On October 13, 1775, Congress resolved to buy four merchant ships and convert them to warships. Three more ships were soon acquired. A naval committee was established. The Continental Navy was created. On December 11 Congress authorized a new committee to devise ways and means of developing the navy. A member of the congress from […]
Recovering James Wilson’s Constitutional Vision Few figures of the American founding exhibit a greater disparity between historical significance and public recognition than James Wilson. A signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, one of the Constitutional Convention’s most influential delegates, and an original Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Wilson […]
American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington by H. W. Brands (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2026) $40.00 hardcover. The prolific historian H. W. Brands has added to his Revolutionary Era portfolio (previous books include Founding Partisans, Heirs of the Founders and Our First Civil War) with his biography of His Excellency, American Patriarch: The Life […]
Revolutionary patriotic songs did not always remain fixed after entering circulation. Soldiers, civilians, and families copied and performed them in manuscripts and other informal settings, allowing their wording and content to change over time.[1] A small manuscript ledger kept in rural Exeter, Rhode Island, between approximately 1793 and 1798 preserves evidence of this process. Amid […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor and historian Davis Richardson about the correspondence between the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the wake of the American Revolution and the coming French Revolution. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, […]
Just a few months after the Revolutionary War began, Congress authorized the invasion of Canada. After some initial success, the invading forces were defeated at the Battle of Quebec in December 1775 and were forced out of Canada entirely the following June. Despite this failure, many still expected Canada to join the union as the […]
BOOK REVIEW: When the Declaration of Independence Was News by Emily Sneff. (Oxford University Press, 2026) $29.99 hardcover Most accounts of the Declaration of Independence focus on the events leading up to the pivotal July 2, 1776, vote on independence. Taking a different tack, historian Emily Sneff, in a book based on her Ph.D. thesis, […]
Although some readers may be familiar with the Civil War’s Invalid Corps, which wrought value and service from even grievously wounded men during that conflict, few probably know that America’s first such organization appeared during the Revolutionary War. Like its later counterpart, Washington’s Corps of Invalids provided the nation valuable service and roles for men […]
On a brisk day in February of 1786, John Adams stepped into the home of Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, the envoy from the Barbary State of Tripoli. Adams spent much of his political and diplomatic career being taken as a nobody, described by his former friend turned political enemy Jonathan Sewall as having, “none of the […]
BOOK REVIEW: One Nation Under Law: The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence by Carlton F.W. Larson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026. $33.00 paperback) Carlton F.W. Larson’s monograph One Nation Under Law: The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence published by Cambridge University Press, discusses the origins of the Declaration of Independence. Through looking at […]
When Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris in 1784, he carried with him the ideals of the American Revolution. Buoyed by the success of a revolution against the British empire, the soon-to-be appointed Minister to France found himself attempting to reconcile Republican principles with the complex political realities of Paris. It marked an intriguing reversal for […]
After two hundred and fifty years, there couldn’t possibly be any more stories hiding away in the Declaration of Independence, right? The shelves groan with the collective weight of all the books written about it, not to mention the untold gallons of ink expended by social commentators, historians, political scientists, cultural critics, activists, radicals, and […]
BOOK REVIEW: Revolutionary War Soldiers of the Southern States, A Demographic View by Douglas R. Dorney Jr. (JAR Books Series/Westholme, 2026, $34.95 cloth) This text represents seven years of research, analysis and writing involving the examination and study of 8,579 Revolutionary War pension applications from four southern states, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. […]
Beyond the most familiar Founding Fathers, the Revolutionary era included a wider circle of contributors whose ideas, actions, and relationships shaped the American cause. Among them was Filippo (Philip) Mazzei, an Italian-born writer, entrepreneur, and political thinker whose engagement with American leaders and Enlightenment ideals influenced the revolutionary generation. Born in the Grand Duchy of […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Robert Swanson on Canadians who wanted to join the other colonies in their break from English rule. 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 episode […]
For the American Revolution enthusiast visiting England, the English Midlands offers a remarkable concentration of sites directly connected to the founding era. Within a twenty-one mile radius centred on the village of Ecton, Northamptonshire, stand the ancestral home of George Washington, the church where Benjamin Franklin’s family worshipped for five generations, the hall from which […]
BOOK REVIEW: Our Story: The Revolutionary War of Colonel Robert and Mary Ouldfield Heriot by Hugh T. Harrington, (South Carolina American Revolution Trust, 2026, $16.95, paperback) Through letters and deep research, the “Story” in this book is the recounting of a colonial Patriot husband and wife whose lives were completely disrupted by the American Revolution. […]
New York City is home to many grave sites of participants in the American Revolution. Many are easy to find, one is a huge mass grave and monument, while one includes a very famous woman. Interestingly, one or two are not where you might think they were laid to rest. In fact, one gravesite of […]
In 1783, the Second Canadian, also known as Congress’s Own Regiment or Hazen’s Infernals, was a combination of two regiments formed in 1775 and 1776 for the Continental Army.[1] During the American Revolution its members fought in battles across the Upper and Middle former colonies. By the end of the war, they were a motley […]
BOOK REVIEW: James Selkirk’s Revolutionary War: The Memoir of a Continental Sergeant, introduced and edited by Robb K. Haberman (Westholme, 2026) $32.50 hardcover In 1774, alone and at the age of sixteen, James Selkirk sailed from Scotland to the American colonies. Two years later, he enlisted in the Continental army and, because he could read […]
On July 21, 1776, the once-peaceful morning was broken by the sounds of musketry as a Cherokee war party, under Chief Old Abraham, attacked the frontier fort known as Fort Watauga, also known as Fort Caswell, near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. This attack was not successful, and it led to an eventual several-day siege on the […]
Lieutenant Gotthold Frederick Enslin served less than a year in the Continental army, and if his name is remembered, it is most often invoked for how that career ended. In what was certainly one of the more painful moments in his life, George Washington had him drummed out of the army for attempted sodomy, the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina’s Militia and the Fight for American Independence by Carl P. Borick. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2026) $27.99 hardcover As students of the Revolutionary War in the American South know, Carl Borick is the author of the definitive study of the 1780 Siege of Charleston, South Carolina, titled […]
It was not just an affirmation of him and his principles by the American people, nor a rejection of his opponents. Thomas Jefferson’s election to the presidency in 1800 was, above all else, an opportunity. Up to this moment, he had been a writer, theorist, legislator, ambassador, secretary, and vice president. But except for a […]
George Washington’s two most-remembered wartime mounts, Nelson and Blueskin, have been the subject of considerable popular retelling, much of it post-dating the events by decades. The manuscript record is thinner than the later accounts but clear on the essentials. Both horses came to Washington as gifts from friends. Both carried him through much of the […]
1777 was a very good year for Daniel Morgan. He was promoted to colonel in late 1776 and received the commission in January 1777. Gen. George Washington had pushed Congress to make the promotion, having been impressed by Morgan’s performance leading three companies of riflemen in the ill-fated 1775 invasion of Canada. While the expedition […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author Jesse Wegman about his new book, The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution. 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 […]
As word of the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord spread among the British colonies in North America, they accelerated efforts to build military forces, often as ad hoc militia companies organized at the county level that would then later be amalgamated into regiments and brigades. The companies might be named for the men […]
During the American Revolution, a defiant miller’s wife hurled freshly made dumplings into the Mianus River in Greenwich, Connecticut, rather than surrender her family’s dinner to a group of enemy Redcoats. From that moment, the section of the river where she cast her dumplings became known as Dumpling Pond. Every Greenwich elementary school student learns […]
“If I have erred in Construing the words or meaning of Genl Arnolds orders I hope it will be considered as an error in Judgement, a Defect in the head and not in the heart”[1] Col. Timothy Bedel made this request while facing trial in July 1776. He had been charged with “quitting his post” […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution by Jesse Wegman (New York: Celadon Books, 2026) $30.00 hardcover The Broadway play 1776 depicts James Wilson, a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, as a cowardly, spineless understudy of John Dickinson, who opposed the Declaration of Independence. This portrayal […]
Prior to the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, New Jersey had not been a hotbed of revolution. With open war, however, followed by the British invasion of 1776, civil strife engulfed the rebellious province. Patriots (Whigs) struck hard and fast against Loyalists, harassing and intimidating anyone suspected of allegiance to […]
To a colonial American, the prelude to the War of Independence might have been considered as much a civil conflict as it was a revolution. This was particularly true in 1775, when the thirteen colonies were in the throes of an internal struggle, before most of the Loyalists sought refuge in cities occupied by British […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Perfect Coincidence: The Extraordinary Friendship and Astonishing Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Jim Rasenberger (Scribner, 2026) It is an astounding bout of timing that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the two men who collaborated so closely in declaring independence, died on the same Fourth of July day on the […]
The beginning of American Revolution was also the beginning of the golden age of counterfeiting paper money. The British Currency Act of 1764 so restricted the circulation of currency that this crime largely disappeared, as colonists listed the lack of liquid capital among their grievances. The Continental Congress and the states, however, needed to pay […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian, author, and JAR Editorial Board member Ray Raphael on statements of independence from Great Britain before the Declaration of Independence was announced in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
In the eighteenth century, standards for decent citations, quotes, references and also for translations were less clear than they are for us, and certainly less strict. This is instantiated by The Federalist (Papers), the eighty-five essays that were published by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the joint pen name of “Publius.” These […]
The scribe of the Declaration of Independence—and perhaps the first man to read it in public—was born on March 28, 1736 in Haddonfield, New Jersey. His family moved to Philadelphia eight years later. At the age of thirteen, Timothy Matlack began an apprenticeship under a prosperous Quaker merchant named John Reynell. Looking forward to a […]
When the Continental Congress approved its Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, at least ninety public bodies had already declared in favor of independence. In those times, local jurisdictions often gave specific instructions to their representatives in higher bodies. (In Britain, by contrast, lower bodies “delegated” authority to elected officials, who could then act […]