“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 […]
European colonial powers often employed enslaved Black soldiers in the New World to combat their enemies. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, Spain freed, trained, and armed fugitive slaves from Georgia and the Carolinas. Britain was an exception. Except for employing enslaved Jamaicans in the failed 1741 effort to conquer the Spanish city of […]
The Virginia Continental Line had suffered with recruitment since the spring of 1777. Desertion, battlefield casualties, and competition with other state units prevented enough men being recruited to replenish the ranks of Virginia’s fifteen regiments. A new recruiting act, including a limited military draft, had produced fewer than 800 recruits for the Virginia Continental Line […]
Wars are seldom won or lost due to a single event. Rather, the ultimate result is often preceded by a series of (sometimes) lesser connecting events. Pennsylvania loyalist Joseph Galloway criticized Sir William Howe and Lord Richard Howe for many of their military strategies in a blizzard of pamphlets written between 1780 and 1782. In […]
Gen. Daniel Morgan’s defeat of Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton at the Cowpens is generally attributed to his arrangement of troops into three lines, with two lines of militia in front to wear down the advancing enemy. Morgan, however, mentioned only a single line, and he attributed his victory to a “fortunate volley.” Did Morgan not […]
The 1st Rhode Island Regiment, famously known as the “Black Regiment,” is renowned for its key role in helping to repel three enemy charges at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. What is not widely appreciated is that Rhode Island’s two Continental Army regiments were multi-racial before the famous “Black Regiment” was […]
The saying that “an army marches on its stomach” has been attributed to both Napolean Bonaparte and Frederick II, King of Prussia, known as “Frederick the Great.”[1] If this observation is correct, it can be argued that nobody did more to keep the Continental Army on the move during perhaps its time of greatest travail, […]
The British army did a lot of recruiting in 1775 and 1776. After the government committed to using force to quell the rebellion in America, the War Office increased the authorized size of each regiment deployed overseas by 50 percent—from 360 private soldiers to 540. Part of this increase was accomplished by transferring soldiers from […]
Military history has taken a variety of forms, one of which is the lasting trend of social or “from the bottom-up” history. One aspect of this brand of historiography that historians of the Revolution have not explored in thorough detail is the impact of religion on the daily lives of the war’s participants. Historians have […]
For Maj. Arent Schuyler De Peyster, his assignment as commandant of British forces at Detroit was growing increasingly frustrating. For years, British officers at Detroit had encouraged Indian allies to strike the American backcountry, rendering the frontier a scorched arc stretching from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. But by the late summer of 1782, De Peyster was […]
In the fall of 1776, Patriots were desperate for ways to defend the Hudson River from British attacks, entertaining even the wildest ideas. Henry Wisner, a member of the Continental Congress from Goshen, suggested revolutionary soldiers hurl stones at approaching ships from the cliffs north of Peekskill. “Ten men on the top,” he claimed, “might […]
No front of the American War of Independence was more consistently violent than the northern frontier in what is today central New York State. Relative to the size of the forces involved, the costliest battle of the war took place at Oriskany near present-day Rome, New York, where the Patriot casualty rate exceeded 50 percent. […]
I recently came across the recollections of Simeon Thayer, who served from 1777 to 1781 as a major in Rhode Island Continental Army regiments. He was one of the outstanding military figures from Rhode Island during the war. His recollections start with him as a teenager during the French and Indian War serving in Maj. […]
When a country is losing a war, especially a war it was expected to win easily, explanations acceptable to the powers-that-be, and the general population, can be hard to come by. Often there is a primary protagonist, or antagonist, depending on who is seeking answers. In the American Revolution, one such person was Joseph Galloway, […]
June 9, 1776: The colonel and the preacher exchanged concerned glances as they crouched in the swamp. They were spattered in mud, exhausted, and cut off from their unit. Visibility was poor through the trees, but they could hear the crack of musket fire nearby . . . the enemy was getting close. They saw […]
Sergeant Solomon Goodwin of Colonel Philip Burr Bradley’s Regiment of Connecticut Levies kept an orderly book for Capt. Bezaleel Beebe’s Company. On November 16, 1776, he added a poignant, personal note: “This Day was the Day that our friends & fellow Soldiers was either killd or taken who were on York Island. This fatal day […]
The common viewpoint on Benedict Arnold’s role in the Battle of Bemis Heights on October 7, 1777 is based almost exclusively on the early nineteenth century testimony of James Wilkinson. That view holds that Arnold, after clashing with Gates over matters involving the Battle of Freeman’s Farm on September 19, was without a command on […]
Americans made repeated unsuccessful attempts during the Revolution to capture Canada and incorporate it into the nascent United States. The British, meanwhile, attempted to incorporate additional territory into Canada. This territory, though not yet part of the United States, would eventually become so. As such, this effort also failed. If that weren’t enough, as with […]
It was well into the first week of October 1776, and all of Britain was anxious for news. By the last official dispatch printed in the October 1 edition of the London Gazette, as of the 15th of August, the British army in America under the command of Gen. William Howe was fully assembled and […]
Warfare during the American Revolution could be brutal; this brutality took on entirely new dimensions in the frontier, and could be devastating, unrelenting, and all-pervading. Threats came in many forms—isolation, starvation, exposure; labor took countless forms as well, demanding never-ending toil and dogged perseverance. Like many whose charge was to defend America’s back door, the […]
