Having just attained his thirteenth (or eleventh) birthday, he found himself confined to a bed on the second floor of a small two-story house on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, gripped by a violent fever now in its second week.[1] Next to him was his mother, who had been the first to come down […]
While there were many Revolutionary-era outlaws, Claudius Smith and the Cowboys of the Ramapos stand apart. Their story has long been exaggerated and romanticized through local legends, but the true account of their actions is far more violent. Smith and his band—comprised of his children, outlaws, deserters, Native Americans, and local Tories—terrorized the Whigs of […]
History occasionally provides a pleasant surprise by revealing the record of an ordinary person who, thrust into a unique role, performed extraordinary services for his country. In researching the movement of American ordinance from the Hudson River and Philadelphia to Yorktown in 1781, this author discovered that the commodore appointed to lead the ordnance fleet, […]
Thomas Moultrie was one of five sons of a successful South Carolina planter. He served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War as a captain of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment. He was killed on April 24, 1780, during a dramatic dawn sortie from the besieged city of Charleston. His heroic death was in […]
As November 1780 begins, we find Cornwallis continuing to wait at Winnsborough, South Carolina, in the hope of being joined by Major Gen. Alexander Leslie, a junction on which the winter campaign to the northward depended. Bound for the Chesapeake and placed under the orders of Cornwallis, Leslie had sailed from New York on October […]
In this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor, Marine Corps veteran, and retired history teacher Jeff Dacus about Stephen Moylan, an Irish immigrant who became one of George Washington’s most trusted and life-long friends. As your host says, “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the interview. . . .” New episodes of Dispatches are available for […]
“Connecticut: Still Revolutionary,” is the official slogan of Connecticut’s tourism program since about 2014. As a historian who worked in architecture as the son of an architect, I have often been fascinated by the wealth of historic homes still standing in Connecticut. There are hundreds upon hundreds from the eighteenth century, among which a handful stand […]
This month, we asked our contributors to consider the many changes of fortune that occurred over the tumultuous four decades that transformed thirteen British colonies into the nascent United States: What was the best strategic defeat, whether political or military, of the American Revolution and the founding era (roughly 1765 thru 1805)? That is, what […]
The year 1780 ended badly, and the new year boded worse for America’s War of Independence. Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold’s treason and defection to the British army had left Gen. George Washington’s officer corps in disarray, demoralized. Officers of all ranks eyed each other suspiciously, questioning each other’s decisions, while distrust of officers provoked mutinies […]
Eighteen-year-old Andrew Sherburne’s younger brother, Samuel, guided Sherburne into a room away from the rest of the family to help wash and dress him. As he helped his older brother peel off his ragged, lice-infested clothing, Samuel glimpsed Sherburne’s emaciated body. Shocked, the younger boy fell back. “He having taken off my clothes and seen […]
In this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor and editorial board member Katie Turner Getty about a dark side of the American Revolution, the notorious prison hulk, HMS Jersey. Thousands of American prisoners—some as young as twelve—died daily aboard British prison ships, mostly from disease. Fortunately for historians, a number of survivors wrote […]
When Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York in the early 1770s, the city was already the one of the largest in the colonies, second only to Philadelphia. Yet Manhattan’s 25,000 residents inhabited just a small portion of the island which stretched from the Battery to well below today’s 14th street. The rest was sparsely-inhabited farmland, […]
Almost forty years ago, I led a team of nautical archaeologists in the study of the steamboat Phoenix, which had burned on Lake Champlain the night of September 4, 1819. In researching the Phoenix’s history, I came across the reference that “in July, 1818 the remains of General Richard Montgomery, the dashing American leader who […]
In March and April of 1780, there was a string of home invasions and robberies around the villages of Jamaica and Flushing on Long Island, New York. The farming region had been a British army garrison since the autumn of 1776, and was teeming with residents, soldiers, sailors, prisoners of war, refugees, and an assortment […]
In this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Bob Ruppert about his research and articles on Catharine Macaulay, the pioneering woman historian who wrote the first history of England from a Whig, or Republican, perspective. Bob explains the importance of Macaulay as a literary figure, how she became involved in the Whig cause, […]
“There has been hell to pay in Philadelphia,” exclaimed Samuel Shaw, referring to the Fort Wilson Riot of October 4, 1779 in a letter to Winthrop Sargent.[1] The riot was the culmination of three years of factional political tension within the city of Philadelphia. Members of the city’s “lower sort,” nominally backed by politically powerful men […]
Word got around fast about Todd Braisted’s amazing detective work in identifying Bernard E. Griffiths and his remarkable journey from slave to Chelsea Pensioner published on February 21! On February 27, Todd appeared as a guest on The World, a Public Radio International Program produced with the BBC and WGBH Boston. You can listen to the […]
By the end of 1772, Catharine Macaulay had completed and published the first five volumes of her History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line. The effort had taken a toll on her health. Instead of continuing to write her History at a feverish pace, she turned her […]
The British Occupation of the New York City region during the Revolutionary War was the longest continuous occupation of any area of the entire war. After the fall of New York in 1776 and the British retreat from Philadelphia in 1778 the British and American armies surrounding the New York region were at a stalemate. […]
The period of the American Revolution does not afford many accounts of individual rank and file soldiers’ exploits, particularly on the side British side. The filing of some 80,000 pension applications in the United States makes it much easier to learn of a soldier’s activities during the war, whether it be the mundane task of […]
Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity by Nick Bunker. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018) This is a tome that, as Gordon S. Wood is quoted on the dust jacket, attempts “the nearly impossible—to say anything new about Benjamin Franklin.” Young Benjamin Franklin is by Nick Bunker, a British journalist and businessman turned historian of […]
Catharine Sawbridge was born in Wye, Kent, England to John Sawbridge and Elizabeth Wanley on April 2, 1731. Her father was a landed proprietor; her mother was an heiress. She was the their second child. She had an older sister Mary and two younger brothers, John and Wanley. Catharine’s education was left to a governess […]
A councilman by profession, James Allen, esquire, lived in Philadelphia during the early years of the American Revolution. A man of considerable social prominence and stature within the colony, Allen held much influence. Indeed, the entire Allen family was held in high esteem, particularly since most of its members enjoyed positions of privilege and respect. […]
Thank you to all of those who listened to the inaugural episode of our podcast, Dispatches. On this week’s show, host Brady Crytzer interviews long-time JAR contributor and Vermont native Michael Barbieri about the history of his state and the importance of the Champlain Corridor to the course of the American Revolution. Brady poses the […]
When one thinks of the American Revolution, the places that most quickly come to mind are Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Yorktown. Yet during the War for Independence, Eastchester, New York, located only a few miles north of Manhattan, experienced with few exceptions calamitous depredations more constant and severe than any other area of […]
We asked our contributors what seemed like a simple question: What scene from the American Revolution or the Founding Era (1765–1805, approximately) do you wish had been depicted accurately by an artist? Quite unintentionally, the wording was ambiguous. Some described scenes that they’d like to see an artist render, while others offered events that they […]
Wars have a way of creating strange alliances, and the American Revolution was no exception. I encountered one such unusual relationship while researching my article on American naval officer Lambert Wickes, who completed many daring privateering captures in European waters in 1776-77 before relinquishing the stage to John Paul Jones. By all accounts, Wickes was […]
Revolutions are complex multi-sided economic, political, social, and technological events. They begin as conservative movements. As each side fears losing, all of these different interests radicalize but when the struggle is over, as historian Robert Calhoon points out, each side will adopt constructive compromise to find a way to govern together.[1] In the American Revolution […]
We are pleased to announce that the Journal of the American Revolution has launched a new podcast, Dispatches. Each week Dispatches will feature interviews with contributors to the journal as well as authors and other persons of interest to the JAR community, highlighting the latest in scholarship, news, and opinions regarding the Revolutionary and Founding Eras. Hosted […]
On October 1, 1768, two regiments of British infantry with an artillery detachment—witnesses estimated 700 to 800 men in all—disembarked from transports in Boston Harbor and formed up on Long Wharf. Then, in a procession lasting several hours, they marched “with muskets charged, bayonets fixed, colours flying, drums beating and fifes . . . playing” […]
The best-known scene of Col. Henry Knox’s train of artillery in the winter of 1775-1776 is Tom Lovell’s painting The Noble Train of Artillery. It shows a caravan of ox-drawn artillery that the Continental Army moved from the recently conquered Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York (pictured near the top left of the painting) through […]
The American Revolution produced different meanings for Patriots and Loyalists. After the end of the Revolutionary war, the pressing issue was no longer the problem of independence or the Imperial Crisis, but the problem of nationhood, and how this newly created nation should be run. Arthur Shaffer argued that the fact that “a diverse group […]
The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch (Flatiron Books, 2019). On June 28, 1776—only days before the Continental Congress voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence—a soldier named Thomas Hickey hanged in what was at the time the largest public execution in North America. Although myths […]
The British Army held New York City from 1776 to November 25, 1783. In prisoner exchanges, royal forces in New York periodically released prisoners of war who were “sickly and emaciated.” Sometimes the prisoners numbered a few dozen, sometimes a few hundred. In 1776, however, British military commander Lt. Gen. Sir William Howe released more […]
The year was 1773. On May 10, Parliament had passed the Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to the American colonies without paying any customs or duties in England. This gave the company a monopoly over the production, distribution, and sale of tea. The colonists saw the Act as a […]
The Molasses Act of 1733 levied a duty of six pence per gallon on foreign molasses imported into British colonies in North America. The duty was not intended to raise revenue, but to be a prohibition against the importation of molasses from foreign sugar plantations. It was at first a nullity, a dead letter, but […]
The Journal of the American Revolution today announced The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation by Colin G. Calloway (Oxford University Press) as winner of the 2018 Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award. Honorable mention was awarded to Frontier Rebels: The Fight […]
When the Second Continental Congress met in June 1775, they were not prepared for what they found. Several months earlier on April 19 the war of words with Great Britain had become a shooting war. The individual colonies found themselves at war with one of the greatest military powers of the age. It would fall […]
To create an organized and effective force the Continental Army required more than just soldiers and officers. Camp followers helped to maintain and even provide supplies, and drummers were critical for signaling routines in camp and coordinating movements. In many cases the war would become a family affair, calling on men, women, adults, and children […]
