Bob Ruppert is a retired high school administrator from the greater Chicago-land area. He received his undergraduate degree from Loyola University and his graduate degree from the University of Illinois. He has been researching the American Revolution, the War for Independence and the Federal Period for more than ten years. His interest began in 1963 when he was eight years old. His parents took the whole family, by car, to Newport Beach, Virginia and a small town that was slowly being restored to its 18th century prominence– the town was Williamsburg.
There are seven parts in the process to approve a bill in England: the first debate and reading, the second debate and reading, the committee stage, the report stage, the third debate and reading, the agreement between both Houses to the same bill, and the royal assent. This article is about the first three stages […]
On December 22, 1773, the Hayley, a merchant ship owned by John Hancock, departed Boston Harbor; on January 19, 1774, the ship arrived at Dover, England. She was carrying news about the destruction of tea in Boston harbor on December 16. By nightfall the news had reached King George III in London. At first it […]
In 1688, King James II of England, a Catholic, was deposed by Mary II, an Anglican, and William III of Orange, a Protestant. The invasion, the battles and the deposition have become known as the Glorious Revolution. In December 1688, James fled to France. The Convention Parliament declared that James’s action was an abdication of […]
Benjamin Franklin died at his home in Philadelphia at eleven o’clock p.m. on April 17, 1790; he was eighty-four years old. On June 4, Benjamin Vaughan, a doctor, Member of Parliament and friend of Franklin, wrote to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, another friend of Franklin. In his letter that arrived on June 10, he […]
On June 1, 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, the newly appointed governor, Lt.-Gen. Thomas Gage, shut down the towns’ harbor. All shipping and commerce came to standstill. Ships-of-war appeared in the harbor, army regiments arrived from England and only food was allowed to enter the town (by way of the town of […]
Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by imposing on the colony of Massachusetts four laws including the Boston Port Bill. This bill received King George III’s royal assent on March 31, 1774 and would go into effect on June 1, 1774. The first sentence of the Bill made its purpose clear, “An act to […]
Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by imposing on the colony of Massachusetts a series of Acts, collectively called the Coercive Acts. The four Acts were the Boston Port Bill, the Quartering Act, the Impartial Administration Act and the Massachusetts Government Act. The first one, the Boston Port Bill, received King George III’s royal […]
France officially joined the American colonies in their struggle for independence on February 6, 1778. On this day two treaties were signed: the first was the Treaty of Alliance and the second was the Treaty of Amity and Commerce.[1] The American Commissioners who signed the treaties were Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee. There was […]
Two motions had already been brought forth in the House of Commons to end the war with England’s American colonies. The first occurred on December 12 and was defeated by a vote of 220 to 179. The second motion occurred on February 22, 1782 and was also defeated but this time by a vote of 194 […]
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 […]
Following the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, the House of Commons began to debate whether or not the war should continue. There were three separate attempts over a period of two and a half months to end the war. This article presents the first attempt, that is, the first motion, […]
On April 1, 2015, Queen Elizabeth II announced the creation of the Georgian Papers Programme. It is a ten-year project to transcribe, digitize, conserve, catalogue, and disseminate close to 425,000 pages related to England’s Hanoverian monarchs located in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Most of the papers are personal and official correspondence—the remaining are […]
The most common storm that the British navy and army encountered at sea and on land during the American War of Independence was the nor’easter. Nor’easters usually develop in the latitudes between Georgia and New Jersey within 100 miles east or west of the East Coast. These storms Progress generally northeastward and typically attain maximum […]
Mit Complimenten Aweissen (put him off with compliments) Arthur Lee, one of the American Commissioners stationed in Paris, was appointed minister to the Prussian Court of King Frederick the Great in the Spring of 1777. He departed Paris on May 19 and arrived in Berlin on the evening of June 4. The next day, he informed […]
Upon the death of his grandfather on May 31, 1740, Frederick William II of the House of Hohenzollern became the King of Prussia. Over the next forty-six years, he pursued two goals: modernizing Prussia and reuniting the lands that had once been part of Prussia. In his youth he received a classical education including exposure […]
There were four bodies that directly influenced England’s relationship with her American colonies; they were the King (a body of one), the Privy Council (advisers to the king), Parliament, and the least known, the Board of Trade and Plantations. This article is about the role and responsibilities of the Board leading up to the accession […]
On May 7, 1757, Thomas Pownall sailed from England for Boston to take his post as the governor of Massachusetts. Aboard the ship was George Lord Howe, an army officer. The two men developed a friendship over the three month voyage. On July 8, 1758, Lord Howe, a brigadier general, led the right center column […]
Thomas Pownall was appointed “Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over . . . the Province of the Massachusetts Bay” on February 25, 1757. He had some advantages that other governors did not have when taking office: first, he had a great deal of experience in the colonies, having travelled extensively through many of them; second, […]
Thomas Pownall, the eldest son of William and Sarah Pownall, was born on September 4, 1722 in Lincoln, England. His father, a country gentleman, died when he was thirteen. Pownall attended the Lincoln grammar school until 1740 and then Trinity College, Cambridge from which he graduated in 1743. Two years earlier, his younger brother, John, […]
Adam Smith, considered by many to be the Father of Modern Economics, was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, on June 16, 1723. His father, also Adam Smith, was a senior solicitor and judge advocate; his mother, Margaret Douglas, was the daughter of a well-landed gentleman. Smith entered the University of Glasgow when he was fourteen years […]
On February 6, 1778, France signed two treaties with the United States, one of Amity and Commerce, the other, a defensive Alliance.[1] In them, France recognized the absolute sovereignty and independence of the United States. On March 10, the Foreign Minister of France, the comte de Vergennes, sent a dispatch that included a copy of the […]
Robert Erskine was born in Dumfermline, Scotland, to Ralph and Margaret Erskine on September 7, 1735. Ralph Erskine, being a Presbyterian minister, raised Robert to be thrifty, God-loving, determined, and well-educated. In 1748 and then again in 1752 he was enrolled in the University of Edinburgh. There are no records of his performance or if […]
In September 1787, Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren informed Catharine Macaulay of the results of the Federal Convention in Philadelphia. She was guardedly optimistic. Macaulay, upon receiving the letter, responded immediately: Indeed I have expected with much impatience the result of the deliberations of your convention . . . I find in the propositions they are […]
Between 1775 and 1784 Catharine Macaulay’s social and personal life was one traumatic event after another. She accepted the invitation from Rev. Dr. James Wilson, a retired minister from London now living in Bath who admired her writing, “to share his home—No. 2 Alfred Street;” because she was twenty-eight years his junior rumors started almost […]
George Mason: The Founding Father Who Gave Us the Bill of Rights by William Hyland, Jr. (Regnery, 2019) Most people have never heard of George Mason; those who have are either students of the American Revolution or people who live in the state of Virginia—and even then the only thing they may know about him is […]
Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s name is rarely mentioned in history books. This is because his name never appeared at the top of any leaderboard, that is, he was not a member of the Continental Congress, a military hero, a leader of a movement or group, or an author of an influential work, and because he died […]
By the end of 1774, Catharine Macaulay had met Benjamin Rush, Arthur Lee, Richard Marchant, and Benjamin Franklin, and had corresponded with John Dickinson, James Otis, Jr., John Adams, William Livingston, Richard Henry Lee, Abigail Adams, Ezra Stiles, Mercy Otis Warren, and Samuel Adams. The number of Americans that Macaulay had met was about to change. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
As the Revolutionary War was coming to an end, financial problems came to the forefront: to name a few, the country’s debts to France, Spain, and Holland, the payment of war reparations, the establishment of public credit, the states’ inability to meet their financial requisitions, and the most immanent, back pay to the disbanding Continental […]
In the Spring of 1775, Benjamin Franklin, still stationed in England, made what he thought was a last attempt to secure a plan of reconciliation between Great Britain and her American colonies. One of the men he worked with was Adm. Lord Richard Howe. Though their efforts proved unsuccessful, at their final meeting on March […]
Benjamin Franklin made two missions to London prior to the Revolution; the first from 1757 to 1762, the second from 1764 to 1775. In the final four months of his second mission he became involved in three efforts to secure a peaceful solution to the constitutional divergence that was growing between England and her American […]
During the three months that the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was on holiday from August to November 1773, the Secretary of State’s office received only routine dispatches from the colonies. Shortly after he returned in November, he was faced with another colonial issue -the Boston Tea Party. In 1772, the […]
William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth, had three interests: his family, his estates, and his religion. He was known by many as “the good Lord Dartmouth.” It is very likely that he would never have entered politics if he had not been related by marriage to Frederick, Lord North. When he became the Secretary […]
Luke Ryan was born in the County Dublin coastal village of Rush on February 14, 1750. His parents were Michael and Mary Ryan. As a twelve year old boy, Luke worked in John Grimes’ boatyard in Skerries and then at age sixteen began his shipwright apprenticeship under Edward King in Ringsend. It is unclear if […]
Thomas Penn, the son of founder William Penn, inherited majority control of the proprietorship of the colony of Pennsylvania in 1746. At the time the colony’s legislative body was called the Assembly; it was unicameral, made up of thirty-four popularly elected members and had been autonomous for the first half of the eighteenth century. Penn […]
Pierre-Augustin de Caron, better known by his stage name, Beaumarchais, was a French playwright, financier, and confidant of King Louis XVI. In the spring of 1775, he travelled to London to take care of some business for Comte de Vergennes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and spend some time with his friend John Wilkes. […]
