On June 20, 1775, Patriots of the Cumberland Association met at Liberty Point, the space currently located between the intersection of Bow Street and Person Street in what is now Fayetteville, North Carolina.[1] At the time, Cumberland County, which included the present-day counties of Moore, Hoke and Harnett, was inhabited by a large concentration of […]
BOOK REVIEW: Lydia’s Tale: The Mystery of Lydia Darragh, Irish Quaker, Patriot Spy by Robert N. Fanelli (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2025) $34.95 hardcover Robert N. Fanelli’s Lydia’s Tale attempts to contextualize the life and legacy of the famed heroine spy Lydia Darragh. Fanelli is a contributor to the Journal of the American Revolution; his […]
On Christmas day 1780, seven days before his discharge from the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (Rawlings’ regiment), Lt. Elijah Evans recorded in a troop return that he “claims a Captaincy from the 15th April 1779.”[1] This was his last attempt to highlight a conspicuous administrative oversight that had prevented his promotion throughout his time […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, and the Forging of a Friendship by Louis P. Masur (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2025) $24.95 hardcover Have you ever wanted to road trip through rural America with future presidents Thomas Jefferson or James Madison? Louis P. Masur’s A Journey North is probably as close to […]
BOOK REVIEW: New Jersey’s Revolutionary Rivalry: The Untold Story of Colonel Tye & Captain Huddy by Rick Geffken (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2025) $24.99 Paperback Rick Geffken’s New Jersey’s Revolutionary Rivalry revolves around two antagonists. Titus was an enslaved man who escaped to British lines and, as the leader of a mixed group of […]
The American Declaration of Independence boldly proclaims “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” These words encouraged Americans to fight for freedom and have inspired disadvantaged groups though out the world. Historian Joseph Ellis called the phrase “the most potent and consequential words in American […]
On March 7, 1778, one of the deadliest naval battles of the Revolutionary War occurred off the coast of Barbados between the British ship Yarmouth and an American squadron led by the Continental frigate Randolph. The five-ship American contingent which sailed from Charlestown, South Carolina, led by Capt. Nicholas Biddle, was the largest joint Continental […]
BOOK REVIEW: Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution by Ronald Angelo Johnson (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2025) The years between the two well-known peace treaties that ended conflicts in North America were a time of significant social upheaval. Two places in particular, the thirteen British colonies and the Caribbean […]
The ten weeks between the American victory at Yorktown and the close of 1781 were a journey from the mountain top to the valley for the Continental army. On the summit, the army’s leaders looked down on the morale-boosting victory they had chased for years, and the successful removal of a British army under Gen. […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews Geoffrey Hoerauf, JAR contributor and reenactor, on the role of American spies and sympathizers around British Fort Detroit and how they informed the American efforts along the frontier. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
During the American War for Independence, 1781 proved to be a monumental year for the young nation. They would achieve an astounding victory at the Siege of Yorktown, and that would presage the end of major combat operations and the beginning of peace negotiations between the warring nations. There was one general officer on the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Facing Washington’s Crossing: The Hessians and the Battle of Trenton by Steven Bier (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2025) $35.00 Steven Bier’s Facing Washington’s Crossing: The Hessians and the Battle of Trenton recounts the tale of the Hessian regiments during the American Revolution as they leave their home of Hessen-Kassel, crossing the Atlantic to […]
There is a fine line between courage and stupidity. Eight men congregated at Smithfield Plantation in southwest Virginia on April 7, 1774, prepared for a perilous adventure. They were young men in high spirits, ready to set off into Virginia’s mostly unexplored western wilderness. Their intrepid leader was Deputy Fincastle County Surveyor John Floyd. Their […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews Stuart Lillie, vice president of Public History at Fort Ticonderoga, on their new exhibit on Henry Knox’s Artillery Train. 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 […]
The Continental Congress directed the organization of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (Rawlings’ regiment) in resolutions dated June 17 and 27, 1776.[1] The force was a combination of six newly-formed companies from the two states and three independent rifle companies organized a year before. The nine-company regiment was still completing organization on November 16 […]
Located far enough away from American-controlled Kentucky but enough close to the British-allied Native Americans in the Western Great Lakes region, Fort Detroit became the center for British military operations to counter American activities in present-day Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio during the American Revolutionary War. These operations included raids on American settlements as well as […]
To the extent that historians give Thomas Paine credit for playing a significant role in the American Revolutionary Cause, it was his rousing call for independence in his widely read tract Common Sense, published January 9, 1776, that most agree was his chief contribution to America’s decision to separate from British rule. Paine turned up […]
On the morning of November 18, 1780, Maj. Archibald McArthur’s troops, a battalion of the 71st and a detachment of the 63rd Regiments of Foot, were washing their clothes and bathing in the still-warm waters of the Broad River in central South Carolina. Stationed at Shirer’s Ferry, their responsibility was to guard the ferry to […]
When the request came, I was surprised, excited and flattered in equal parts. Would I be an advisor for the upcoming PBS series The American Revolution, produced by Ken Burns? Of course I said yes, despite not knowing what the project would actually entail. I had heard it was in the works, but did not […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR Contributor Brett Bannor on the surprising influence of Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” on members of the Founding Generation. How often did they refer back to this classic political satire? New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, […]
The PBS documentary The American Revolution, produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, premiers on November 16, 2025. Producers Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt took time out of their busy schedules to talk to JAR about their experiences working on this landmark film, and some of the things they learned about the people […]
BOOK REVIEW: George Washington: His Quest for Honor and Fame by Peter R. Henriques (Charlottesville, VA: University of VA Press, 2025) $24.95 hardcover Famed Washington scholar Peter R. Henriques (author of Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington) turned the content of some recent talks given at Colonial Williamsburg into a brief “interpretive biography” of […]
Borden H. Mills, writing on the Saratoga campaign a century ago, noted: The task of determining, with any degree of certainty, what militia units actually participated in the battles or were present at the surrender is a stupendous one. All that can be done is to present the known facts and draw certain conclusions therefrom, […]
Moses Kirkland was a man born into the unsettled margins of South Carolina, where ambition and survival often blurred together. By the mid-1770s he was a planter of modest means, a militia captain in the backcountry, and a restless figure whose loyalties shifted with the winds of opportunity. In the opening year of the Revolution, […]
This week Brady Crytzer’s guest is Alexander S. Burns, assistant professor of History at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Prof. Burns discussed his new book Infantry In Battle: 1733-1783, at the 2025 Braddock’s Road Preservation Association Seminar at Fort Ligonier in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States […]
One the United States’ Founders, writing under the pseudonym Brutus, argued that the new country, spanning too great a distance and too many distinctly interested peoples, was not viable.[1] His predictions were bleak: the government would lack the support of the people, who would feel both neglected and subsumed by its distant authority. To generate […]
An unbiased observer would likely conclude that the record of George Washington’s generalship in purely military terms was a mixed bag. The intent of what follows—a highly subjective exercise, to be sure—is not to reassess the overall quality of his generalship or weigh wins against losses. It is merely to give credit where credit is […]
BOOK REVIEW: The First Fleets: Colonial Navies of the British Atlantic World, 1630-1775 by Benjamin C. Schaffer (University of Alabama Press, 2025) $34.95, paperback The United States Navy honors October 13, 1775 as its birthday in keeping with a resolution passed by the Second Continental Congress to acquire two vessels “for a cruize eastward, for […]
Charles Stedman published his two-volume History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War in 1794. For 150 years, the work enjoyed a reputation as a solid, reputable source for the history of the Revolutionary War. Light-Horse Harry Lee, an enthusiastic Patriot, was gracious in his acclaim of the Tory historian. Stedman’s work, […]
Even though American colonists protested the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act, the Townshend Acts, the Boston Massacre and the Septennial Act, nothing pushed the colonies’ relationship with Britain to the point of no return more than the Boston Tea Party. It was premeditated, it destroyed private property, it violated the Tea Act, and customs officials […]
BOOK REVIEW: Colonial Massachusetts Laws and Liberties and the English Commonwealth: State Formation, the Rule of Law, and the People’s Welfare by Charles Edward Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2024). Hardcover $177 In the 1840s, an interviewer asked Capt. Levi Preston why he had fought in the American Revolution. Was it the oppression of the Stamp Act? […]
During his time in England prior to the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin often wrote letters to The Public Advertiser, a London newspaper. In one of them, published on August 22, 1766, Franklin mentioned in passing that among his old friends he counts Lemuel Gulliver.[1] Gulliver was renowned for his voyages around the world, in which […]
On March 18, 1818, the U.S. Congress enacted a law that established a lifetime pension for American veterans of the Continental army who were “in reduced circumstances.”[1] As part of the filing process for these benefits, veterans were required to submit affidavits to local courts with supporting testimonials attesting to their service record during the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Colonel William Prescott: Heroic Commander of the Battle of Bunker Hill by Donald R. Ryan. (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2025) $34.95 hardcover. Donald R. Ryan’s Colonel William Prescott: Heroic Commander of the Battle of Bunker Hill recounts the life a Massachusetts native who led his men in a courageous effort against a formidable British […]
Jean Thurel, or Jean Theurel, is one of those very unusual people whose life extended over three centuries. He was born in Orain, Departement de la Côte-d’Or, Bourgogne, France on September 6, 1698 during the reign of Louis XIV. He died at Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France on March 10, 1807 during the reign of Napoleon I. […]
Many Americans celebrated April 30, 1789, as a defining moment for the United States, a sort of political BC/AD demarcation point in the republic’s short history.[1] Once the initial jolt of national optimism and political unity induced by President George Washington’s first inauguration had worn off, however, the first administration took up the thankless business […]
BOOK REVIEW: Before Manifest Destiny: The Contested Expansion of the Early United States by Nicholas DiPucchio (University of Virginia Press, 2025) $35.00 paperback It is rather easy to take for granted the continental scale of the modern United States as a near inevitability, imagining a steady march of intrepid American pioneers into a foreboding wilderness […]
“The Expedition of Genl Sullivan against the six nations seems by its effects to have exasperated than to have terrified or disabled them,” wrote Continental Congressman James Madison in June 1780.[1] This 1779 Patriot offensive, known as the Sullivan Campaign or the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, was meant to teach the Loyalists and their Native American allies […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR Contributor G. Patrick O’Brien on how the news of the end of the American Revolution was conveyed along the New York frontier in 1783. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
