The American Revolution came as a fire storm. No section of America was untouched or unaltered. The British Colonists who were in open rebellion against the crown in 1775 found themselves embroiled in a conflict that would last well beyond the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The war cost them dearly—in resources, […]
On June 1, 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, the newly appointed governor, Lt.-Gen. Thomas Gage, shut down the towns’ harbor. All shipping and commerce came to standstill. Ships-of-war appeared in the harbor, army regiments arrived from England and only food was allowed to enter the town (by way of the town of […]
From the outset of the American Revolution and the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the Continental Congress dealt with its financing. Under the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1777, Congress lacked the power to levy taxes.[1] Even had it possessed such power, to exercise it would […]
Nearly every American knows the name of John Hancock, but often for little more than his signature on the Declaration of Independence. Hancock was one of the most popular men in eighteenth-century North America, winning people over with his style, personability, and generosity. These ten quotations offer a fuller picture of the character, political temper, […]
The official birthday of the United States Army is June 14, 1775. On that day, the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia passed the following: Resolved, That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia . . . as soon as completed, shall march and join […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews attorney and JAR contributor Jane Strachan on her two-part series about the descent from riches to rags of Margaret Moncrieffe Coghlan and the memoir she penned describing her life. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
Departing from Morristown, New Jersey, the Continental Army’s Maryland Division, Delaware Regiment, and 1st Continental artillery (approximately 1,400 men), were ordered south in April 1780 to break the siege of Charlestown and reinforce Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s beleaguered garrison. Upon reaching Petersburgh, Virginia, in early June, the surrender of Charlestown on May 12 became known. […]
On Friday morning, December 30, 1792, Archibald Robertson, an ambitious painter from Aberdeen, Scotland, arrived at the doorstep of the executive mansion at Philadelphia.[1] David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, entrusted him to deliver a wooden box to President George Washington.[2] Yet this was no ordinary box and Robertson’s call no ordinary visit. For […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historians and JAR contributor Michael Cecere. In his new book United for Independence: The American Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1775-1776, Michael provides an in-depth analysis of the people of politics of the Middle Colonies from 1775-1776. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United […]
Though he played a significant role in British victory at the Battle of Camden August 16, 1780, the leadership of Lt. Col. Francis, Lord Rawdon throughout the Camden District (northeast South Carolina) prior to that battle has long gone unrecognized.[1] Few know that Lord Rawdon was charged by his commander, Lt. Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America by Cynthia Kierner (University of Virginia Press, 2023) Linda K. Kerber’s Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America demonstrated women’s resilience to create their own “republican motherhood;” this later evolved into accomplishing what the revolution did not do for women. […]
Margaret Moncrieffe Coghlan was many things—the privileged daughter of a highly-regarded British Army officer who served in North America, an alleged British spy, hapless wife, high society courtesan, scandalous and political memoirist—and last, a woman hounded by creditors in London and Paris who ensured that she served time in debtors prison. (Read Part One.) No […]
In 1805, Margaret (Moncrieffe) Coghlan’s options were running out. For more than a decade, she had been back and forth to the King’s Bench prison in London, known then as debtors prison, with a reputation for filth, overcrowding and typhus outbreaks. She had written a lengthy letter to King George III, seeking a pension for […]
For many years Paul Revere was not prominent in the history of the Revolutionary War. Extremely versatile, he was a Massachusetts militia officer and artillery commander, a skilled artist and engraver, a caster of bells, an esteemed silversmith, and an industrialized coppersmith.[1] He also was a prosthodontist and at one point a forensic dentist.[2] Revere […]
The “Ten Crucial Days” winter campaign of 1776-1777 reversed the tide of war just when Washington’s army appeared near collapse. Beginning with the Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River, Washington recorded his first three significant victories over the British and their Hessian auxiliaries under the overall command of Maj. Gen. William Howe and the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777-1778 by Norman E. Donoghue II. )Penn State University Press 2023) This carefully researched book supplements much of what has been previously known about Quaker history. The Quaker faith proclaims, “take no part in carrying on war on any occasion or under any power but lead […]
Two important books in the twenty-first century have focused on the impact of terrifying smallpox contagions on the American Revolutionary War.[1] Understandably, most of their stories are about smallpox infecting soldiers on land. As the two books relate, smallpox wrought havoc on Benedict Arnold’s small army outside Quebec in 1775 and 1776, and likely killed […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor William H. J. Manthorpe on the Dewees family and their contributions to the Patriot cause. 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 now be easily accessed […]
BOOK REVIEW: United for Independence: The American Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1775-1776 by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa.: Westholme, 2023) In the American Revolutionary War, probably no period was more dramatic than the time between April 1775 and August 1776. It was then that the skirmish at Lexington and Concord grew into an all-out war, and […]
Estimates have appeared in print for generations that 3,000 to 5,000 Black soldiers served in the American military in the Revolution. These claims seldom offer documentation, being instead what historian Michael Lanning defined as only a “general consensus” of the number of African American patriots. Lack of records, reliance on anecdotal evidence, and other factors […]
Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, more commonly known as Baron von Steuben, served as a military officer in both the Prussian and American armies. He fought in the Prussian army for sixteen years, rising through the ranks from cadet in 1747 to adjutant general on the king’s staff in 1759. In 1762, he served as aide-de-camp […]
William Mehls Dewees (1711-1777) The “Father” of this history is William M. Dewees. He was the son of William Dewees of Germantown (1680-1745), “the papermaker,” and Anna Christina (Mehls) Dewees (1690-1749).He was born at the new family home and paper mill in what is now Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. In 1735, he married Rachel Farmar (1712-1777), […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Eric Wiser on the bitter political rivalry between Abraham Clark and William Livingston. 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 now be easily accessed on the […]
Let’s admit it. Most of us have used or have heard the word “frog” as a derogatory term to refer to the French. But why? We don’t really know the origin of the use of the term in that context, but we do know that it dates back to the colonial period or even earlier. […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Charles Asgill Affair: Setting the Record Straight by Anne Ammundsen (Heritage Books, 2023) What happened to British officer Charles Asgill at the end of the American Revolution is not a frequently covered topic in histories of the Revolution, and the biographies of General George Washington that cover the “Asgill Affair”often put a inaccurately […]
Nathanael Greene is rightly remembered as one of the great combat leaders of the American Revolution. But he was also a deep political thinker, a Rhode Island politician before the war who did not hesitate to discuss the broader ramifications of the American Revolution with a wide range of Patriot notables, some of whom never […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Victor J. DiSanto on the Fidelity Medallion presented to Isaac Van Wart and the other captors of John André. The medallion has now been donated to the New York State Museum. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) […]
Andrew Pickens is the very image of the hard-nosed Patriot, but after the surrender of Charleston, South Carolina on May 12, 1780, he gave the British good reason to hope he would join them. In order to understand Pickens’ thinking, it is instructive to begin with Andrew Williamson, who did join the British and lived […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis by Brady J. Crytzer (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2023) In late July 1794, at least 1,500 armed rebels assembled at Braddock’s Field, about eight miles southeast of Pittsburgh, in what Brady Crytzer, a professor of history at Robert Morris University, describes as “the largest […]
John Adams said of his Whig contemporaries that they had views as “various as the Colors of their Cloths.”[1] Such was the paradigm in the civil yet often contentious political relationship of Abraham Clark and William Livingston. Both men were, as the saying goes, cursed with being born in interesting times. They were the top […]
The Fidelity Medallion awarded to Isaac Van Wart has been donated to the New York State Museum in Albany by the estate of Rae Faith Van Wart Robinson, late of Westchester County and a direct descendant of Van Wart, in accordance with Robinson’s stated wishes.[1] Ms. Robinson passed away on October 19, 2020 at the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Long Island City in 1776: The Revolution Comes to Queens by Richard Melnick (The History Press, 2023) Richard Melnick’s Long Island City in 1776: The Revolution Comes to Queens comes to us from The History Press. The 222-page book that serves to highlight the role a portion of Queens borough in New York City played […]
During the trial years under the Federal Constitution, some political observers contributed to the national discourse by employing one of the period’s most ambitious and creative ornaments: the classical pseudonym. Cloaked behind these ancient disguises, commenters added a historically nuanced layer to their arguments that enlisted the ubiquitous gravity of the classical past.[1] These signatures […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Benjamin George on how George Washington used information tactically and strategically to manipulate the course of the war. 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 now […]
We often remember the controversy surrounding the Hutchinson Letters, which inspired many colonists to oppose the provincial government in Massachusetts, by talking about Benjamin Franklin (who found and sent the letters) and Samuel Adams (who helped publish them). Our memory of the letters’ author, Thomas Hutchinson, is often colored by a 1774 print by Paul Revere, […]
BOOK REVIEW: To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, 1776-1782 by Mark Maloy (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie LLC, 2023) “Walking through historic Charleston, the sight of hundreds of 18th- and 19th-century buildings will transport you back in time. The sound of horse hooves clopping on the city streets echoes off the buildings and sea […]
Thomas Anderson’s journal, covering May 1780 through April 1782, has been lost, but a nineteenth century transcription resides in the Peter Force Collection of the Library of Congress, as Series 7E, Mss. 19,061, Item 4, Reel 1. Here is the portion of the journal from April 1781 through its conclusion on April 7, 1782. Anderson […]
In 1867, The Historical Magazine published “Extracts from the Journal of Lieutenant Thomas Anderson.” The original manuscript at that time belonged to the Maryland Historical Society. Unfortunately the original document cannot be found. Anderson’s journal has been quoted in numerous histories of the Revolutionary War in the South in 1780-1782, but the 1867 published version leaves […]
BOOK REVIEW: South Carolina Provincials: Loyalists in British Service During the American Revolution by Jim Piecuch (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2023) In his recently published text, South Carolina Provincials, Jim Piecuch provides a well-researched and informative account of South Carolina’s Provincial Loyalists units and their actions in the southern theater during the American Revolution. These units are often […]
