When we picture the Declaration of Independence, most of us immediately think of the document handwritten on parchment and signed at the bottom by…
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Maj. John Pitcairn of the British marines became notorious among New Englanders after the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The…
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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…
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On July 15, 1775, less than two weeks after he arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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On 10 November 1775, slightly more than four months after he had taken command of the American troops besieging Boston, Gen. George Washington sent…
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1. Myth: Tarring and feathering could be fatal. Busted: The notion that hot tar caused severe, sometimes fatal burns is based on the assumption…
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…
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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…
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In 1765 Parliament instituted a Stamp Act for the North American colonies, which proved wildly unpopular from Savannah to Halifax, and ultimately unworkable. The…
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The primary dispute between Britain and her North American mainland colonies in the 1760s and early 1770s has often been summed up in four…