Over the years, historians have located about thirty first-hand accounts of the American expedition into Canada in the fall of 1775. These accounts detail the hardships encountered as the Americans marched through the wilderness in an attempt to capture the British stronghold at Quebec. There may be other journals that have not yet been discovered; […]
At nine o’clock on the morning of May 6, 1778, Continental soldiers at Valley Forge emerged from their huts to hear their regimental chaplains announce the American alliance with France. This was followed by the troops forming in ranks for a review by General George Washington, the firing of muskets by Washington’s guard, a thirteen-gun […]
On July 2, 1778, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hanged Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner and Continental soldier Ezra Ross, together with British soldiers Sgt. James Buchanan and Pvt. William Brooks. They had been convicted of the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Joshua Spooner, in “the most extraordinary crime ever perpetrated in New England.”[1] The trial was the first […]
The Revolutionary War was fought on a global scale, with six nation states engaged in battles across three continents and two oceans. Volunteers from many European nations came to the United States to fight alongside the American insurgents: Antoine Félix Wuibert and the Marquis de Lafayette from France, Jordi Farragut from Spain and Thaddeus Kosciuszko from Poland, to name […]
The Sugar Act of 1764 levied taxes on imports to British colonies in North America. In doing so, the act marked a change in British colonial policy—an empire-shaking change—from commercial and trade regulation only, to taxation by Parliament. There was an earlier Sugar Act that established a foundation for the act of 1764. The First […]
Through four months in the summer of 1787, passionate arguments over political principles filled the Pennsylvania State House while hard-nosed political horse-trading buzzed in the taverns and drawing rooms of Philadelphia. Fifty-five American politicians were writing a new charter of government for the United States, the Constitution. They produced the longest-surviving constitutional republic in human […]
George Washington surrounded himself with the best and the brightest young men involved in the revolutionary cause. Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, Robert Harrison, the Marquis de Lafayette, James McHenry, and John Fitzgerald were a few of the talented people that served alongside Washington in his “family” at various times. One of them, John Laurens of […]
Books are an important resource for any researcher. As approaches to the interpretation of history change and new primary source material comes to light, books can become dated. However, some books have value much longer than others. With this in mind, we asked JAR contributors: “Which book published between 1800 and 1950 do you still […]
On my way to Boston’s Logan Airport a while ago a taxi driver pointed towards Boston Harbor and started telling me about a Revolutionary War monument located behind South Boston High School. As an Irish-American transplant from Chicago, green-colored Red Sox hats and the reputation of the South Boston Irish are very real manifestations of […]
Eric Sterner is a writer and historian living in Northern Virginia, who has worked primarily in the fields of national security and aerospace policy for both the government and private sector. He served at the Department of Defense and NASA during the Bush Administration and held senior staff positions for the Committee on Science and […]
During the American Revolution, hundreds of civilians and military men on both sides were killed or injured by accidents. A number of these occurred during occasions which were supposed to be joyous. One of the earliest was Robert Jewell. Samuel Rowland Fisher heard of his death in 1781, and remembered he had been keeper of […]
In today’s trial, see if you agree with the court’s verdict and sentence. In determining guilt, the court considered several factors: was the man enlisted properly as a soldier in the first place? Had he been paid and provided clothing in accordance with his enlistment contract? Did he have a good reason for his absence? […]
Desertion was a capital crime, but it was up to a general court martial, a board of thirteen officers, to determine the defendant’s guilt and assign a punishment. In today’s trial, see if you agree with the court’s decision. The court considered several factors to determine guilt: was the man enlisted properly as a soldier […]
If a British soldier was absent without leave, he might be charged with desertion; if caught, he could be tried by a general court martial, a board of thirteen officers. The court looked at many factors in deciding guilt and sentencing punishment. In today’s trial, see if you agree with the court’s verdict and sentence. The […]
In this second trial, see if you agree with the court’s verdict and sentence. In determining guilt, the officers of the general court martial considered whether the man enlisted properly as a soldier in the first place, whether he been paid and provided clothing in accordance with his enlistment contract, and whether he had a […]
This week JAR Editor Don N. Hagist presents the testimony from five British desertion trials held during the American Revolution. For each trial, see if you agree with the court’s verdict and sentence. British soldiers charged with desertion were tried by a general court martial, a board of thirteen officers tasked with determining whether the […]
On January 1, 1775, Charles Stockbridge visited his neighbor’s house in Hanover, Massachusetts, twenty five miles south of Boston. He heard a rumor that opponents of the government would visit nearby Marshfield to harass Tories (supporters of the king), who were well known and vulnerable to trouble. His neighbor doubted the rumor was true.[1] Yet […]
The charge was leveled often in his own time, as it has been ever since: James Madison is and was a hypocrite—a man inconstant in principles; “a mind mired in confusion and inconsistency, or perhaps even one suffering from schizophrenia or tainted by dishonesty.”[1] This judgment is only a recitation of the verdict first rendered […]
Book Review: Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero by Christian Di Spigna (Crown Publishing: 2018). BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON As a fan of Dr. Joseph Warren and having researched him thoroughly for my own two Revolutionary War books,[1] I was interested to see what new […]
The October 7, 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain is likely familiar to those even casually interested in the American Revolution. For those who look deeper into its context within the contentious Southern Campaign, there were many battles and small skirmishes preceding Kings Mountain which account for the developments between the fall of Savannah and the […]
Book Review: The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History by Richard L. Bushman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, May 2018). BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON Farming is hard work, always has been. Farmers make their livelihoods cultivating the earth and typically shun the limelight. Students exposed to the colonial and […]
John Andre’s body hung in silence for thirty minutes before being taken down. It was placed carefully in a simple open coffin crudely painted black. The guard detail then withdrew and the “country people” of the villages around Tappan respectfully filed past his corpse. It was estimated upwards of 2,000 viewed his execution, a remarkable […]
Managing Editor Don N. Hagist is pleased to announce two new additions to the Journal of the American Revolution’s editorial team. Adrian Rutt, who most recently contributed a review of Justifying Revolution, provides his expertise in copy editing and academic publishing to ensure that JAR articles meet the journal’s overall editorial standards. In addition, Adrian will weigh in […]
A motorist travelling northbound through New Jersey along Interstate 295, which tracks the east bank of the Delaware River from the Delaware Memorial Bridge, passes opposite Philadelphia, and ends a short ways beyond Trenton, might think he or she is in Europe, based strictly on fleetingly observed exit signs rather than any resemblances evoked by […]
Thomas Jefferson, that American Sphinx,[1] is perhaps Alexander Hamilton’s only rival within the high pantheon of the founding generation for enigma. Hamilton’s character recalls Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women, a spiraling marble Renaissance masterpiece resident in Florence’s Piazza Signoria, featuring three intertwined figures that can only be captured conclusively from a host of vantage […]
Documents that contain the original signatures of more than one Continental Army general are rare. During the eight years of the Revolutionary War, generals penned thousands of pages of military orders, official correspondence, and private letters. The vast preponderance of these signed documents are in archives and museums, but some are cherished and preserved in […]
Book review: Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father by Peter Stark (HarperCollins, 2018). BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON Peter Stark’s account of George Washington during the French and Indian War from 1753 to 1758 offers an entertaining portrait of Washington during those early years of his military career, but he gives […]
The American Revolution’s armies got their horsepower from horses. These animals carried cavalrymen into battle, pulled cannons, carts and wagons of all description, hauled baggage on their backs, moved messengers swiftly over countless miles, and brought officers and gentlemen to wherever they needed to be. And they ran off sometimes. Advertising in the era’s newspapers […]
Book Review: Justifying Revolution: Law, Virtue, and Violence in the American War for Independence, Glenn A. Moots and Phillip Hamilton, eds. (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018) BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON For many, the story of the American Revolution is simple and straightforward: in an effort to break the chains of tyranny and unrepresentative […]
The American Revolution was in effect a civil war. It included all the heightened acrimony associated with one. In what became the United States, there was hostility and outright violence between those supporting the rebellion (“Patriots”) and those against it (“Loyalists”). Soldiers and families alike faced social ostracism, physical danger, loss of property, and for […]
Book Review: American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era by Craig Bruce Smith (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON In American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era, Craig Bruce Smith, a professor of history at William Woods University, traces the role that […]
The characters and contributions of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton are collectively sketched by historian Richard B. Morris in, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries. Amid descriptions of Hamilton’s grandiose ambitions, Washington’s sullen stiffness, Adams’s humble origins, and Franklin’s protean diplomacy, […]
The JAR 2018 Annual Volume is going on a road trip and you’re invited! If you plan on visiting any Revolutionary War historic sites or reenactments this summer or fall, be sure to pack your 2018 Annual Volume! Snap some photos of your volume at historic locations or with reenactors and post the pics to […]
The United States pension and land bounty records furnish us with a multitude of fascinating stories. It is important, however, to weight them against other information, as there is often much more to the real story. Such is the case with Private Zacheus Holmes of Massachusetts; his pension application gives just a tease of his […]
George Washington realized early in the Revolutionary War that the British Navy provided the King’s army with an advantage in mobility. Not long after taking command of the fledgling army around Boston, Washington took steps to provide his forces with a maritime arm of its own. Several states had organized navies of their own as […]
As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington was involved in many battles, both military and political, during the revolution. A battle with both military and political aspects was Washington’s effort to obtain army lieutenant generals. Although often identified as a lieutenant general (or even a major general) himself, Washington was a full general.[1] Despite a […]
In August 1776, the Crown’s disciplined forces easily displaced the unprepared Continental resistance in the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn. It was a decisive British victory, and the surviving Patriots retreated westward across the East River and onto York Island. By September, the British army firmly occupied Long Island […]
One American Revolutionary War naval captain, Pierre Landais, appeared paranoid and somewhat deranged. Landais was a French merchantman lieutenant who trafficked arms to America for entrepreneur Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.[1] Beaumarchais created a fictitious trading enterprise called Hortalez et Cie that channeled French arms to the Americans via colonial West Indian entrepôrts.[2] Once there, the arms […]
Book Review: Thomas Paine: Britain, America, & France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution by J.C.D. Clark (Oxford University Press, 2018, 485 pages) BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON British historian J.C.D Clark sets out in his newly published book on Thomas Paine to reevaluate Paine and his contributions to the “age of revolution” by examining […]
