucial Days” of the Revolutionary […]
Marinus Willett was born the son of a Quaker, Edward Willett, on July 31, 1740, in Jamaica, Long Island (now part of Queens). After spending his early years on a farm in Jamaica, he relocated to a place known then as Cedar Grove, along the East River and now part of New York City. This […]
BOOK REVIEW: James Colbert and his Chickasaw Legacy by Stephen L. Kling, Jr. and Guy B. Braden (St. Louis, MO: THGC Publishing, 2022) The history of the American Revolution is filled with shadowy figures, about whom little is known, though scattered documents provide fragments of information and hint at their importance. One such individual was James […]
The graphic below outlines the force structure created by the Third Virginia Convention in August 1775 and identifies the district and county or counties where companies formed, unit commanders, and where and when the companies assembled, served or operated in 1775. The initial intent of this research was to identify the regular companies that served […]
During the Revolutionary War, several men refused commissions as generals in the Continental Army. Seth Pomeroy and John Whitcomb were unable to accept the honor due to ill health. John Philip de Haas concentrated on his business after distinguished service as a colonel. One officer, John Cadwalader of Pennsylvania, not only turned the down the […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Battle of Gloucester 1777 by Garry Wheeler Stone and Paul W. Schopp (Yardley, PA: Westhome Publishing, 2022) Garry Wheeler Stone’s and Paul W. Schopp’s The Battle of Gloucester 1777 comes to us as a part of Westholme Publishing’s new Small Battles series. The 152-page book highlights the small action that took place outside […]
The surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1781 was implemented by the three-party Articles of Capitulation (“the Articles”), one of the most important documents of the Revolutionary War, since the surrender eventually led to the Peace of Paris (1783) and American independence. Curiosity as to the current location of the original Articles, i.e., […]
David Williams, John Paulding, and Isaac Van Wart were celebrated as heroes during their lifetime, vaulted to fame by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and lionized in popular ballads and the play The Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry.[1] Historian Mercy Otis Warren adored John André’s Captors, writing in 1805 that their names “ought never to […]
Following the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, the House of Commons began to debate whether or not the war should continue. There were three separate attempts over a period of two and a half months to end the war. This article presents the first attempt, that is, the first motion, […]
