On March 7, 1778, one of the deadliest naval battles of the Revolutionary War occurred off the coast of Barbados between the British ship Yarmouth and an American squadron led by the Continental frigate Randolph. The five-ship American contingent which sailed from Charlestown, South Carolina, led by Capt. Nicholas Biddle, was the largest joint Continental […]
The ten weeks between the American victory at Yorktown and the close of 1781 were a journey from the mountain top to the valley for the Continental army. On the summit, the army’s leaders looked down on the morale-boosting victory they had chased for years, and the successful removal of a British army under Gen. […]
During the American War for Independence, 1781 proved to be a monumental year for the young nation. They would achieve an astounding victory at the Siege of Yorktown, and that would presage the end of major combat operations and the beginning of peace negotiations between the warring nations. There was one general officer on the […]
There is a fine line between courage and stupidity. Eight men congregated at Smithfield Plantation in southwest Virginia on April 7, 1774, prepared for a perilous adventure. They were young men in high spirits, ready to set off into Virginia’s mostly unexplored western wilderness. Their intrepid leader was Deputy Fincastle County Surveyor John Floyd. Their […]
The Continental Congress directed the organization of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (Rawlings’ regiment) in resolutions dated June 17 and 27, 1776.[1] The force was a combination of six newly-formed companies from the two states and three independent rifle companies organized a year before. The nine-company regiment was still completing organization on November 16 […]
Located far enough away from American-controlled Kentucky but enough close to the British-allied Native Americans in the Western Great Lakes region, Fort Detroit became the center for British military operations to counter American activities in present-day Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio during the American Revolutionary War. These operations included raids on American settlements as well as […]
On the morning of November 18, 1780, Maj. Archibald McArthur’s troops, a battalion of the 71st and a detachment of the 63rd Regiments of Foot, were washing their clothes and bathing in the still-warm waters of the Broad River in central South Carolina. Stationed at Shirer’s Ferry, their responsibility was to guard the ferry to […]
Borden H. Mills, writing on the Saratoga campaign a century ago, noted: The task of determining, with any degree of certainty, what militia units actually participated in the battles or were present at the surrender is a stupendous one. All that can be done is to present the known facts and draw certain conclusions therefrom, […]
Moses Kirkland was a man born into the unsettled margins of South Carolina, where ambition and survival often blurred together. By the mid-1770s he was a planter of modest means, a militia captain in the backcountry, and a restless figure whose loyalties shifted with the winds of opportunity. In the opening year of the Revolution, […]
On March 18, 1818, the U.S. Congress enacted a law that established a lifetime pension for American veterans of the Continental army who were “in reduced circumstances.”[1] As part of the filing process for these benefits, veterans were required to submit affidavits to local courts with supporting testimonials attesting to their service record during the […]
“The Expedition of Genl Sullivan against the six nations seems by its effects to have exasperated than to have terrified or disabled them,” wrote Continental Congressman James Madison in June 1780.[1] This 1779 Patriot offensive, known as the Sullivan Campaign or the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, was meant to teach the Loyalists and their Native American allies […]
About an hour’s drive west from Raleigh, in North Carolina’s Moore County, the traffic thins out, the roads narrow, and the suburban sprawl of the Triangle area softens into farmland, ringed by trees, unrolling across the horizon. While only a little over fifty miles from one of the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas, this is still […]
On April 17, 1783, a dispatch arrived at Fort Rensselaer along the western bank of the Mohawk River, around two miles northwest of modern Canajoharie, New York. The messenger carried directions from Gen. George Washington to send “an Officer To the British Garrison at Oswago To announce a Cessation of Hostilities on the frontiers of […]
On February 6, 1778, the American colonies signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce and a Treaty of Alliance with the country of France. The former treaty recognized the absolute sovereignty and independence of the colonies and established commercial rights in direct opposition to England’s Navigation Acts; the latter guaranteed financial and military support. On […]
Georgia’s legendary John Twiggs had a distinguished public career during and after the American Revolution, but he left almost no other information about himself, as reflected in the extremely concise and brief text on his tombstone and obituary. The family descends from the Twiggs family of Devonshire, England, reportedly including Thomas Twiggs (died 1614) of […]
Nowhere in the struggle that was the American Revolution was outside assistance more significant than at the siege of Yorktown during the autumn of 1781.[1] The French provided significant support from land troops, but it was the French Navy that really clinched the affair with their naval blockade that ultimately trapped the British army of […]
As his London Packet approached the colonies in November 1774, Thomas Paine was not scanning for land. After turning northwards towards Philadelphia in Delaware Bay, the former privateer was not visualizing where, during the Seven Years War, French privateer ships awaited English prey within the folds of the eastern shore.[1] Stricken with typhus fever that […]
The Culper Spy Ring. An espionage network composed primarily of civilians funneling military intelligence to Gen. George Washington out of British-occupied New York City and Long Island. Washington once referred to it as “the channel upon which I most depend.”[1] It has been the subject of several books and a television show, so many would […]
River crossings during the American Revolution were common events. Historians, patriotic organizations and living history enthusiasts focus on several of these crossings with commemorations and reenactments. The most celebrated of all crossings is Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware on December 25, 1776. State parks, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, recognize the crossing and events of […]
“They are by no means such Troops, in any respect, as you are led to believe of them from the [Accounts] which are published.”[1] So declared General George Washington to his cousin, Lund Washington, nearly two months into his command of the newly formed Continental Army outside Boston. Appointed by the Continental Congress on June […]
The pivotal military events that transpired in the northern theatre of war during the American Revolution are well known. A chronological list of the main ones would include: the failed American invasion of Canada in 1775-76; the British naval victory on Lake Champlain at the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776; the decisive American victory […]
A few weeks after the Lexington alarm on April 19, 1775 a team of four men set out with congressional approval on a spying expedition through the Maine wilderness, heading for Quebec. Their goal was to determine whether Maine was threatened by the French Canadians, or whether the French wished to cooperate with the Revolution. […]
By March 1782 Loyalist Col. David Fanning had been a thorn in the side of Patriot forces for some time. Fanning’s perpetually violent methods were well known to Patriots throughout North Carolina, as was his desire to visit retribution upon previous foes. But the story of one of his most infamous raids for that revenge […]
A British cannonball decapitated James McNair, a Continental artillerist, at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778. Thomas Bliss, another American cannoneer, was captured that day. Col. John Durkee, commanding Varnum’s brigade, escaped death that Sunday but his right hand was permanently disabled from a wound received in the morning. Col. Henry Livingston, commanding […]
Six indigenous nations in upstate New York—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora—were joined in an alliance for mutual protection. Known as the Haudenosaunee, which means people of the longhouse, or the misnomer Iroquois, at the beginning of the American Revolution they assured the upstart patriots that they would adopt a neutral stance and […]
In December 1775, Pope Pius VI released his famed encyclical entitled Inscrutabilie Divinae Sapientiae. Translated as “The Inscrutable Divine Wisdom,” the Pope used his platform to issue a commentary on the most pressing issues of the time. Among the many topics he touched on were threats to the Catholic Church, the shifting politics of Europe, […]
The mention of Beaufort, North Carolina, does not typically bring to mind any significant activity of the American Revolution. Only the most serious students of the war are likely to have studied the role Beaufort played. The action there offered no turning point and no clash between well-known commanders or sizable forces, but in the […]
The bloody events of April 19, 1775 at Lexington and Concord marked the opening of the Revolutionary War, at least in New England. But how did the colonies outside of New England? It turns out, most reacted similarly. New York When the inhabitants of New York City learned about the bloody clash in Massachusetts on […]
The fighting that raged over miles of Massachusetts countryside on April 19, 1775 finally subsided with the approach of evening. Thousands of Massachusetts militia had converged upon retreating British troops as they made their way back from Concord that fateful spring day and the casualties suffered by the redcoats were shocking. Two hundred and seventy-two […]
Among the foreign-born leaders who played crucial roles in the American Revolution, Hungarian-born Colonel Commandant Michael Kovats de Fabriczy stands out for his significant, yet often overlooked, contributions to the Continental Army.[1] Kovats played a key role in the establishment and development of the cavalry, overseeing the recruitment, training, and organization of regular cavalry units. […]
Nathanael Greene famously wrote of his experience during the Southern Campaign that “The whole Country is in Danger of being laid Waste by the Whigs and Tories who pursue each other with as much relentless Fury as Beasts of Prey.” Historian John Pancake comments that “This observation was made by Nathanael Greene, a man already […]
Alarming news of violence on the Upper Ohio flooded Pittsburgh in the late summer of 1777. On August 2, Joseph Ogle reported from Wheeling that a Native war party had wounded two men. James Booth, further south in Monongalia County, wrote that a mother and child had been killed and scalped and another captured. Col. […]
Ebenezer Lathrop’s company of militia which marched from Norwich, Connecticut, to Stillwater, New York, in the autumn of 1777 makes an excellent case study to understand Connecticut’s militia forces in the middle of the American War of Independence. When Connecticut raised companies that Fall to serve with Gen. Horatio Gates’s army, most were formed by […]
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence charted a new autonomous path for thirteen of Britain’s North American colonies. One of the document’s many allegations was that British authorities had “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.”[1] While its context largely pointed towards Native Americans, another inspiration for this grievance may have been the embodying of Loyalist regiments […]
As part of the British empire, none of the thirteen American colonies maintained a standing army of the sort Great Britain and the other European powers had. American colonists looked to their own militia and when necessary, the British army and navy, for their defense. The French and Indian War of the 1750s and 1760s, […]
The American Revolution ended many lives and cut short many promising futures. A few of the fallen became celebrated martyrs in the cause of liberty, but most died in obscurity and are unremembered today. Thomas Williams, Jr. of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was one who died, after considerable military service, less than a week after the Declaration […]
There is a coatee from the collection of the Bayville Historical Museum that is presently stored within the Oyster Bay Historical Society Archive that appears to be a genuine uniform from the American Revolution. It is speculated to have belonged to a soldier from the Loyalist militia of Queens County, New York and possibly that […]
In researching the little-known Battle of Cricket Hill/Gwynn’s Island that took place on July 9-10, 1776, in what was then Gloucester County and today Matthews County, Virginia, available surviving records document only one Patriot casualty. While this is not unusual for many of the smaller, lesser known and infrequently studied engagements, the details of this […]
In May 1780, British Maj. Patrick Ferguson outlined a plan for constructing fortifications and securing the province of South Carolina. His proposals hinged on fortifying the junctions of major land and water routes from Charlestown (today Charleston) to prominent villages across the interior. Although known primarily for his design of a breech-loading rifle, Ferguson had […]
