When British soldiers arrived in Boston in 1768 as part of the British government’s efforts to maintain peace in the colony of Massachusetts, local citizens resented the military presence for several reasons. First and foremost was the implication that the army, in spite of their mission to maintain order, were in fact oppressors sent by […]
BOOK REVIEW: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021) The eminent historian and author Gordon S. Wood has turned a series of recent lectures into his latest work, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. The focus of the book is what Wood considers […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Jane L. Green on her research into the life of Thomas Ditson, a man who went from being tarred and feathered by the British for illicit trading to becoming one of the first Massachusetts militiamen to engage the British at Concord. New episodes of Dispatches […]
George Washington’s appointment as commander of the Continental Army filled him with doubt from the start. In his address to the Continental Congress on June 16, 1775, Washington described himself in the best light while at the same time signaling doubt. He declared himself humble to accept the position and explained that he did so […]
Rev. George Whitefield (1714-1770) was an ordained Church of England priest with an exceptional speaking voice who in his lifetime swayed countless people towards historic Christianity. In a time of the liberalization of historic Protestant Christianity, Whitefield preached the simple biblical message of the Protestant Reformation, that people could not reach God or merit God’s […]
We regularly ask our contributors questions about the American Revolution and founding era. This month we’ve asked them to tell us about an African American or Native American associated with the 1765-1805 era who does NOT have a Wikipedia entry, but who should. Lars D. H. Hedbor The Marquis de Rouvray, who commanded the regiment of […]
BOOK REVIEW: Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History by Katherine Carté (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press/Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2021) Dwight Eisenhower once said that “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it […]
In the second half of the 1700s, French natural historian Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, formulated what would be dubbed the “New World degeneracy” or the “American degeneracy” theory. His work, Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière, included a vast array of facts about natural history from around the world as well as the Count’s many […]
BOOK REVIEW: Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution by H. W. Brands (New York: Doubleday, 2021) Thanks to his many television appearances, H.W. Brands is a familiar face to many. The Jack S. Blanton, Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas Austin, Brands is also a prolific writer whose numerous […]
The status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was an average, unpretentious farmer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time than with specific displays of courage. A deeper look at his activities reveals years of service first as […]
BOOK REVIEW: Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders by Dennis C. Rasmussen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021) I feel dutybound to confess something, before I tempt the reader further into this review of Dennis C. Rasmussen’s Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders. I am somewhat embittered—envious even. […]
The months leading up to the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781 are often glossed over in histories of the Revolutionary War. But they should not be. They were crucial months of preparation for the campaign to come. The events of late June to mid-August 1781 tell the important story leading up to the most […]
We asked our contributors what history project they’re most looking forward to in 2022. Ken Lawson In 2022, I am most looking forward to the spring publication of my book, George Whitefield’s Ministry in New England, 1740-1770. This 600 or so page book is a detailed account full of primary sources that have mostly been […]
Constant Avery of Eaton, in New York’s Madison County, travelled sixteen miles to the county seat in Wampsville in the first week of October 1832. On October 8 he appeared in open court to apply for a federal pension for his years as a soldier in the Continental Army. Avery was “aged seventy three years […]
BOOK REVIEW: Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution by Woody Holton (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021) Some historical narratives are plain and straight forward, almost like a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece. The Mona Lisa is very explicit: you know exactly what the painting is about because the image is directly in front […]
The Journal of the American Revolution is pleased to announce The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher as winner of the 2021 Journal of the American Revolution Book-of-the-Year Award. Honorable Mention is awarded to Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic by Brad A. Jones. The award—an international award dedicated to nonfiction books specifically […]
Late in September 1774 the Continental Congress was in the middle of an ongoing debate on the means that should be implemented to restore American rights. Most of the discussion was around methods of confrontation with Britain, embargoes, and non-consumption activities, as well as the breaking down of British law and order in the colonies. […]
The threat of resigning one’s military commission under protest is almost a matter of tradition. If your leaders made a decision you did not think was in the best interest of either yourself or your comrades, you offered up your resignation. It was a matter of honor. Should your resignation be received, you found yourself […]
BOOK REVIEW: Washington at the Plow: The Founding Father and the Question of Slavery by Bruce A. Ragsdale (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021) In Washington at the Plow: The Founding Father and the Question of Slavery, Bruce Ragsdale provides an in-depth examination of George Washington’s passion for agriculture and the way it changed his […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews public historian and JAR contributor Kim Burdick on Cooch’s Bridge, an early action in the Philadelphia campaign and the only Revolutionary War battle to be fought in the state of Delaware. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, […]
This story begins five weeks after Gen. John Burgoyne’s army forced the Americans to abandon positions on Lake Champlain in July 1777. On August 12, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln wrote to Washington telling him, “I am to return with the militia . . . to the northward, with a design to fall into the rear of […]
On October 18, 1777, New York provincial assemblyman, and tory, Crean Brush, penned his final will and testament from prison in Boston. After nineteen months of incarceration which included being held in irons, and “in a state of body and mind so debilitated by misfortune,” Brush made provisions for his wife Margaret, stepdaughter Frances, and […]
Many things remained slow and uncertain during 2021, but the publication of excellent new books on the American Revolution and founding era was not one of them. JAR received dozens of books for review, several of which were nominated by publishers and readers for our annual Book of the Year award. Our review committee had […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Scott M. Smith on Robert Rogers, a legend for his service during the Seven Years’ War, but during the American Revolution his role was far less glamorous. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
The increasingly turbulent years preceding the American Revolution were fueled by an exchange of laws promulgated by Great Britain to maintain political and economic control over its American Colonies and the reactions of her unruly colonies to those laws. One of the events in the lead-up to the Revolution was the issuance by Great Britain […]
During the era of the American Revolution, French and Spanish regiments were comprised primarily of Roman Catholics who customarily have objects and implements blessed before their use to invoke God’s blessing, favor and protection on them. Small objects, like medals, are blessed with a simple prayer. Larger, more important objects and occasions are blessed in […]
In July 1783 John Jay, one of the Americans negotiating a treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States, was sitting at his desk. The negotiations, taking place in Paris had been going on for some months with much quibbling over language, borders, trading rights, and fishing rights. Sentences were being written and […]
BOOK REVIEW: March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776 by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa.: Westholme Publishing for Journal of the American Revolution Books, 2021) Historian Michael Cecere has written an overview of the coming of the Revolutionary War in the South, from the months immediately leading up to the outbreak of fighting to […]
Jemima Howe (1724–1805), a pioneer woman of the early Vermont frontier wilderness, survived a 1755 abduction along with her seven children ranging from six months to eleven years old, three years of captivity in French-Canada, and three husbands, the first two killed by Abenaki.[1] The early American literary genre of Indian captivity narratives presented the […]
In Douglas S. Freeman’s biography of Robert E. Lee, he noted: Corps activities took a certain amount of Lee’s time that winter. Kosciuszko was in those days the patron saint of West Point. He had designed the Revolutionary forts, Clinton and Putnam, and had resided in the little cottage that had been preserved. For some […]
A separation of powers is a defining structural feature of the federal government established by the United States Constitution, yet an explicit statement of the concept exists nowhere in the document. If James Madison had had his way there indeed would have been a clause pronouncing the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches to be distinct […]
Book Review: The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America by Brendan McConville (Harvard University Press, 2021) Recent scholarship on the Revolution has expanded the perspectives from which the conflict is viewed, but as Brendan McConville observes, the white yeoman population has been overlooked. In The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy […]
