Along the banks of the Delaware River—in what is now Upper Makefield Township on the Pennsylvania side and Hopewell Township on the New Jersey side—lie a pair of preternaturally venerated sites, indelibly linked by their shared connection to one of the most notable military enterprises the world has ever known. That would be the legendary […]
The third and final debate for the bill, For Regulating the Government of Massachusetts, took place on May 2, 1774. The House of Commons unfortunately did not realize that they had arrived “at the Rubicon”; the question by the end of the day was on which side of the Rubicon would they find themselves. What […]
BOOK REVIEW: Fighting for Philadelphia: Forts Mercer and Mifflin, the Battle of Whitemarsh, and the Road to Valley Forge, October 5-December 19, 1777 by Michael C. Harris (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2025) When examining the 1777 Philadelphia campaign, historians often skip from the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, in September and early October, […]
George Washington’s childhood is a rather elusive historical research topic. It is not that there is a lack of stories, tales, and legends published about Washington’s early years, but the task of separating authentic information from widespread mythology has compelled judicious historians to exercise tremendous skepticism when offered an assertion about his youngest days. Much […]
Historian Richard Kohn argued in 1981 that to make progress in military history, the first thing historians would need to do would be to seek the “true identity of soldiers” grounded in the community and time from which they came. Among those soldiers was John Shee, an Irish gentleman from Ballyreddin, County Kilkenny born to […]
The genteel glass rattled through the windows of the “flying machine” as Maj. William Trent tried to stay awake on the coach ride from Bristol to London.[1] The passage across the ocean had been anything but accommodating after he was delayed a week off the coast of Ireland to wait out the angry winds of […]
Introduction As America enters its semiquincentennial year in 2026, there will be numerous celebrations and remembrances of the nation’s founding. The names George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and others will ring familiar as patriots who drafted key documents such as the Declaration of Independence, rode across the countryside to alert […]
The engagement between Abraham Buford and Banastre Tarleton at the Waxhaws has attracted controversy since it occurred. Buford has had supporters and detractors, just as students of the battle have exonerated or excoriated Tarleton. The problem has been that this kind of black-or-white determination suggests one side was entirely at fault, the other entirely blameless. […]
“They are by no means such Troops, in any respect, as you are led to believe of them from the [Accounts] which are published.”[1] So declared General George Washington to his cousin, Lund Washington, nearly two months into his command of the newly formed Continental Army outside Boston. Appointed by the Continental Congress on June […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR Contributor Josh Wheeler on Loyalist David Fanning’s raid against Patriots in North Carolina after the British surrender at Yorktown. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Each […]
