“No taxation without representation” was not a notion born in the American colonies in 1765 with the passage of the Stamp Act, or with James Otis’s 1764 pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, or in his 1761 courtroom oration against Writs of Assistance. It was born with the “Pistole” fee in […]
Winston Churchill: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Almost without exception present day military commanders have heeded Winston Churchill’s advice.[1] Starting with Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s book on the First Gulf War, successive American commanders in the Middle East have written books describing their war strategies and emphasizing positive […]
February felt like National New JAR Contributor Month with four new writers: Ennis Duling, Anthony J. Minna, Thomas Thorleifur Sobol and Tyler Rudd Putman. Welcome aboard! That makes seven new JAR authors in the first two months of 2016 and 120 total JAR contributors since we launched! Together we have now published more than 725 articles with many more fascinating pieces on […]
We are pleased to introduce our newest collectible hardback, which is now available for pre-order via Amazon and will deliver in April. The Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume 2016, presents the journal’s best historical research and writing over the past calendar year. Articles are carefully selected by the editorial board and authors are given […]
Book review: George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation by T. H. Breen (Simon & Schuster, 2016). [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] George Washington’s standing as the Revolutionary Era’s “indispensable man” is virtually unchallenged. Veteran historian T.H. Breen’s new study of Washington’s tours during his first term of office can only add to that assessment. […]
In July 1776, Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold brought charges against Col. Moses Hazen for disobeying orders and neglecting merchandise seized in Montréal. Hazen was a Massachusetts-born Québec landowner and merchant who commanded a small regiment of Canadians in the Continental army. In April when Arnold took command in Montréal, he called Hazen “a sensible judicious […]
No country venerates its “Founding Fathers” like the United States. Academics, legislators, judges, and ordinary citizens all frequently seek to validate their opinions and policy prescriptions by identifying them with the statesmen who led America to nationhood. It is not surprising, therefore, that debates about the role of religion in the United States are infused […]
An internet search for Conrad Heyer will reveal that he was a Revolutionary War soldier who crossed the Delaware with George Washington. In fact, you’ll find a variation of this sentence repeated on page after page almost word for word: “He served in the Continental Army under George Washington during the Revolutionary War, crossing the […]
Taxation without representation has been the traditionally accepted cause of the American Revolution. Such an understanding of the Revolution, while valid, does not give credit to its complexity. An often-neglected aspect of Virginia’s American Revolution experience is the importance of the frontier. Soil exhaustion, a recurrent problem of Virginia’s tobacco economy, turned planters into land […]
Book review: Washington’s Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution by Patrick K. O’Donnell (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016). [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] The author uses the words of the actual participants to craft a powerful narrative of the American Revolution focusing on the contributions and sacrifices of […]
“The most unhappy man in the world,” wrote the Commissary General of Purchases at Valley Forge about Gen. George Washington.[1] On every portrait we examine, on every image we see, the commander in chief does appear burdened and preoccupied. Occasionally, though, hidden among the millions of words written by, and about, General Washington, we catch […]
When Gen. Henry Clinton was preparing the British army to leave Philadelphia, he received instructions from Lord George Germain, the British Secretary at War, to send 5,800 troops to the West Indies. When he learned that the navy was in no position to send ships to protect the transports, Clinton refused to dispatch the troops. […]
Book Review: First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His — and the Nation’s — Prosperity by Edward G. Lengel (Da Capo Press, 2016). [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] When one thinks of George Washington, perhaps the first image is that of the military commander of the Revolutionary War. Next might be Washington as president. Few are likely to […]
In an army where men died as a matter of course, there was nonetheless something peculiarly unsettling about the business scheduled for the morning of September 23, 1776. The grim verdict of a court-martial four days before had, at least in the opinion of Connecticut’s Joseph Plumb Martin, left the troops “greatly exasperated.”[1] For his […]
In the spring of 1775, the fur trading post at the junction of Lakes Michigan and Huron looked much as it had for years. Fort Michilimackinac, significantly larger than when the French founded the site in 1715, comprised a tall stockade wall surrounding streets of privately owned row houses, a church, a soldiers’ barracks, officers’ […]
On July 4, 1776, the authors of American independence declared to the world “that all men are created equal, [and] that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” However, one of the Declaration’s grievances against the English Crown was that it employed “the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose […]
On April 24, 1775, Samuel Adams and John Hancock arrived in Worcester, Massachusetts, forty miles west of Boston. They hoped to find three more men – John Adams, Thomas Cushing and Robert Treat Paine – who were the other three delegates from the colony to the upcoming second Continental Congress, but they had not been […]
The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island is the only Jewish house of worship that survives from the American colonial period. Built at the threshold of America’s Revolutionary period, it survived the war and the damaging occupation of Newport by British troops. After the war, the congregation returned and the synagogue formed the focal point […]
January 2016 was triple-A rated for featuring plenty of new announcements, authors and articles. We crowned Independence Lost by Kathleen DuVal as our 2015 book award winner and shared our top 30 articles of the previous 12 months. The first two books of our new series—The Road to Concord by J. L. Bell and Grand […]
In the Old Senate Chamber of the Maryland State House hangs a painting commissioned by the Maryland Legislature often called the “Annapolis Portrait” of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale. The moment portrayed in the work is after the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1781. Two of the figures are easily recognized, […]
Since the dawn of humanity, thunder and lightning have both terrified and awed. Protection was sought from deities like Zeus and Thor; and in later ages God and St. Barbara. By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment had brought about a new sense of curiosity; reason began to replace superstition. There were […]
They’re everywhere now. On the pages of social media, displayed on bumper stickers, and in the speeches of political candidates, partisan factions claim a Founding Father by virtue of one of their Founding Sound Bites. But how many of those words were actually said, as written, by the person claimed? Very few, if any, one […]
It was November. Sergeant Williams was cold, and he knew it would be getting colder. He had no warm clothing, no money to purchase any, and he wasn’t able to get a part-time job to earn some extra cash. He needed help, and so he did the most sensible thing a man in his circumstances […]
On April 20, 1775, John Hunter Holt announced to the public his recent acquisition of the Norfolk newspaper, the Virginia Gazette or Norfolk Intellingencer. For a newspaper that had only been in print since 1774, this sudden change in ownership was more than just a business venture, it would serve as an open act of […]
In March 1778, George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental army, was in winter quarters with his men at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; Capt. James Cook was exploring the Pacific northwest of North America; and Voltaire, the famous French philosopher, was crowned as a poet laureate in Paris. But Chichester Cheyne, a fifteen-year-old Virginian, gave little […]
Barlow Trecothick was born in Stepney, England in 1720. At seven, his family moved to Boston where he became an apprentice for six years to Charles Apthorp, a local merchant. He lived in Boston until he was 22, then he moved to Jamaica where he represented Apthorp’s firm for five years. While in the West […]
In January of 1781, Loyalist Maj. James Dunlap raided the Long Cane settlement in South Carolina that included the homes of notorious rebel leaders James McCall and Andrew Pickens. Among the most respected of all the Whig military men, Pickens had only renounced his parole the month before. Lord Cornwallis’s response was to send Dunlap […]
The organization of the Militia in colonial Rhode Island[1] was established by law. Five county regiments and the number of companies in each town were specified.[2] Annually the General Assembly approved the locally elected officers for the trained bands (companies of militia) at its session in May or the next session in June. In 1771, […]
With our finger on the pulse of great research and writing about the American Revolution, it seemed natural to launch a namesake book series. Early in 2015, we were fortunate to find a partner who shared our vision for publishing microhistories with meticulous, groundbreaking research and well-written narratives about unknown or lesser-known topics. The Journal […]
In 1775, the Continental Army was in dire need of engineers. The colonies did not have a War College or military academy like the Ecole Militaire in Paris or the Royal Military Academy in London. Gen. George Washington complained to Congress, “The Skill of those engineers we have … [is] very imperfect and confined to […]
The year 2015 was our best ever. Online, we published 200 articles by scores of expert writers and welcomed 1.1 million unique readers. Our existing content has become an authoritative source with high search rankings, ensuring that our articles reach researchers and fact-finders around the world. In print, we published our 2015 Annual Volume and […]
Journal of the American Revolution, the popular online magazine and annual book, today announced its winner and runners-up for the 2015 Book of the Year Award. The annual award goes to the non-fiction volume that best mirrors the journal’s mission: to deliver passionate, creative and smart content that makes American Revolution history accessible to a […]
A Story of Resistance to the Universal Draft In Rhode Island, as in the rest of New England during the Revolutionary War, a key Patriot institution was the universal draft. Rhode Island required all white men between the ages of sixteen and sixty to serve in the militia, backed by state courts and other state […]
Thomas Paine’s sensational pamphlet Common Sense, published anonymously in January of 1776, has a singular place of importance in the literature of the American Revolutionary era. So famous was the title that Paine would adopt it as a sobriquet when authoring future works. The publication history of that wildly successful pamphlet is well established.[1] But […]
After an extremely busy and exciting year, Journal of the American Revolution is taking a short vacation to tackle a few time sensitive projects. Look for us again on January 4, 2016. We’ll have news to share about Annual Volume 2016 and our forthcoming book series. Plus, we’ll be announcing the winner of the 2015 Book of […]
What’s the funniest thing you’ve come across in researching this period? In Paris, while negotiating the treaty with France, Ben Franklin stopped for a bite to eat in a popular cafe. On the other side of the room he saw Edward Gibbon, member of Parliament and author of the already famous Decline and Fall […]
What two people from the Revolutionary period who never met (so far as we know) do you wish you could introduce? Why? I would like to have seen Dr. Joseph Warren, who died tragically at Bunker Hill, meet Dr. Benjamin Rush. Warren would have soon concluded Rush was an airhead and not even a […]
Since you began studying the American Revolution, how has your perspective on it changed? My perspective has become more complex. As I followed Ben Franklin to France, I saw the war become an international struggle. As I watched Washington think his way to the strategy that won the war in America, he emerged as […]
How do you define “Founding Fathers”? You can define it either broadly or narrowly. By consensus, most historians limit the narrow definition to six. Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison. A broader definition would include many worthwhile individuals, such as Sam Adams, John Hancock, Joseph Warren, Nathanael Greene etc. –Thomas Fleming I don’t. […]
