Month: December 2023

 Critical Thinking Posted on

A Demographic View of South Carolina Revolutionary War Soldiers, 1775–1783

Over the past few years, three demographic studies of North Carolina and Georgia Revolutionary War pension applicants have been completed (North Carolina militia, North Carolina Line, Georgia). A similar study of South Carolina soldiers who served in the Continental Line, state troops, and militia provides compiled demographic data of those who served in that state, […]

by Douglas R. Dorney, Jr.
Autobiography and Biography Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Shirley L. Green on the Frank Brothers and the 1st Rhode Island Regiment

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews history professor and author Shirley L. Greenabout her new book, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence. New episodes of Dispatchesare available for free every Saturday evening(Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Dispatchescan now […]

by Editors
Diplomacy Posted on

Don Diego de Gardoqui: Hero of the Revolution, Schemer Against the Republic

When Don Diego Gardoqui stepped onto Philadelphia’s docks in May 1785, he was a hero of the American Revolution. A merchant from Bilbao, Spain, Gardoqui, forty-nine, had early on in the war transformed his trade connections with Massachusetts into a pipeline for delivering the arms and supplies desperately needed by American troops. Following the war, […]

by Tyson Reeder
Critical Thinking Posted on

John Adams Above the Fray: The Original Foreign Policy President

The “whole of [President John] Adams’s single term was absorbed, to a degree unequaled in any other American presidency, with a single problem”: a diplomatic crisis with France.[1] Some Federalists must have been surprised that France, the United States’s greatest ally during the Revolution, became its greatest enemy within a generation. Not Adams: As a […]

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

George Washington Versus the Continental Army: Showdown at the New Windsor Cantonment, 1782–1783

BOOK REVIEW: George Washington Versus the Continental Army Showdown at the New Windsor Cantonment, 1782-1783 by Michael S. McGurty (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2023) Except for the dangerous Newburgh Conspiracy, historians overlook the Continental Army’s activities in the Hudson Valley during the last year of the American War for Independence. Michael S. McGurty […]

by Gene Procknow
Historic Sites Posted on

Securing the Bells

“Remove all public bells, in Philadelphia, to a place of security.”—Continental Congress Resolution, Sept. 14, 1777 The British Army commanded by Gen. Sir William Howe landed on the western shore of Elk River in Cecil County, Maryland, on August 25, 1777, with the objective of occupying Philadelphia, capital of the recently declared independent United States. […]

by William W. Reynolds
Books and Publications Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Novia Liu on John Adams’s Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Novia Liuon her examination of John Adams’s Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, a response to Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot’s letter criticizing the US state constitutions. New episodes of Dispatchesare available for free every Saturday evening(Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, […]

by Editors
Autobiography and Biography Posted on

The Lionkeeper of Algiers: How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War

BOOK REVIEW: The Lionkeeper of Algiers: How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War by Des Ekin (Essex, CT: Prometheus Books, 2023) The war with the Barbary States is often referred to as the first war of the new United States, post-Revolution. President Thomas Jefferson has been given credit […]

by Timothy Symington