On August 17, 1775 Capt. James Wood returned to his home in Winchester, Virginia from a month-long diplomatic mission to the Native American nations west of the Appalachian Mountains and north of the Ohio River.[1] Wood’s mission was vital. In one of its last official acts, the Virginia House of Burgesses appointed George Washington, Thomas […]
Gen. George Washington has long stood at the center of the American Revolution’s intelligence story, but every commander, British and American, in North America understood the importance of intelligence gathering and the impact of information. His use of spies and long-established techniques such as coded messages and invisible ink is well documented, and for many, […]
The 1781 defeat of British forces at Yorktown Virginia is often cited as the pivotal battle of the American Revolution, winning American independence. General George Washington with the support of French ground and naval forces under General Rochambeau and Admiral de Grasse, along with the expertise of French engineers, conducted a siege at Yorktown forcing […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Gene Procknow on wealthy Irish landowner Apollos Morris’s little-known attempt to broker peace between the American colonies and England before hostilities escalated. 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 death of Col. Christopher Greene of the Rhode Island Regiment during the Loyalist raid at Pine’s Bridge on the Croton River in May 1781 represents one of the most brutal and dramatic episodes of irregular warfare in the American Revolution. Drawing upon contemporary correspondence, eyewitness testimony, military reports, and later historical compilations, this surprise […]
BOOK REVIEW: Fire and Freedom: The American Revolution in New York, edited by Thomas S. Wermuth, Devin Lander, Jennifer Lemak, Robert Chiles. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2026) $29.95 hardcover What region of the nation do people picture when they think of the setting of the American Revolution? It is certainly no surprise that New […]
John Adams is a singular figure in the history of the American Revolution. No founder contributed more to the Revolution while drawing less attention from future generations, both historians and the public, searching for meaning in the American Revolution. Throughout his life Adams was aware of his reputation—“obnoxious, suspected and unpopular”—and the impact it would […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews musician Andrew Scott Wills of the band Hawken Horse. Through his love of history and music, Nashville’s Wills has brought the Revolutionary frontier back to the 21st century. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
In the midst of the French and Indian War, with dusk settling over the Loyalhanna Creek and volunteer soldiers firing at shadows in the dark, George Washington confronted an “inexcusable but understandable military blunder.”[1] Mistaking their fellow soldiers for enemy combatants in the midst of heavy fog and failed communication, two battalions of Virginians fired […]
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 […]
During the first four years of the War for Independence, the British-held province of East Florida was a large and painful thorn in the side of the southern states. Under the leadership of royal governor Patrick Tonyn, a former army officer, East Florida became a haven for Loyalists fleeing from Georgia and the Carolinas. Tonyn […]
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 […]
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 […]
On a Friday morning in 1764, a nineteen-year-old Abigail Smith sent some tobacco to her betrothed: one John Adams esquire, a country lawyer from Braintree.[1] Abigail was a parson’s daughter from nearby Weymouth, a young lady already brimming with the spiritedness and pragmatic optimism for which she would eventually become famous. But she didn’t send […]
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 […]
John Trumbull of Connecticut today is rightfully famous as a painter of Revolutionary War scenes. Some of his best paintings were enlarged by him and painted in the rotunda in the United States Capitol, where they can be viewed to this day. Less familiar is that Trumbull twice came under fire at the Battle of […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
In the story of the Revolutionary War in the south, William Hill has long enjoyed the reputation of a true hero of the backcountry. Very early in the southern conflict, Hill picked up the banner of revolution and led efforts to defeat the Loyalist and British forces in rural northwestern South Carolina. In a time […]
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 […]
BOOK REVIEW: Major General Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero by Michael P. Gabriel. (McFarland, 2026) $49.95 paperback Michael P. Gabriel has released the second edition of his biography of Brig. Gen. Richard Montgomery, a British-born Patriot who sought a quiet life of farming only to take up arms once more against the […]
Monday, November 17, 1777. The men started their march north through Westchester County at six o’clock, more than an hour after nightfall. The afternoon’s clouds had given way to wind and freezing rain. After a few hours the sleet turned to snow. Roughly one hundred men marched in silence. Their green coats disappeared in the […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Gabriel Neville on how before the Revolution the colony of Virginia took steps to take possession of the western frontier. After the war, they set those plans in motion. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on […]
Henry Laurens is recognized by scholars of revolutionary history as the president of the Second Continental Congress during the Valley Forge winter and as a peace commissioner at the close of the American Revolution. He is also known to a broader audience, thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, as the father of John Laurens, the fiercely […]
Francis Marion has long been celebrated as one of America’s best partisan guerrilla commanders. The nature of Marion’s tactics, such as hit and run raids, speed and surprise, and the use of violence of action, continues to captivate people. His nighttime surprise attack against Loyalist militia at Black Mingo Creek on September 17, 1780, along […]
Major Abraham Kirkpatrick was not one to mince words. “There is a few of them Damned Cherokees,” he reported in July 1784, “near 40 men, settled on Siota about the old Chillicoffee Towns . . . These is the Villains that killed the family at the blue licks,” he continued, “as is still doing mischeif […]
BOOK REVIEW: Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America by Karin Wulf (Oxford University Press, 2025). $35.00 Hardcover. In Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America, Karin Wulf explores the ways in which people of the foundational era represented their family histories and what we can learn about the […]
Introduction The actions of the cavalry at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781 have been particularly difficult to understand. Previous researchers have struggled to explain the actions of the cavalry under Lt. Col. William Washington while accounting for his seeming to be in multiple places on the battlefield at different times.[1] During research […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author Steven Bier on what he found out when researching the Hessian troops who fought at the Battle of Trenton, the subject of his new book. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon […]
As anyone who studies history will know, history is seldom a linear account of one fact after another. It’s a series of stories that reveal how we see ourselves. Sometimes, intentionally or no, the telling of those stories blurs the lines between truth and fiction. In my region of North Carolina, there is a story […]
In May 1775, a letter was sent to British General Thomas Gage in Boston the likes of which had never been received before. The letter certainly looked harmless enough. It was very short, and it didn’t say anything important at all—it simply requested the delivery of some papers. But this mysterious letter contained far more […]
Worcester, Massachusetts, claims to be the site of the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in New England. A bronze star and plaque on the sidewalk in front of Worcester’s City Hall commemorates the event. The plaque reads: Here July 14, 1776 the Declaration of Independence was first publicly read in New England […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Michael Adelberg on the attempt to jail Loyalists in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and the eventual jail break by prisoners in 1781. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and […]
Located along the western coast of the Hudson River just north of New York City, Orange County New York[1] was an active theater of war in the northern department. Large mountain ranges abutting both sides of the river gave the region the name of the Highlands, and provided a strategic barrier between New York City […]
BOOK REVIEW: Atlas of Independence: John Adams and the American Revolution by Chris Mackowski, (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, LLC, 2026) $16.95 Paperback Chris Mackowski’s Atlas of Independence positions John Adams as just that, a self-sacrificing man who attempts to direct his “reluctant colleagues” towards America’s independence. Mackowski is pretty plain in his argument […]
A British writer wrote in 1781 that it was through individual obscure events that the conduct of the American Revolution was demonstrated across the whole continent.[1] The Battle of the Burke County Jail, fought in Georgia on January 26, 1779, was such an incident. This small but brutal gunfight brought to a head the political […]
Let’s start with what was lost: the 1691 Massachusetts charter, which merged Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth into a single royal colony. The document contains 9,755 words, but here’s the gist of it:[1] The Crown appointed a governor, but he would not govern alone. “Upon every last Wednesday in the Month of May, every yeare for […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding by Joseph J. Ellis (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025) $31.00 hardcover. The latest book by Founding Brothers author Joseph J. Ellis brings the reader back to the meaning of what he has referred to as “The Cause,” that is, the ideals […]