Month: April 2026

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The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

A British Major’s Quixotic American Mission and True Loyalties

In late 1775, Lord George Germain, the recently appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies, opened a letter from a newly retired British Army major, a large landholder in Ireland. The obsequious writer offered that a “Great Man, conscious of his own superiority,” heeded advice from those with valuable experience. The correspondent counselled that when […]

by Gene Procknow
Reviews Posted on

Money and the Making of the American Revolution

BOOK REVIEW: Money and the Making of the American Revolution by Andrew David Edwards (Princeton University Press, 2025). $35.00 hardcover In 1953, Edmund and Helen Morgan published The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, a pathbreaking study of the earliest days of the imperial crisis which preceded the American Revolution.[1] Their contention, that the conflict […]

by Kevin Diestelow
The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

Augustin Lacroix and the Insurgency of Saint-Féréol, 1775–1776

Sedition in the Côte-de-Beaupré Historical accounts of the American invasion of Quebec in 1775 often reduce the campaign to movements on a map: Benedict Arnold’s march through the Maine wilderness, Richard Montgomery’s death in the snow of the Lower Town, and the British fleet’s arrival that forced an American retreat.[1] Beneath that high drama lay […]

by Carter F. Smith
Reviews Posted on

New Hampshire and Independence

BOOK REVIEW: New Hampshire and Independence: Rediscovered Writings from the Sons of the American Revolution edited by William Edmund Fahey (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2026). $34.99 Cloth, $24.99 Paperback The guidelines set for submissions to the Journal of the American Revolution ensure the articles exhibit the best practices of today’s historiography. They mandate that the […]

by Michael Barbieri
Interviews Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Drew Palmer on Francis Marion’s Ambush at the Great Savannah

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Drew Palmer on how Francis Marion’s daring raid on the Great Savannah in 1780, began the legend of the “Swamp Fox.” 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 […]

by Editors
1
The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

An Obscure Fort and Battle at Brandon’s Bay, Long Island, 1782

Although the Revolutionary War was winding down by the year 1782, there was still raiding across Long Island Sound between the British-Loyalists forces on Long Island and the Patriot forces in Connecticut. The raids which engaged both soldiers and citizens alike were often revenge seeking, creating a somewhat civil war between factions in the region. […]

by David M. Griffin
Reviews Posted on

The American Revolution at 250

BOOK REVIEW: The American Revolution at 250: Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding edited by Francis D. Cogliano (University of Virginia Press, 2026) $32.95 hardcover The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution has engendered a crowded commemorative landscape. This volume, The American Revolution at 250: Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding is University of Virginia […]

by Kevin Diestelow
Postwar Politics (>1783) Posted on

Disunion And The Right To Recede In The Founding Era

On July 19, 1788, as Federalist and Anti-Federalist delegates at the sharply divided New York ratifying convention debated the relative merits of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote to James Madison. The New York convention sought to include a series of conditions and amendments before ratifying, and Hamilton solicited Madison’s opinion as to whether New York […]

by David Otersen