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 […]
Light-Horse Harry Lee: The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Hero and the Father of Robert E. Lee by Ryan Cole. (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2019) Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, politician, and bankrupt businessman, has been the subject of renewed interest among historians and biographers in recent years. After […]
While the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was on holiday in the summer of 1774, his office continued to receive and send communications concerning the political divergence with the American colonies. The general issues were the Quebec Act, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the Non-Importation Agreement, […]
What is the focus of your research and writing? I review books about the Revolutionary period. I’ve always enjoyed reading book reviews, but often felt frustrated when they would fail in what I regard as their essential mission: to give me a sense of whether I’d enjoy reading the book being reviewed. I hope that […]
“There, rebels, there is a cage for you.”[1] Forced to row under guard of British marines, a boatload of captured American sailors approached the forbidding black hulk of the old British warship, HMS Jersey. Nicknamed “The Hell Afloat,”[2] the Jersey and other decommissioned British warships were moored in Wallabout Bay, just off Brooklyn, New York, where […]
In this article I address the absurdity of Cornwallis’s decision to march from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Virginia and the light thrown on it by The Cornwallis Papers.[1] The central enigma of the Southern Campaigns, it had until their publication never been able to be satisfactorily resolved. Lt. Gen. Charles Earl Cornwallis, the British General […]
Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life by Albert Louis Zambone (Westholme Publishing, 2018) Few figures in the American Revolution contributed more towards victory over Great Britain than Daniel Morgan of Virginia. His leadership in two of the most significant engagements of the Revolutionary War, the battles of Saratoga and Cowpens, as well as his bold conduct […]
The Continental Navy. Words that didn’t exactly strike fear into the heart of the mighty British Royal Navy. For most Americans, knowledge of the early American Navy likely begins and ends with the daring exploits of John Paul Jones, starting in 1778. Indeed, it was not the Continental Navy, but the French Navy, that was […]
For our first post of the New Year—a time when resolutions are announced, new leaves are turned, and anticipation and hope for a fulfilling life renews, it is appropriate that this month we asked our contributors the following question: During the Founding Era, which we’ll consider as 1765 thru 1805, who was the most promising […]
Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776, by Patrick Spero (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018) In most standard histories of the Revolution, affairs in the west are often seen, somewhat understandably, as little more than a sideshow to the rebellion that unfolded on the eastern seaboard. Recent years, however, have fortunately […]
While conducting research for my essay on General Washington’s plight in the New Jersey short hills in the spring of 1777, I was fortunate to have stumbled upon a series of maps held at the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. These maps, twenty reprinted copies in all, focus attention on the New […]
Our ancestors often believed in fate, and so do I. It was fate one day that brought me to the Fraunces Tavern in New York City. Fate that day that the waiter overheard me talking to my daughter. Fate that that same waiter told me of the museum on the top floor of the Fraunces […]
In June 1777, Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant governor for Quebec and Superintendent for Indian Affairs at Detroit, held a council at Detroit with all who would attend. His goal was simple: mobilize the western Indian nations to attack Americans all along the Ohio frontier, just as the Six Nations were doing along the northern […]
November 10, 1775 was an important day in both Great Britain and America. Lord George Germain assumed duties as the Secretary of State for the American Department—“he was virtually War minister in the British cabinet”—and the Continental Congress authorized two battalions of marines, giving birth to the United States Marine Corps.[1] Two hundred and forty-three […]
