Major Peter L’Enfant is most well-known for his 1791 “wholly new” plan for the Federal City that would become Washington, DC. Fewer are aware of his previous experience during the Revolutionary War where he served as an aide-de-camp, engineer, and sometimes as an artist and light infantry officer. This military service, coupled with his fine […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Continental Dollar: How the American Revolution Was Financed with Paper Money by Farley Grubb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023) Economists and historians have been telling us the wrong story about Continental currency for two centuries. Continental money did not lose its value because Congress printed too much of it. In fact, […]
Since 2014, the Journal of the American Revolution has recognized the adult nonfiction volume that best mirrors the mission of the journal with its national Book-of-the-Year Award. This year the editors are pleased to announce a winner and two runners-up. All three books are outstanding contributions to the history of the Revolutionary and Founding Eras. […]
BOOK REVIEW: Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions by Katlyn Marie Carter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023) In our age of freedom of information acts, C-Span, and a never-ending news cycle, we tend to equate transparent government with democracy and sensible public policy. In Democracy in Darkness, however, […]
The national government under the Federal Constitution effectively began its reign on April 6, 1789, as an invisible and unremarkable presence in the lives of most ordinary Americans.[1] The army boasted about 750 men stationed mainly on the western frontier, there were no national buildings, roads or even construction sites, while few federal bureaucrats and […]
On the blazing afternoon of June 17, 1775, two forces met on the Charlestown peninsula just outside Boston, Massachusetts. An unstoppable force of red-clad British troops swept ashore and broke upon the immovable walls of the provincial fortifications atop Breed’s Hill, crashing across the Charlestown peninsula like a blood-red wave. Flood waters of British soldiery […]
BOOK REVIEW: Dishonored Americans: The Political Death of Loyalists in Revolutionary America by Timothy Compeau (University of Virginia Press, 2023) Early American scholars treated Loyalists of the American Revolution as bystanders and stereotypical villains in the story. This was part of a larger attempt to unify American colonists during and after the war. Some Loyalists wrote […]
History is frequently more complicated than it initially appears, and accordingly, it may be surprising to discover that when George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States, he was constitutionally ineligible for office. Similarly, when John Adams became the first Vice President nine days earlier, he too was constitutionally ineligible for […]
I recently drove to Fishkill, New York to see the Daniel Nimham Monument located at the intersection of Routes 52 and 82. Nimham—diplomat, warrior, patriot, and the last sachem of the indigenous Wappinger people—died a violent death in combat on August 31, 1778, at the Battle of Kingsbridge in what now is the Bronx, fighting […]
With the end of the Seven Years’ War, Great Britain found itself in possession of vast new territories. The government looked on these holdings as a means to reduce the enormous debt built up during the war but, when it came to utilizing those resources, existing “salutary neglect” policies and practices simply did not suffice. […]
The British Library in London, England, houses an internationally significant and relatively understudied copy of Dr. John Mitchell’s renowned 1755 map, renamed and reprinted circa 1775 A Map of the British Colonies in North America. . .[1] This map garnered particular attention due to its use in the 1782 boundary negotiations conducted by the British […]
