Days of Thanksgiving were frequently declared in colonial and early America. We asked our contributors for their favorite proclamation of Thanksgiving between 1765 and 1805? Jane Hampton Cook The Stamp Act caused conflict at Thanksgiving dinner tables in Massachusetts in 1765. Newlyweds John and Abigail Adams dined with her father, William Smith, a minister who […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Chip Langston on the life of Captain James Morris of the Connecticut Light Infantry who wrote a compelling memoir about his experience during the American Revolution, from the Battle of Long Island and his capture at the Battle of Germantown to his parole and participation in […]
During August 1775, the Third Virginia Convention replaced the Volunteer Militia Companies, authorized in March 1775 by the Second Virginia Convention, with a new more robust defensive military structure. This new structure included two regular regiments recruited for one year of service, the 1st and 2nd Virginia Regiments, made up of fifteen, sixty-eight-man companies, one […]
France has an extraordinary way of commemorating the glorious past through landmarks and monuments. Benjamin Franklin had been an off and on resident of Paris living at 66 rue Raynouard, the former Hotel de Valentinoise, in Passy. He was recognized as the first official diplomat and Ambassador of the thirteen American colonies. There is a […]
The day following the legendary taking of Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775, Lt. Col. Ethan Allen reported the successful mission to New York’s Albany County Committee of Safety, as well as plead for their immediate assistance: I have the inexpressible satisfaction to acquaint you that at day-break of the tenth instant, pursuant to my […]
In 1812 when the British attacked the United States for the second time, Captain James Morris of the South Farms District of Litchfield, Connecticut, took quill to parchment to capture his six years of experiences during the Revolutionary War as an officer in Connecticut’s Light Infantry.[1] The light infantry was the battle-hardened, elite fighting force […]
BOOK REVIEW: No Man Knows This Country Better”: The Frontier Life of John Gibson by Gary S. Williams (University of Akron Press, 2022) The Founders with whom most Americans are familiar were all on the eastern seaboard: Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton. Librarian Gary S. Williams has delivered a thorough and extensive biography […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor David Otersen on the influence of political philosopher Alergnon Sidney on Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. 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 […]
Ensign Ebenezer Denny calculated that he went from a green officer to a combat veteran in all of four minutes. Yet in those harsh two hundred and forty seconds he felt like anything but a leader of men in battle. Adrenaline alone was no match against hard marching amidst the brutal Virginia heat with a […]
In the 1760s and through 1775 John J. Zubly was the leading Whig in Georgia. He wrote a number of sermons and political tracts strongly opposing any right of the British Parliament to tax Americans and especially objecting to its declared right to legislate for America “in all cases whatsoever.” In spite of that stance, […]
Georgia did not send a delegation to the first Continental Congress in 1774. The least populous colony of the thirteen British colonies in North America, Georgia was originally settled in 1663 by a group of men on land given to them by Charles I, King of England. They settled the land with the poorer people […]
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), a French philosopher, once said that the definition of a traitor was “a patriot whose cause was lost.” In the time of the American Revolution, it could well be said of those who were considered Loyalists, that a “Loyalist was a patriot whose cause was lost.” Born in Switzerland in 1724, Hans […]
Those who study the Revolution in the northeast have some familiarity with the Crown Point Road that ran from the Fort at #4 in Charlestown, New Hampshire, to the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Built during the French and Indian War, the road provided a route across Vermont for troops and supplies moving from […]
Algernon Sidney was a seventeenth-century British political theorist, Member of Parliament, and Whig politician who was executed for treason on December 7, 1683, during the reign of Charles II. At his trial, the most incriminating evidence presented by the prosecution was a series of anti-monarchical passages from a seized manuscript of Sidney’s reformist treatise, Discourses […]
BOOK REVIEW: Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade by Christian McBurney (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2022) In Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade, author Christian McBurney recounts the voyage of a Rhode Island merchant’s privateer ship Marlborough to the West Coast of Africa to attack and disrupt British […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Eric Sterner about an important international repercussion of the British war in America: the organization of neutral states led by Russia to counter with force if necessary British attempts to control international trade on the seas. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free […]
James Thacher’s contribution to the history of smallpox and to the Revolutionary War has not been fully appreciated. In the historical scholarship, his tireless efforts against the disease have been acknowledged but only in passing.[1] Under extremely trying conditions, Thacher and his colleagues cared for those stricken with the virus and inoculated both combatants and […]
On December 12, 1781, a motion to end the war with the American colonies and to grant them their independence was introduced in the House of Commons. In the debate which followed, twenty-three men spoke. The debate did not end until 2:00 in the morning. A vote was then called; the outcome was 220 against the […]
Like a rock dropped into a smooth pond, the American Revolution spread ripples across the European world. French and Spanish entry into the war amplified those ripples to reach the distant shores of the Baltic and White Seas. In 1780, Russia reacted and threatened to upend the entire strategic balance in Europe, which would have […]
Throughout the churning tides of 1776 and 1777, John Brown, a prominent a prominent merchant from Providence, Rhode Island, amassed a fortune by investing in privateers. Through reviewing a comprehensive list of his privateers and their values, along with a list of the captures made by some of his privateers, and the values of the […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR contributor Shawn David McGhee explains how a plot was devised to unseat Vice President John Adams on partisan lines during the 1792 election. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and […]
The first objective in Lt. Gen. Earl Cornwallis’s first invasion of North Carolina was the capture of Charlotte. He intended to establish a post there, not only to control adjacent territory, but also to facilitate his communication with the south as he advanced farther. At daybreak on September 7, 1780, accompanied by two 3-pounders, Cornwallis […]
Recently, JAR interviewed author Stephen L. Kling, Jr. about the American Revolutionary War in the West Museum Exhibit at the St. Charles County Heritage Museum in St. Peters, Missouri. How did the ‘American Revolutionary War in the West’ museum exhibit come about? The exhibit grew out of an earlier book I wrote on the Battle […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Patrick H. Hannum on his research to determine the leadership and deployment of Virginia’s military companies in 1775, as dictated by the Third Virginia Convention force structure. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
Scholars typically cast the outcome of the second presidential election as either a forgone conclusion or a non-event.[1] After all, George Washington ran unchallenged and once again received unanimous support from the Electoral College.[2] Shifting academic focus from the first magistrate to the second, however, reframes the 1792 contest as a struggle for the soul […]
General Anthony Wayne was one of the most capable generals in the Continental Army and is perhaps best remembered for his successful surprise attack that captured the British post at Stony Point, New York, on July 16, 1779. Wayne also suffered his share of reverses, most notably at Paoli, Pennsylvania, on the night of September 20-21, […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews actor, research, and JAR contributor, Sarah Swift on her research on the service record of Loyalist Samuel Babcock and the surprising connections she uncovered. 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 […]
“The King had evidently consented to the repeal, and then disavowed his Ministers.”—Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third In early 1766, in response to American violent resistance to the taxation levied by the Stamp Act of 1765, British leaders were concerned with determining “the best mode of restoring order & […]
The American Revolution was perhaps America’s first civil war—a dispute that forced neighbors to choose between country and King; to declare themselves Patriots or Loyalists. Modern Americans might be tempted to only focus on the Patriots’ side of events, but I have discovered that by investigating the Loyalists, an ensemble of characters with connections to […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2022) It is one of the great ironies of historical studies that the people who were most numerous are the ones about whom, as individuals, the least information survives. The ordinary […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor William W. Reynolds on his examination of the surrender documents from Yorktown discovering differences between the original papers and subsequent copies. 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. […]
In 1776, John Cadwalader was a thirty-four-year-old merchant and prominent member of the Philadelphia gentry who had risen to command the volunteer militia known as the Philadelphia Associators. In his capacity as a militia colonel, he would play a distinctive—and today largely unappreciated—role in what historians have termed the “Ten Crucial Days” of the Revolutionary […]
Marinus Willett was born the son of a Quaker, Edward Willett, on July 31, 1740, in Jamaica, Long Island (now part of Queens). After spending his early years on a farm in Jamaica, he relocated to a place known then as Cedar Grove, along the East River and now part of New York City. This […]
BOOK REVIEW: James Colbert and his Chickasaw Legacy by Stephen L. Kling, Jr. and Guy B. Braden (St. Louis, MO: THGC Publishing, 2022) The history of the American Revolution is filled with shadowy figures, about whom little is known, though scattered documents provide fragments of information and hint at their importance. One such individual was James […]
The graphic below outlines the force structure created by the Third Virginia Convention in August 1775 and identifies the district and county or counties where companies formed, unit commanders, and where and when the companies assembled, served or operated in 1775. The initial intent of this research was to identify the regular companies that served […]
During the Revolutionary War, several men refused commissions as generals in the Continental Army. Seth Pomeroy and John Whitcomb were unable to accept the honor due to ill health. John Philip de Haas concentrated on his business after distinguished service as a colonel. One officer, John Cadwalader of Pennsylvania, not only turned the down the […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Battle of Gloucester 1777 by Garry Wheeler Stone and Paul W. Schopp (Yardley, PA: Westhome Publishing, 2022) Garry Wheeler Stone’s and Paul W. Schopp’s The Battle of Gloucester 1777 comes to us as a part of Westholme Publishing’s new Small Battles series. The 152-page book highlights the small action that took place outside […]
The surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1781 was implemented by the three-party Articles of Capitulation (“the Articles”), one of the most important documents of the Revolutionary War, since the surrender eventually led to the Peace of Paris (1783) and American independence. Curiosity as to the current location of the original Articles, i.e., […]
David Williams, John Paulding, and Isaac Van Wart were celebrated as heroes during their lifetime, vaulted to fame by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and lionized in popular ballads and the play The Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry.[1] Historian Mercy Otis Warren adored John André’s Captors, writing in 1805 that their names “ought never to […]
