Month: September 2023

3
Memorials Posted on

“The Modern American Wallace:” Relics, Revolutions, and Revolutionaries

On Friday morning, December 30, 1792, Archibald Robertson, an ambitious painter from Aberdeen, Scotland, arrived at the doorstep of the executive mansion at Philadelphia.[1] David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, entrusted him to deliver a wooden box to President George Washington.[2] Yet this was no ordinary box and Robertson’s call no ordinary visit. For […]

by Shawn David McGhee
Interviews Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Michael Cecere on the Middle Colonies during the First Year of the American Revolution

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historians and JAR contributor Michael Cecere. In his new book United for Independence: The American Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1775-1776, Michael provides an in-depth analysis of the people of politics of the Middle Colonies from 1775-1776. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United […]

by Editors
Loyalists Posted on

The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America

BOOK REVIEW: The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America by Cynthia Kierner (University of Virginia Press, 2023) Linda K. Kerber’s Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America demonstrated women’s resilience to create their own “republican motherhood;” this later evolved into accomplishing what the revolution did not do for women. […]

by Kelsey DeFord
Autobiography and Biography Posted on

Margaret (Montcrieffe) Coghlan: The Making of Her Memoirs (Part Two of Two)

Margaret Moncrieffe Coghlan was many things—the privileged daughter of a highly-regarded British Army officer who served in North America, an alleged British spy, hapless wife, high society courtesan, scandalous and political memoirist—and last, a woman hounded by creditors in London and Paris who ensured that she served time in debtors prison. (Read Part One.) No […]

by Jane Strachan
Illness and Disease Posted on

Smallpox Threatens an American Privateer at Sea

Two important books in the twenty-first century have focused on the impact of terrifying smallpox contagions on the American Revolutionary War.[1] Understandably, most of their stories are about smallpox infecting soldiers on land. As the two books relate, smallpox wrought havoc on Benedict Arnold’s small army outside Quebec in 1775 and 1776, and likely killed […]

by Christian McBurney
Interviews Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: William H. J. Manthorpe on the Dewees Family

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor William H. J. Manthorpe on the Dewees family and their contributions to the Patriot cause. 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. Dispatches can now be easily accessed […]

by Editors
Politics During the War (1775-1783) Posted on

United for Independence: The American Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1775–1776

BOOK REVIEW: United for Independence: The American Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1775-1776 by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa.: Westholme, 2023) In the American Revolutionary War, probably no period was more dramatic than the time between April 1775 and August 1776. It was then that the skirmish at Lexington and Concord grew into an all-out war, and […]

by John Gilbert McCurdy