*** All JAR Articles ***

 Features Posted on

Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership

Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2020) George Washington and Early Republic scholar Edward J. Larson (author of The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783-1789 and A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign) has produced a new work focusing on […]

by Timothy Symington
Constitutional Debate Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Jane Hampton Cook on “Remember the Ladies,” Abigail Adams on Women’s Right to Vote

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and former White House webmaster, Jane Hampton Cook on Abigail Adams’s advice to her husband John to “Remember the Ladies”—consider the voices of women during the debate over how a new country should be governed—an early act in recommending the vote to both women and men. Thousands […]

by Editors
1
Loyalists Posted on

Countervailing Colonial Perspectives on Quartering the British Army

In the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, as the British Army repositioned its forces from western frontier posts into American cities, many Americans seethed against quartering troops in urban centers. Animosity with the military occupation was rampant but was not the universal reaction in every location. In two cities, colonial anger ranged from vituperative […]

by Gene Procknow
Features Posted on

Contributor Close-up: Kim Burdick

What inspired you to start researching and writing about the Revolution? As a little kid growing up in very rural Chenango County, New York, I remember the astonishment my classmates and I felt when our teacher told us we lived in the Mid-Atlantic.“Uh- Uh,” shouted twenty 4th graders. “We live in New England!!!”  It didn’t […]

by Editors
2
Constitutional Debate Posted on

How Did John Adams Respond to Abigail’s “Remember the Ladies”?

Women in all states won the universal right to vote one hundred years ago through the ratification of the United States Constitution’s 19th Amendment in 1920. Though women in Seneca Falls, New York, launched the women’s rights movement in 1848 when they claimed that the Declaration of Independence applied to women in the Declaration of […]

by Jane Hampton Cook
Arts & Literature Posted on

A Painter Abroad: John Singleton Copley Writes to His Wife

It may have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s patriotic paean that belatedly canonized a heroic horseman as a key figure of the American Revolution, but it was John Singleton Copley who provided posterity with the definitive visual representation of the famous midnight rider. Seven years before Paul Revere spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm—and […]

by Justin Ross Muchnick
Features Posted on

General Peter Muhlenberg: A Virginia Officer of the Continental Line

General Peter Muhlenberg: A Virginia Officer of the Continental Line by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020) “The General, mounted upon a white horse, tall and commanding in his figure, was very conspicuous at the head of his men…many of the [enemy] soldiers (German enlistments being for life,) remembered their former comrade, and the cry ran […]

by Gabriel Neville
Diplomacy Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Kim Burdick on the Atlantic Crossing of the French l’Expédition Particulière

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR contributor Kim Burdick about l’Expédition Particulière, the codename for the French fleet that sailed from Europe to support the American war effort following the Treaty of Amity and Friendship. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches […]

by Editors
Critical Thinking Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Christopher Warren on Documents of the American Revolution

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Christopher Warren, historian and Curator of American History in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, on his recent article in JAR discussing important documents of the American Revolution that are held in the collection. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published […]

by Editors
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Letters and Correspondence Posted on

A “Truly Noble” Resistance: The Sons of Liberty in Connecticut

The role of Connecticut’s Sons of Liberty is one that exemplifies the state’s rich history of self-governance and fiercely independent spirit. Their swift reaction to the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 shattered the political landscape of Connecticut, known ironically as “the land of steady habits.” Later, a few select Sons and their respective […]

by Dayne Rugh
Features Posted on

The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution

The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution by Lindsay M. Chervinsky (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2020) In his slim volume on George Washington’s presidency, Forrest McDonald concluded that Washington had actually “done little in his own right, had often opposed the best measures of his subordinates, and had taken […]

by Alec D. Rogers
Engineering and Technology Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Jeff Dacus on the “Tower of Victory” at the Siege of Fort Watson

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Jeff Dacus on how Light Horse Harry Lee and Francis Marion were able to successfully capture British Fort Watson using a siege tower designed by Maj. Hezekiah Maham. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a […]

by Editors
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People Posted on

Certain British and British American Actors in the Southern Theater of the War

This article supplements one of mine that appeared in the Journal of the American Revolutionin November 2016.[1] Based partly on The Cornwallis Papers,[2] it provides a wide-ranging set of reappraisals compartmentalised under the sub-headings below. James Paterson Paterson, as he signed his surname, had been appointed Lt. Colonel of the 63rd Regiment on June 15, […]

by Ian Saberton
Journals Posted on

“Very Cold & Nothing Remarkable”: the Journal of Dr. Edmund Hagen, Privateer and Prisoner of War, Part 2 of 2

This article continues an examination of the journal kept by Dr. Edmund Hagen of Scarborough, Maine, begun in “Dispatch’t to America’: the Journal of Dr. Edmund Hagen, Privateer and Prisoner of War.” This second article presents and examines the second half of Dr. Edmund Hagen’s journal, dealing with Hagen’s experience on board the prison ship […]

by Kadri Kallikorm-Rhodes
Journals Posted on

“Dispatch’t Him for America”: the Journal of Dr. Edmund Hagen, Privateer and Prisoner of War, Part 1 of 2

Edmund Hagen presumably never intended the publication of his daily journal of his 1776 stint as the surgeon on a successful, but ultimately ill-fated, privateer. But it is exactly the fact that his journal contemporaneously records what he at the time regarded as the important facts of the day, rather than retrospectively identifying important events […]

by Kadri Kallikorm-Rhodes
Arts & Literature Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Greg Aaron on the American Revolution’s Influence on Superheroes

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews cybersecurity expert and former trade book editor Greg Aaron on the influence of the American Revolution on the development of some of the most iconic Superheroes and the promotion of the ideals of America in the face of intolerance and fascism. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles […]

by Editors
2
Constitutional Debate Posted on

Creating Order: Rufus King and the Nascent American Republic

On the afternoon of April 30, 1789, George Washington stepped onto the balcony of the freshly-renovated and renamed Federal Hall on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and took the presidential oath of office. Then, stepping into the Senate chamber, now-President Washington gave his inaugural address. He began plaintively, admitting in his opening line that “Among […]

by Keith Muchowski
1
Battles Posted on

The Battles of Connecticut Farms and Springfield 1780

The Battles of Connecticut Farms and Springfield 1780 by Edward G. Lengel.  (Yardley, PA:  Westholme Publishing, LLC, 2020) Famed Washington historian Edward G. Lengel (editor-in-chief of the Papers of George Washington and author of General George Washington: A Military Life) reminds readers that the recognizable titles of some Revolutionary War battles were not the only ones […]

by Timothy Symington
1
People Posted on

An American Bolingbroke: John Taylor of Caroline’s Republican Opposition, 1792–1794, Part 2 of 2

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, in the first half of the eighteenth century, and John Taylor of Caroline in the 1790s, both feared that once power had been secured by an unpatriotic faction it might employ a standing army to effect the destruction of the republic. Additionally, Taylor was among those who felt that the […]

by James A. Cornelius
Constitutional Debate Posted on

An American Bolingbroke: John Taylor of Caroline’s Republican Opposition, 1792–1794, Part 1 of 2

From 1792 to 1794, John Taylor of Caroline, a senator from Virginia, was engaged in a heated party struggle between Jeffersonian Republicans and Hamiltonian Federalists over the implementation of the latter’s new economic program. Taylor, despite being largely unknown by non-specialists today, has been called by Gordon S. Wood “the conscience of the Republican party” […]

by James A. Cornelius
Features Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Jett Conner on Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and the Louisiana Purchase

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews political scientist, historian, and JAR contributor Jett Conner on his recent article about Thomas Paine’s and Thomas Jefferson’s interpretations of the role of presidential powers used by Jefferson to justify the Louisiana Purchase. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American […]

by Editors
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Politics During the War (1775-1783) Posted on

L’Expédition Particulière crosses the Atlantic: The French Rally to the American Cause

Following American success at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777, French King Louis XVI signed the Treaty of Amity and Friendship, establishing open French assistance to the American cause. In May 1780 nearly 6,000 soldiers and sailors left the Port of Brest in northwest France and sailed across the Atlantic, arriving in Rhode Island in […]

by Kim Burdick
4
Engineering and Technology Posted on

The Fall of Fort Washington: The “Bunker Hill Effect”?

It was the one of the worst defeats suffered by the Americans during the War for Independence, certainly the worst over which George Washington had direct command. Historian David McCullough perhaps characterized the debacle best, writing that after experiencing “one humiliating, costly reverse after another,” during the New York campaign of 1776, “the surrender of […]

by Derrick E. Lapp