Derrick E. Lapp, a former US Army officer, holds a BA in History from the Virginia Military Institute and an MA in Historical Studies from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His work has been published in the Journal of Military History and U.S. Military History Review.
The senate chamber of the Maryland State House was more crowded than usual. It was December 23, 1783. Congress had recently relocated to Annapolis, and now George Washington was in town to fulfill a promise he made eight years earlier. “I went with several others to see Gen. Washington resign his Commission,” Annapolis socialite Mary […]
After seven years of fighting in the Revolutionary War, Otho Holland Williams returned home. It was the Spring of 1782. When he left Frederick, Maryland, in 1775 he was the first lieutenant in a company of riflemen; now he was back from a long campaign in the Carolinas and was receiving a commission as a […]
It was the one of the worst defeats suffered by the Americans during the War for Independence, certainly the worst over which George Washington had direct command. Historian David McCullough perhaps characterized the debacle best, writing that after experiencing “one humiliating, costly reverse after another,” during the New York campaign of 1776, “the surrender of […]
In the early hours of October 4, 1777, the Maryland militia trudged southward along the Old York Road in eastern Pennsylvania. In the distance off to their right, the rumble of cannon fire punctuated just how behind schedule they were. The battle in which the militiamen were to participate had begun, yet they were still […]
