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 […]
We want to hear from you! This summer we are going to conduct an email survey of JAR subscribers to get an idea of how you read the journal, what you like about the site, what you would like to see more of, and your input into initiatives we are considering. You are the lifeblood […]
JAR: You’ve just completed the latest in your series of novels on the American Revolution. Tell a bit about the series as a whole and this new book in particular. There are five published novels in the series and I am writing the sixth and final one. The books chronologically follow the Revolutionary War and […]
In his last moments, with calculated efficiency, he bolted the bedroom door so no one could interrupt the execution of his final act. Charles Craig ended his life with the same cool determination and secretiveness that characterized his public service as a soldier, a cavalryman and an able practitioner of the dirty business of intelligence. […]
Book Review: The Indian World of George Washington by Colin G. Calloway (Oxford University Press, 2018) BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON In writing The Indian World of George Washington Colin Calloway set off to rectify a shortcoming in American history. According to him, “American history has largely forgotten what Washington knew. Narratives of national expansion and Indian […]
In the days following the British pyrrhic victory of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, Gen. George Washington, in his new role as commander-in-chief, assumed the leadership of approximately 14,000 troops. While Washington’s army laid siege to Boston, the town’s British garrison of some 7,000 soldiers, sailors and marines were stretched thin as they attempted […]
For something special this Independence Day, we asked JAR contributors a simple but thought-provoking question. Their answers are insightful and remind us of the broad range of people and events that transformed thirteen British colonies into the United States of America. How would you answer this question: If there was another national holiday, in addition […]
In addition to museums and historical sites, a way to learn about Revolutionary War history is to attend a reenactment. There are many, large and small, all over the country. Each year commanders of reenactment organizations throughout the country select two events that they will all support, insuring an especially large turnout of participants, and, […]
Book Review: Turncoat. Benedict Arnold and the Crisis of American Liberty by Stephen Brumwell (Yale University Press, 2018) BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON For a century after his death in 1801, Benedict Arnold was portrayed as a Judas who betrayed his country from that basest of all motives: greed. His was a personality of “innate evil,”the […]
This July 4th, Sirius XM radio personality Dave Nemo has invited Don Hagist, Wayne Lynch, and James Kirby Martin to discuss aspects of the American Revolution for his more than 1.3 million listeners across North America. The program will broadcast from 8:00–11:00 am eastern on Sirius XM 146. “I’m excited to able to talk about […]
As Nathanael Greene retreated from Ninety Six in late June 1781, following his unsuccessful siege there, Thomas Sumter was eager to campaign in lower South Carolina. This was a stratagem the Gamecock had employed before. Following Greene’s defeat at Hobkirk’s Hill on April 25, 1781, Sumter quickly opened a campaign against the British supply depots […]
The bus tour was in its final hour. Over 100 men and women had climbed back up the steps of the two buses for the last time that day. And it had been a long day. Beginning in the parking lot of Fulton-Montgomery Community College, on a plain just above Amsterdam, New York, the assemblage […]
The 38th Regiment of Foot disembarked in Boston in the summer of 1774, and spent the next nine years in America involved in some of the war’s most storied campaigns. There was considerable turnover of personnel during those years; the regiment had, nominally, thirty-five officers at any given time, but a total of eighty-eight men […]
Book Review: Hamilton: An American Biography by Tony Williams, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON Alexander Hamilton fever has certainly swept the country and revived the American public’s interest in Hamilton and the other Founding Fathers. Individuals who perhaps at one point showed little special interest in the founding of the country are […]
As a young country lawyer, John Adams thought he seemed to lack focus. “Ballast is what I want, I totter, with every Breeze. My motions are unsteady.”[1] History has shown that he eventually would find his “Ballast” in the steady personage of Abigail (Smith) Adams, his almost-equally-famous better half. Over the course of their fifty-four-year-long […]
