On July 25, 1768, Benjamin Franklin set his friend, Charles-Guillaume-Frédéric Dumas, straight. Dumas, a man of letters who would later serve as an American diplomat in Europe, was interested in settling British East Florida. Franklin informed Dumas that his home in Philadelphia “being near 1000 Miles from Florida”[1] prevented his intimate acquaintance with that region. […]
The last level of British authority at the colony level was the colonial governors. They came in various forms, military and civil, appointed and proprietary, and occasionally elected by the colonists. As British authority started to break down, the colonial governors were some of the most prominent people to be chased from their respective colonies. […]
Alexander Hamilton penned most of the famous series of essays called the Federalist Papers. In Federalist 71, published in March 1788, he wrote this notable paragraph: It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Joseph Solis-Mullen on how the agreement between Austria, Russia, and Prussia to divide Poland in 1772 allowed France to confront Britain in the Americas without fear of a continental war. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) […]
The scene is one of the most famous in the annals of the American Revolutionary War. The commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington, confronts his second-in-command, Charles Lee, in the midst of a retreat by Continental Army forces during the Battle of Monmouth Court House on June 28, 1778. Washington arrives at the […]
We regularly ask our contributors questions about the American Revolution and founding era. This month we’ve asked them to tell us about a woman associated with the 1765-1805 era who does not have a Wikipedia entry, but who should. Steven Park Hannah Thomas (1730-1819) was the first woman lighthouse keeper in what was about to […]
In 1817, as popular sentiment finally forced Connecticut to adopt a new constitution separating church and state, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams: “I join you therefore in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood [Connecticut] is at length broken up, and that a Protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews retired US Army chaplain and JAR contributor Kenneth E. Lawson on the influence of Rev. George Whitefield’s teachings on colonial ministers, including those who became chaplains in the Continental Army. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, […]
Throughout history, changes in political order have often been accompanied by the destruction of the old regime’s images and monuments. The July 9, 1776 destruction of King George III’s New York City statue is the most famous and persistent image of such iconoclasm in the American Revolution. In that particular event, after a public reading of […]
Silence Dogood, Anthony Afterwit, Fanny Mournful, Caelia Shortface. Dickens’ characters? No. They’re just a few of the many evocative pen names Benjamin Franklin used to wittily present a controversial or libelous issue or two sides of an argument while remaining anonymous. As a sixteen-year-old apprentice at his brother’s paper, the New England Courant, Franklin was privy […]
It is generally taken for granted that France was ready to jump into the war between Britain and the rebelling North American colonies on the side of the colonies as soon as the colonists showed themselves capable of giving the British a serious fight. After all, Britain had been a frequent antagonist to France, had […]
BOOK REVIEW: William Hunter: Finding Free Speech—A British Soldier’s Son Who Became an Early American by Eugene A. Procknow (Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunbury Press, Inc., 2022) An unknown, virtually invisible figure finds his historical reputation established in William Hunter: Finding Free Speech—A British Soldier’s Son Who Became an Early American. Eugene A. Procknow, frequent contributor to the Journal […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews college student and JAR contributor Alexander Lenarchyk on his discovery that Washington mused on the idea of needing an “asylum” should the war go terribly wrong. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, […]
In the fall of 1796, just months before George Washington’s presidency ended, thirty-six-year-old Revolutionary War veteran Johnson Cook (1760-1848), a Connecticut native, petitioned the president for financial assistance and entreated him to spare Cook from living out his final days “neglected.” In his two-page manuscript letter to Washington, written on October 1, 1796, from Marietta […]
To complement my two studies of the North Carolina Continental Line and militia/state troops, I’ve researched the demographics of the Georgia Continental Line and militia using Federal pension applications.[1] The colony of Georgia at the beginning of the Revolutionary War consisted only of a series of counties along the Savannah River running from the Atlantic coast […]
When British soldiers arrived in Boston in 1768 as part of the British government’s efforts to maintain peace in the colony of Massachusetts, local citizens resented the military presence for several reasons. First and foremost was the implication that the army, in spite of their mission to maintain order, were in fact oppressors sent by […]
BOOK REVIEW: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021) The eminent historian and author Gordon S. Wood has turned a series of recent lectures into his latest work, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. The focus of the book is what Wood considers […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Jane L. Green on her research into the life of Thomas Ditson, a man who went from being tarred and feathered by the British for illicit trading to becoming one of the first Massachusetts militiamen to engage the British at Concord. New episodes of Dispatches […]
George Washington’s appointment as commander of the Continental Army filled him with doubt from the start. In his address to the Continental Congress on June 16, 1775, Washington described himself in the best light while at the same time signaling doubt. He declared himself humble to accept the position and explained that he did so […]
Rev. George Whitefield (1714-1770) was an ordained Church of England priest with an exceptional speaking voice who in his lifetime swayed countless people towards historic Christianity. In a time of the liberalization of historic Protestant Christianity, Whitefield preached the simple biblical message of the Protestant Reformation, that people could not reach God or merit God’s […]
We regularly ask our contributors questions about the American Revolution and founding era. This month we’ve asked them to tell us about an African American or Native American associated with the 1765-1805 era who does NOT have a Wikipedia entry, but who should. Lars D. H. Hedbor The Marquis de Rouvray, who commanded the regiment of […]
BOOK REVIEW: Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History by Katherine Carté (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press/Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2021) Dwight Eisenhower once said that “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it […]
In the second half of the 1700s, French natural historian Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, formulated what would be dubbed the “New World degeneracy” or the “American degeneracy” theory. His work, Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière, included a vast array of facts about natural history from around the world as well as the Count’s many […]
BOOK REVIEW: Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution by H. W. Brands (New York: Doubleday, 2021) Thanks to his many television appearances, H.W. Brands is a familiar face to many. The Jack S. Blanton, Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas Austin, Brands is also a prolific writer whose numerous […]
The status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was an average, unpretentious farmer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time than with specific displays of courage. A deeper look at his activities reveals years of service first as […]
BOOK REVIEW: Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders by Dennis C. Rasmussen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021) I feel dutybound to confess something, before I tempt the reader further into this review of Dennis C. Rasmussen’s Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders. I am somewhat embittered—envious even. […]
The months leading up to the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781 are often glossed over in histories of the Revolutionary War. But they should not be. They were crucial months of preparation for the campaign to come. The events of late June to mid-August 1781 tell the important story leading up to the most […]
We asked our contributors what history project they’re most looking forward to in 2022. Ken Lawson In 2022, I am most looking forward to the spring publication of my book, George Whitefield’s Ministry in New England, 1740-1770. This 600 or so page book is a detailed account full of primary sources that have mostly been […]
Constant Avery of Eaton, in New York’s Madison County, travelled sixteen miles to the county seat in Wampsville in the first week of October 1832. On October 8 he appeared in open court to apply for a federal pension for his years as a soldier in the Continental Army. Avery was “aged seventy three years […]
BOOK REVIEW: Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution by Woody Holton (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021) Some historical narratives are plain and straight forward, almost like a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece. The Mona Lisa is very explicit: you know exactly what the painting is about because the image is directly in front […]
The Journal of the American Revolution is pleased to announce The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher as winner of the 2021 Journal of the American Revolution Book-of-the-Year Award. Honorable Mention is awarded to Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic by Brad A. Jones. The award—an international award dedicated to nonfiction books specifically […]
Late in September 1774 the Continental Congress was in the middle of an ongoing debate on the means that should be implemented to restore American rights. Most of the discussion was around methods of confrontation with Britain, embargoes, and non-consumption activities, as well as the breaking down of British law and order in the colonies. […]
The threat of resigning one’s military commission under protest is almost a matter of tradition. If your leaders made a decision you did not think was in the best interest of either yourself or your comrades, you offered up your resignation. It was a matter of honor. Should your resignation be received, you found yourself […]
BOOK REVIEW: Washington at the Plow: The Founding Father and the Question of Slavery by Bruce A. Ragsdale (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021) In Washington at the Plow: The Founding Father and the Question of Slavery, Bruce Ragsdale provides an in-depth examination of George Washington’s passion for agriculture and the way it changed his […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews public historian and JAR contributor Kim Burdick on Cooch’s Bridge, an early action in the Philadelphia campaign and the only Revolutionary War battle to be fought in the state of Delaware. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, […]
This story begins five weeks after Gen. John Burgoyne’s army forced the Americans to abandon positions on Lake Champlain in July 1777. On August 12, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln wrote to Washington telling him, “I am to return with the militia . . . to the northward, with a design to fall into the rear of […]
On October 18, 1777, New York provincial assemblyman, and tory, Crean Brush, penned his final will and testament from prison in Boston. After nineteen months of incarceration which included being held in irons, and “in a state of body and mind so debilitated by misfortune,” Brush made provisions for his wife Margaret, stepdaughter Frances, and […]
Many things remained slow and uncertain during 2021, but the publication of excellent new books on the American Revolution and founding era was not one of them. JAR received dozens of books for review, several of which were nominated by publishers and readers for our annual Book of the Year award. Our review committee had […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Scott M. Smith on Robert Rogers, a legend for his service during the Seven Years’ War, but during the American Revolution his role was far less glamorous. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
