Year: 2025

 Autobiography and Biography Posted on

Elijah Clark and the Revolutionary American Frontier

Although a genuine folk hero, little has been published about Elijah Clark (often spelled Clarke) beyond well-intended historical fiction.[1] Like his contemporaries Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark, he should be remembered as an important frontier leader. Clark’s first biographer, Absalom Harris Chappell, wrote in 1874 that he would never have been known if he […]

by Robert Scott Davis
Reviews Posted on

An American Triumph

BOOK REVIEW: An American Triumph: America’s Founding Era Through the Lives of Ben Franklin, George Washington, and John Adams by Tom Hand (Americana Corner Press, 2023) $35.00 Hardcover. Tom Hand’s An American Triumph examines the lives of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and John Adams. Hand, a West Point graduate, created the website “Americana Corner” in […]

by Kelsey DeFord
1
Critical Thinking Posted on

The Federalist Papers

Aside from the commercially inspired Mount Vernon Compact of 1785, the first public acknowledgement of the enormous inability of Congress to govern the peace in the new United States was the calling of the Annapolis Convention for September 1786. William Grayson, writing to James Madison that May, sounded upon the grievances of an ineffective Congress, […]

by Jude M. Pfister
Reviews Posted on

The Scientist Turned Spy

BOOK REVIEW: The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793 by Patrick Spero (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024) $34.95 Hardcover Dreary as they may have been, the COVID lockdowns had a few positive consequences; they did give some historians, among them Patrick Spero, the Chief Executive Officer of the […]

by Jeff Broadwater
4
Politics During the War (1775-1783) Posted on

George Washington and Thomas Paine: Friendship in a Revolutionary Age

George Washington was famously taciturn, often a man of few words in public gatherings. And though his published works are sparse in comparison to many of his fellow founders, he nevertheless left a voluminous written record of correspondence and diary entries that is still being parsed today.[1] It was while commanding the Continental Army that […]

by Jett Conner
Interviews Posted on

On This Week’s Dispatches: Andrew Lawler on Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Andrew Lawler about Virginia Royal Governor John Murray, Lord Dunmore’s decision to begin arming enslaved men in service to the Crown. Murray’s actions sent shockwaves across the colony. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening  (Eastern United States Time), […]

by Editors
The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

Cricket Hill and Gwynn’s Island: Captain Arundel’s Only Fight

In researching the little-known Battle of Cricket Hill/Gwynn’s Island that took place on July 9-10, 1776, in what was then Gloucester County and today Matthews County, Virginia, available surviving records document only one Patriot casualty. While this is not unusual for many of the smaller, lesser known and infrequently studied engagements, the details of this […]

by Patrick H. Hannum
Crime and Justice Posted on

Samuel Mason: Revolutionary Turncoat or Opportunistic Pirate?

In the chaotic aftermath of the American Revolution, the boundaries between heroism and villainy were often obscured by economic hardship, social instability, and territorial disputes. One figure who epitomizes this ambiguity is Samuel Mason, a Revolutionary War captain who later became infamous as a river pirate preying on trade along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. […]

by Carter F. Smith
2
Reviews Posted on

Washington’s Marines: The Origin of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775–1777

BOOK REVIEW: Washington’s Marines: The Origin of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775-1777 by Jason Q. Bohm. (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2023) $34.95 hardcover “In December [1776] he [Major Samuel Nicholas] was ordered to march with three companies of Marines to the Jerseys to be under his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, and continue […]

by William Edmund Fahey
Reviews Posted on

The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, and Liberty

BOOK REVIEW: The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, & Liberty: A Philosophical Analysis by M. Andrew Holowchak (Vernon Press, 2024). In The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, & Liberty: A Philosophical Analysis, author M. Andrew Holowchak situates Thomas Jefferson’s political ideology within a philosophical framework and positions Jefferson as a great philosopher of […]

by Kelly Mielke
2
Engineering and Technology Posted on

Patrick Ferguson’s Fortification Proposals In South Carolina

In May 1780, British Maj. Patrick Ferguson outlined a plan for constructing fortifications and securing the province of South Carolina. His proposals hinged on fortifying the junctions of major land and water routes from Charlestown (today Charleston) to prominent villages across the interior. Although known primarily for his design of a breech-loading rifle, Ferguson had […]

by Brian Mabelitini
Reviews Posted on

A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution

BOOK REVIEW: A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution by Andrew Lawler (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025) $30.00 Hardcover Andrew Lawler’s recent text artfully focuses on an important and understudied American Revolutionary period, Virginia in 1775 and 1776, and topic, slavery. The title, A […]

by Patrick H. Hannum
4
The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

Scott’s Levies: The Virginia Detachments, 1779-1780

The Virginia Continental Line had suffered with recruitment since the spring of 1777. Desertion, battlefield casualties, and competition with other state units prevented enough men being recruited to replenish the ranks of Virginia’s fifteen regiments. A new recruiting act, including a limited military draft, had produced fewer than 800 recruits for the Virginia Continental Line […]

by John Settle
1
Postwar Politics (>1783) Posted on

“What Magic There is in Some Words!”: John Fenno’s Private Crusade for an American National Identity

Governance under the federal Constitution transformed the nature and style of American politics. The spirit of this transformation revolved broadly around fear of political corruption and the vaguely defined yet delicate balance between national authority and state and local power.[1] And while the new republic’s first elected officials deliberated the nation’s most pressing issues in […]

by Shawn David McGhee
7
Prewar Politics (<1775) Posted on

The Green Mountain Insurgency: New York’s Rebellion Against the Crown

The pre-Revolutionary War history of Vermont centered on a border dispute between the colonies of New York and New Hampshire. It is a complicated but colorful history, one that has been populated through the years with stories of greedy royal governors, show trials by corrupt provincial officials, land hungry settlers, shady land speculators, lawless vagabonds […]

by Robert J. Walworth
1
Reviews Posted on

Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America

BOOK REVIEW: Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America by Tyson Reeder (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024) $35.00 cloth, $23.99 Kindle. Tyson Reeder, James Madison historian and history professor at the University of Virginia, explores the role of foreign empires/confederacies in his excellent book, Serpent in Eden: Foreign […]

by Timothy Symington
2
Autobiography and Biography Posted on

Richard Varick in History and Memory: Colonial Lawyer, Continental Officer, Mayor of New York City

The Fourth of July celebration of 1831 was shaping up similarly to the ones Americans had been commemorating for over half a century. A sizable crowd squeezed into the Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building to hear lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key deliver an Independence Day oration. In Boston’s Park Street Church the […]

by Keith Muchowski
Reviews Posted on

The Constitution’s Penman

BOOK REVIEW: The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter by Dennis C. Rasmussen (University Press of Kansas, 2023) The Constitution stands as the foundation of the United States’ government and political system, a point on which all Americans can agree even as they dispute how the document should be interpreted. […]

by Jim Piecuch
3
Battles Posted on

Morgan’s Victory at the Cowpens: Brilliant Tactics or Fortunate Volley?

Gen. Daniel Morgan’s defeat of Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton at the Cowpens is generally attributed to his arrangement of troops into three lines, with two lines of militia in front to wear down the advancing enemy. Morgan, however, mentioned only a single line, and he attributed his victory to a “fortunate volley.” Did Morgan not […]

by Conner Runyan and C. Leon Harris
The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

Rhode Island Soldiers of Color at Red Bank, Monmouth, and Valley Forge

The 1st Rhode Island Regiment, famously known as the “Black Regiment,” is renowned for its key role in helping to repel three enemy charges at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. What is not widely appreciated is that Rhode Island’s two Continental Army regiments were multi-racial before the famous “Black Regiment” was […]

by Christian McBurney
Reviews Posted on

Backcountry War: The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter

BOOK REVIEW: Backcountry War, The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Sumter by Andrew Waters (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2024) $34.95 Cloth In his Epilogue to Backcountry War, The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Sumter, Andrew Waters states he wrote the book for himself to better understand his childhood exposure to […]

by Patrick H. Hannum