Author: John Grady

John Grady was the communications director of the Association of the United States Army for seventeen years and managing editor of Navy Times for more than eight years. He is the author of Matthew Fontaine Maury: Father of Oceanography, a nominee for the Library of Virginia’s 2016 non-fiction award. He has contributed to Sea History, Naval History, the New York Times “Disunion” series, and Civil War Monitor and was a blogger for the US Navy’s sesquicentennial of the Civil War web site. His writing on national security and defense has appeared in USNI.org, BreakingDefense, Government Executive, govexec.com, nextgov.com, among other publications. Grady has spoken at the North American Society for Oceanic History, the Banner Lecture Series of the Virginia Historical Society, and the Great Lives series at Mary Washington University. He also has spoken at the Navy Museum, Navy Memorial, Museum of the Confederacy, Mariners Museum, the Maritime Museum of Annapolis, the Fredericksburg Area Cultural Center, and other organizations and institutions interested in naval and Civil War history.

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Historic Sites Posted on

The Beeline March: The Birth of the American Army

On a late spring afternoon in 1825, the two Bedinger brothers—Henry and Michael, old men now, seventy-four and sixty-nine respectively, proud immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine—commanded attention among “a party of ladies and gentlemen” gathered for an “elegant [midday] dinner” to keep a fifty-year-old pledge to their other “brothers” in arms. They were at Daniel Morgan’s Springs, […]

by John Grady
Features Posted on

The “Parson’s Cause:” Thomas Jefferson’s Teacher, Patrick Henry, and Religious Freedom

As Tidewater lands played out, exhausted from repeated tobacco plantings, or were encumbered by inheritance, the established church moved with young planters like Peter Jefferson into the Piedmont. One hundred thirty miles from the colonial capital Williamsburg and “planted close under the southwest mountains,” James Maury preached the gospel of the Church of England in […]

by John Grady