Author: J. L. Bell

J. L. Bell is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War (Westholme, 2016). He maintains the Boston1775.net website, dedicated to history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in New England. His other historical writing includes Gen. George Washington's Home and Headquarters—Cambridge, Massachusetts, a comprehensive study for the National Park Service, and contributions to Todd Andrlik's Reporting the Revolutionary War (Sourcebooks, 2012), James Marten's Children in Colonial America (New York University Press, 2007), and many journals and magazines. He has been elected a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society, and a Member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

Critical Thinking Posted on June 27, 2024June 27, 2024

The Story of Isaac Bissell—and the Legend of Israel Bissell

In April 1775, Isaac Bissell was a crucial link between the Patriots of Massachusetts and the government of neighboring Connecticut. His actions contributed to alerting many communities along the Atlantic coast about the outbreak of war in Lexington. Nevertheless, through a chain of circumstances, Isaac Bissell’s name has been overwritten in history books.[1] This story […]

Critical Thinking Posted on April 18, 2024

Dr. Warren’s Crucial Informant

On April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren, leader of the Patriots still inside Boston, gathered information about a possible British army march from many sources. Nineteenth-century accounts spoke of hints coming in from a groom in the governor’s stable, a boy who held horses for redcoat officers, a woman who employed a soldier’s wife as […]

Law Posted on April 6, 2023April 3, 2023

The Secrets of Samuel Dyer

As recounted in a previous article, in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army of holding him captive, interrogating him about the Boston Tea Party, and shipping him off to London in irons. Unable to file a lawsuit for damages, Dyer attacked two army officers […]

Crime and Justice Posted on April 4, 2023April 3, 2023

The Return of Samuel Dyer: An Attempted Assassination in Revolutionary Boston

On October 10, 1774, the brigantine Charlotte arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, from London. On board was a sailor named Samuel Dyer, and he told a shocking story, soon reported in the local newspapers. Three months earlier, on July 6, soldiers of the 4th or King’s Own Regiment had grabbed him off the streets of Boston and […]

Arts & Literature Posted on June 17, 2020June 16, 2020

Who Said, “Don’t Fire Till You See the Whites of Their Eyes”?

“Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes!” is one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Revolutionary War. According to hallowed American tradition, the provincial commander at the Battle of Bunker Hill bellowed those words to his soldiers, warning them to preserve their gunpowder until their muskets could do the […]

Myths and Legends Posted on July 2, 2019July 1, 2019

The Declaration of Independence: Did John Hancock Really Say That about his Signature?—and Other Signing Stories

When we picture the Declaration of Independence, most of us immediately think of the document handwritten on parchment and signed at the bottom by fifty-six members of the Second Continental Congress. Few individuals from the first two generations of Americans shared that view, however. The vast majority of those citizens never saw the Congress’s document, […]

Conflict & War Posted on June 18, 2018June 17, 2018

Peter Salem? Salem Poor? Who Killed Major John Pitcairn?

Maj. John Pitcairn of the British marines became notorious among New Englanders after the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress published depositions from dozens of men declaring that he had ordered light infantrymen to fire on the peaceful Lexington militia company. (Modern historians discount those claims, agreeing that […]

Features Posted on March 20, 2018March 21, 2018

The General, the Corporal, and the Anecdote: Jacob Francis and Israel Putnam

On August 18, 1832, a seventy-eight-year-old New Jersey man named Jacob Francis went before Hunterdon County officials and described his military service in the Revolutionary War. His affidavit became the core of his application for a federal government pension available to surviving veterans.[1] According to Francis, he had joined the Continental Army besieging Boston in […]

Techniques & Tech Posted on October 4, 2016September 17, 2016

General Washington’s First Spy, and Why His Mission Was Doomed from the Start

On July 15, 1775, less than two weeks after he arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington penned this entry in his expense notebook: To 333 1/3 Dollars give to —— ——* to enduce him to go into the Town of Boston; to establish a secret correspondence for […]

People Posted on October 12, 2015August 28, 2016

George Baylor: Spirited, Willing and Wrong for the Job

George Baylor (1752-1784) was a young Virginia planter in 1775. He was a son of Col. John Baylor, who had been George Washington’s friend and companion during the French and Indian War. Therefore, when young Baylor decided to join the American war effort, he had an inside line on a top staff position. Baylor arrived […]

People Posted on December 2, 2014August 28, 2016

Newton Prince and the Struggle for Liberty

On the 5th of March, 1770, Newton Prince heard Boston’s church bells start to ring. He ran to the door of his house and heard “the cry of fire.” Putting on his shoes, Prince went out to help fight the blaze, as town inhabitants were supposed to do. On the streets he asked other men […]

People Posted on September 3, 2014August 28, 2016

General Washington and the Body-Snatchers

Among the many challenges Gen. George Washington faced in his first year as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, he probably didn’t expect to deal with grave-robbing. But on 1 September 1775 his general orders included this admonition: Complaint has been made to the General, that the body of a Soldier of Col. [Benjamin Ruggles] Woodbridge’s […]

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on August 13, 2014August 28, 2016

Misinformation, Disinformation, and Gen. Washington’s Gunpowder Supply

In the summer of 1775, Gen. George Washington fell victim to bad information about the Continental Army’s gunpowder supply. When he finally received accurate data, it left him temporarily speechless, fearful of a British attack, and unable to carry out his plans to free Boston. Nearly two hundred years later, a historian created a counter-narrative […]

Critical Thinking Posted on May 8, 2014December 4, 2014

Tracking Down a Musket-Toting Woman

Ray Raphael just described how an Advanced Placement exam in U.S. History asked students to analyze what this image of a musket-toting woman said about the Revolutionary War. The picture appeared on an undated broadside commenting on the war with a poem titled “A New Touch on the Times” by a “Daughter of Liberty, living […]

Critical Thinking Posted on April 21, 2014August 28, 2016

Did Paul Revere’s Ride Really Matter?

The biggest myth of Paul Revere’s ride may not be that Revere watched for the lantern signal from the North Church spire, as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem described. Nor that he was a lone rider carrying Dr. Joseph Warren’s warning all the way from Boston to Concord. Nor even that Revere yelled, “The British are […]

Prewar Politics (<1775) Posted on February 5, 2014August 28, 2016

You Won’t Believe How Samuel Adams Recruited Sons of Liberty

In his 1936 biography Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, John C. Miller wrote this about the leader of Boston’s Whig activists: Sam Adams discovered these taverns with their “tippling, nasty, vicious crew” excellent recruiting grounds for the mobs he later raised against the Tories and Crown officers. Adams himself was a familiar figure in Boston […]

Interviews Posted on December 20, 2013December 20, 2013

An Interview with Richard C. Wiggin

Richard C. Wiggin is the author of Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783. This book is a very detailed study of all the Revolutionary War soldiers from one American town, designed to preserve their names and biographical information. In the late nineteenth century, many town histories contained a chapter […]

Arts & Literature Posted on December 18, 2013August 28, 2016

Washington’s Five Books

On 10 November 1775, slightly more than four months after he had taken command of the American troops besieging Boston, Gen. George Washington sent a list of books to an old military colleague in Virginia. William Woodford (1734–1780) had just been reappointed an officer for their home colony. Woodford complained about the “inexperience” of his […]

Prewar Conflict (<1775) Posted on December 13, 2013August 28, 2016

5 Myths of Tarring and Feathering

1. Myth: Tarring and feathering could be fatal. Busted: The notion that hot tar caused severe, sometimes fatal burns is based on the assumption that “tar” meant the asphalt we use on roads, which is typically stored in liquid state at about 300°F (150°C). But in the eighteenth century “tar” meant pine tar, used for […]

Critical Thinking Posted on November 15, 2013August 28, 2016

Birth of the “Caucus”

America’s Revolutionary decades produced a new republican system, and with it new republican language. One term that surfaced early in that period and remains with us today is “caucus.” The word’s origin is mysterious, but its meaning has stayed fairly steady and the earliest uses offer a good glimpse into pre-Revolutionary politics. The first form […]

Critical Thinking Posted on June 25, 2013August 28, 2016

“Intolerable Acts”

I started with an innocent question about the British Parliament’s Quartering Act of 1774: Did American Patriots list that law as one of the “Intolerable Acts” that led them to outright rebellion against Great Britain? Some of the Revolutionary histories I’d read said that was one of the five Intolerable Acts, along with the Boston […]

Critical Thinking Posted on May 22, 2013August 28, 2016

“No Taxation without Representation” (Part 2)

In 1765 Parliament instituted a Stamp Act for the North American colonies, which proved wildly unpopular from Savannah to Halifax, and ultimately unworkable. The following year, there was a change of government in London. The new ministers repealed the Stamp Act, and across the ocean there was great rejoicing. However, those ministers also proposed a […]

Critical Thinking Posted on May 21, 2013August 28, 2016

“No Taxation without Representation” (Part 1)

The primary dispute between Britain and her North American mainland colonies in the 1760s and early 1770s has often been summed up in four words: “no taxation without representation.” American Whigs declared they were loyal to the British king and constitution, but that part of that unwritten constitution was that subjects (or at least wealthy […]