Jemima Howe (1724–1805) reflects the strength it took to endure the harsh realities of the Vermont frontier during the American colonial and Revolutionary War eras. Although recognized as the “fair captive” then and now, Jemima was far from a damsel in distress. During her full life, she outlived three husbands and five of her nine […]
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel Shays’s Honorable Rebellion: An American Story by Daniel Bullen (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2021) There is truth to the adage that history is told by the victors. It is no coincidence that we are taught that the rebellion named after Pelham, Massachusetts, farmer Daniel Shays was the event that led to the Constitutional Convention. Massachusetts […]
Ned Streater (also spelled Streator) was a twenty-year-old man when he first served early in the American Revolution as a member of a Virginia Minute Battalion from Nansemond County during the Battle of Great Bridge in 1775. Streater served again during the Virginia campaign of 1780-81. What makes Ned Streater unique is not his multiple […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of King George III by Andrew Roberts (New York: Viking, 2021) In 1774, a colonial lawyer wrote an anonymous pamphlet summarizing the political relationship between Mother England and her North American colonies. He urged King George III to use his kingly prerogatives in support of […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews video producer, history enthusiast, and JAR contributor Bridget Barbara on her recent visit to the Yorktown Battlefield, Colonial National Historical Park and the Yorktown Museum of the American Revolution. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
The Battle of Kings Mountain was fought on October 7, 1780 in the upcountry of South Carolina near the border with North Carolina. As the gunsmoke dissipated and Patriot officers rallied their men, they found themselves victorious and in possession of the mountain-top; but still in danger. British General Charles, Lord Cornwallis and his army […]
FILM REVIEW: Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed. Directed by Chris Stearns. Executive Producers James Kirby Martin and Ray Raymond. (Talon Films Production, 2021) One of the most hated men in American history receives a different image in the Talon Films production Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed. Based on the book Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior […]
When they heard the news in 1757, some New Englanders smirked. Others grew angry. The British were mounting a major expedition against the powerful French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, next to Nova Scotia. Sometimes called “the Gibraltar of the North,” Louisbourg was the key to the French empire in North America. New […]
BOOK REVIEW: Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence by Robert G. Parkinson (Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2021) The final grievance that Thomas Jefferson included in the Declaration of Independence used blatantly racist language, making it […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor James M. Smith on the political, legal, and philosophical influences considered by the First Continental Congress in the formulation of their Declaration of Rights, a 1774 draft that declared the American colonies independent, yet was never brought up for a full vote in that congress. […]
It is not exactly a secret that John Adams was a fan of cider. The Massachusetts-born second President’s love of the drink has been mentioned before. He famously had a drink of it just about every morning.[1] But just how did he express this fondness? Obviously, there is no way to quantify how much one […]
After his exploits during the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers (1732-1795) was indisputably the most famous military leader born in the thirteen colonies; however, he played only a cameo role in the Revolution because both the British and American commanders-in-chief, Thomas Gage and George Washington, not only scorned him but actually arrested him for […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher (Princeton University Press, 2021). While Alexander Hamilton has attracted his fair share of attention over the past few years, most studies of the Founding Father focus on his life once he reaches America, his role in the Revolution, and his efforts in the early national […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Richard Werther talks about his recent article about how small pox threatened to derail the American cause by depleting troops strengths and George Washington’s realization that ordering universal inoculation for his army was necessary to prosecute the war. New episodes of Dispatches are available for […]
The Battle of Mamaroneck, known to some as the “Skirmish of Heathcote Hill,” was one of the most obscure military engagements of the Revolution but noteworthy for being the first time in the war that organized infantry units composed entirely of Americans—including Continental Army soldiers—encountered each other. To that extent, it might be regarded as […]
In 1790, when Edmund Burke published his Reflections on the Revolution in France, it triggered lots of backlash from people like Thomas Paine, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wrote a letter to Benjamin Vaughan in May 1791 severely criticizing Burke.[1] This letter has given many scholars an impression that after this point, […]
Following the failed assault on Quebec City, the Continental Congress resolved on January 8, 1776 to provide additional regiments for the defense of Canada. One of them was a new (unnumbered) battalion to be commanded by New York’s Col. Goose Van Schaick and his fellow field officers who had continued in the service from the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Decision At Brandywine: The Battle on Birmingham Hill by Robert M. Dunkerly (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2021) Historian and National Park Ranger Robert M. Dunkerly begins his book with an admission that the Battle of Brandywine is his passion: “Brandywine has fascinated me since I was young” (page ix). What follows is an unusual […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Rand Mirante on John Marshall’s and Mercy Otis Warren’s differing views of Benedict Arnold in their postwar writings. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Dispatches can […]
One of the most effective ways to immerse yourself in history is to read old newspapers—to read the goings-on of the past, written in present tense. Before the internet, television, and radio, this was the primary means of disseminating information to the masses. And so, to hold a newspaper, printed many lifetimes ago, to delve […]
Historian Robert Middlekauff, author of the seminal work The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, passed away recently. Since JAR’s inception in 2013, we’ve seen the passing of other prominent historians of the founding era of the United States, including Pauline Maier and JAR contributors Thomas Fleming, John A. Nagy, Robert Carver Brooks, and C. […]
At the onset of the Revolutionary War, coastal towns north of Boston such as Salem, Marblehead, Beverly, and Gloucester were patrolled by British naval vessels supporting troops stationed ashore and looking for smugglers. The fourteen-gun sloop-of-war Falcon commanded by Capt. John Linzee was one of these vessels.[1] Having arrived in America early in the year, it […]
BOOK REVIEW: Surveying in Early America: The Point of Beginning, An Illustrated History by Dan Patterson and Clinton Terry (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2021) One of the first things that people may learn about George Washington is that his earliest professional experience was in the field of surveying. He did this briefly, until his half-brother […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews distinguished historian and writer Gregory J. W. Urwin about his recent JAR article, “The Yorktown Tragedy,” examining George Washington’s order following the American and French victory at Yorktown to round up enslaved persons who had fled to the British, and return them into bondage. New episodes of Dispatches […]
During the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the political philosophers of Europe were writing and discussing some new and radical ideas on what a government should look like and how it should function. They would reshape the political landscape in the late eighteenth century and well into the twentieth. One of the most […]
March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775–1776 by Michael Cecere chronicles this crucial twelve-month period in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida both politically and militarily. This latest book in the JAR Books Series is illustrated with six original maps, including the battles of Great Bridge, Virginia, and […]
Teaching the American Revolution in the United Kingdom comes with baggage. But British students respond to it ways that an American might not expect. I grew up in the United States and moved to the U.K. about twenty years ago. I have taught the American Revolution in four different institutions, working with both British and […]
Book Review: Cavalry in the Wilderness: Cavalry in the Western Theater of the American Revolutionary War and the French and Indian War by Stephen L. Kling, Jr. (St. Louis, MO: THGC Publishing, 2021) As author Steven L. Kling, Jr., notes in the preface to Cavalry in the Wilderness, until recently cavalry operations in the American Revolution […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews architect and JAR contributor David M. Griffin on his research to determine the possible appearance and location of a series of Continental forts in Brooklyn that formed a defensive line protecting New York City during the Battle of Long Island. New episodes of Dispatches are available for […]
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the founders of the new American Republic were lurching forward from the shockingly successful outcome of their increasingly remote Revolution, and finding themselves immersed in the uncharted waters of nation-building. The political landscape was inflamed by passionate partisanship and varying, often vituperatively expressed visions of what course […]
The debate over mandatory vaccination for Covid-19 has led to many articles referring to how George Washington handled a similar issue, this one involving smallpox, with the Continental Army early in the American Revolution. With the advantage of hindsight, the decision Washington made to fully inoculate (not vaccinate) his army may today seem obvious, but […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 by Joseph J. Ellis (New York, NY: Liveright Publishing, 2021) Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis’s examines the evolving meaning of the American Revolution in his newest work, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents. The events that history refers to as the Revolution […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian, decorated Marine veteran, and JAR contributor Patrick Hannum on the historic meeting between George Washington, French admiral, Comte de Grasse, and French general Comte de Rochambeau during the Yorktown campaign. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, […]
Considered the last major battle of the American Revolution, Yorktown is synonymous with American victory. It was the beginning of the end of the war, and a crucial moment of triumph for the fledgling United States of America. On a short trip to Virginia, I was inundated with history from all periods of the country’s […]
Book Review: Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution by Bruce E. Stewart (Charlottesville, VA and London: University of Virginia Press, 2020) On a spring day in 1775, two Pennsylvania judges placed an exorbitant bond on a participant in a public protest against the British government. The judges were not simply Loyalists trying to put […]
On October 19, 1781, Gen. George Washington attained his apex as a soldier. Straddling a spirited charger at the head of a formidable Franco-American army, Washington watched impassively as 6,000 humiliated British, German, and Loyalist soldiers under the command of Lt. Gen. Charles, Second Earl Cornwallis, emerged from their fortifications to lay down their arms […]
BOOK REVIEW: Minds and Hearts: The Story of James Otis Jr. and Mercy Otis Warren by Jeffrey Hacker (Amherst, MA: Bright Leaf/University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) James Otis and his sister Mercy Otis Warren belong on any list of underappreciated founding-era Americans. James was described by none less than John Adams as being “the earliest and […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historians and JAR contributors Michael C. Harris and Gary Ecelbarger on their important work to better determine the numerical strength of the Continental Army during the 1777 Philadelphia Campaign. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
A recent home improvement project led to the Home Depot located at 2324 Elson Green Avenue, Virginia Beach, Virginia. The area is in the middle of the expansion of the old narrow two-lane country Princess Anne Road, into a modern six lane highway with access lanes needed to support the growing private and commercial vehicle […]
