General histories of the Battle of Connecticut Farms, New Jersey, that was fought on June 7, 1780 tend to miss their mark with the very first shots. The intrusion of local myth impacts our understanding of the sequence of battle and distorts some of its key elements. In the process, the battalion that suffered nearly […]
A good story spreads like glitter on a craft table: one spill and suddenly it’s everywhere. Readers picking up almost any history book about the American Revolution in the southern colonies will learn about the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain and the plot point of British Major Patrick Ferguson threatening the Patriots of the southern […]
Just sixty days after the start of armed hostilities at Lexington Green, the Continental Congress’s decision to invade Canada resulted in one of the worst defeats in the War for Independence.[1] While exact casualty figures are difficult to discern, likely half of the American forces sent north were killed in battle, wounded, captured, or died […]
The once-promising Continental invasion of Canada was clearly headed for disaster by May 1776. With British forces chasing the American Army out of the Province of Quebec, Continental leaders started grappling with the fact that their ten-month strategic offensive in the north had failed. Canada would not be joining the Continental Congress as a fourteenth […]
Did Thomas Paine actively write against the American cause after emigrating from England in late 1774 and only opportunistically pretend to support the cause? When Paine was nominated for a Congressional position in April 1777, did delegate John Witherspoon hurl those accusations against Paine?[1] As other delegates were undoubtedly well aware, Witherspoon knew Paine personally. […]
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 […]
The description of the United States as an “Empire of Liberty” is one of the most often repeated phrases of the American founding. Long associated with Thomas Jefferson, the phrase has been used by statesmen and authors alike. But what does “Empire of Liberty” mean? What were Jefferson’s intentions with the phrase and what are […]
The court martial of Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, who had been George Washington’s second in command during the Monmouth campaign, centered on three charges against him for his conduct during the Battle of Monmouth, fought near Freehold, New Jersey, on June 28, 1778. Lee was found guilty by the court on all three charges. The […]
On November 16, 1775, Robert Dixon lay dying not far from Quebec. Among the first American troops commissioned by the Continental Congress, he was a sergeant in Matthew Smith’s Company of Thompson’s Rifle Battalion. The previous July, he had walked with his company from the backcountry of Pennsylvania all the way to Boston, a distance […]
The traditional story of Valley Forge tells of an encampment where a weakened and stripped-down army of 11,000 men endured the hardships of a winter cantonment rife with depravations. Overcoming crippling deficiencies and benefitting from superb training by the first Inspector General of the United States, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the army got healthy and […]
George Washington’s perseverance kept the American army in the field long enough to win negotiated independence, and later saw him through the first presidency under the Constitution. Benjamin Franklin’s ingenuity and sagacity guided the formation of the young nation before it yet realized it could be a country of its own. Thomas Jefferson’s eloquence gave […]
History is frequently more complicated than it initially appears, and accordingly, it may be surprising to discover that when George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States, he was constitutionally ineligible for office. Similarly, when John Adams became the first Vice President nine days earlier, he too was constitutionally ineligible for […]
The British Library in London, England, houses an internationally significant and relatively understudied copy of Dr. John Mitchell’s renowned 1755 map, renamed and reprinted circa 1775 A Map of the British Colonies in North America. . .[1] This map garnered particular attention due to its use in the 1782 boundary negotiations conducted by the British […]
Over the past few years, three demographic studies of North Carolina and Georgia Revolutionary War pension applicants have been completed (North Carolina militia, North Carolina Line, Georgia). A similar study of South Carolina soldiers who served in the Continental Line, state troops, and militia provides compiled demographic data of those who served in that state, […]
The “whole of [President John] Adams’s single term was absorbed, to a degree unequaled in any other American presidency, with a single problem”: a diplomatic crisis with France.[1] Some Federalists must have been surprised that France, the United States’s greatest ally during the Revolution, became its greatest enemy within a generation. Not Adams: As a […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Novia Liuon her examination of John Adams’s Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, a response to Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot’s letter criticizing the US state constitutions. New episodes of Dispatchesare available for free every Saturday evening(Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, […]
In researching one of the many projects I have in train, I ran across the Federal Pension Application file of Caleb Brewster. With all the public interest of late in him, Abraham Woodhull, Robert Townsend, and the Culper Spy Ring, I decided to take a more detailed look. Brewster was first commissioned as the lowest-rated […]
An important issue that the Congressional delegates faced when drafting the Constitution was how to create an equitable balance in voting rights between the larger states (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia) and the smaller ones (Delaware, Georgia, New Hampshire). Although the delegates were sworn to secrecy throughout their debates (May through September 1787), once the debates were […]
Today’s Americans revere the Founding Fathers as egalitarian exceptions within the eighteenth century’s hierarchical world. Yet, these men were neither uniform nor wholly democratic in their opinions. Among them, John Adams stands out as a particularly clear deviation, continuing to espouse support for the Old World’s system of natural hierarchy long after the American Revolution. […]
Several years ago, I set out to understand the movements of the British army through Delaware and into Pennsylvania in early September 1777. It was a small piece of the Philadelphia campaign of Gen, Sir William Howe, who led a combined army of about 16,000 that landed on Elk Neck on August 25 and captured […]
From the outset of the American Revolution and the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the Continental Congress dealt with its financing. Under the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1777, Congress lacked the power to levy taxes.[1] Even had it possessed such power, to exercise it would […]
The official birthday of the United States Army is June 14, 1775. On that day, the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia passed the following: Resolved, That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia . . . as soon as completed, shall march and join […]
Departing from Morristown, New Jersey, the Continental Army’s Maryland Division, Delaware Regiment, and 1st Continental artillery (approximately 1,400 men), were ordered south in April 1780 to break the siege of Charlestown and reinforce Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s beleaguered garrison. Upon reaching Petersburgh, Virginia, in early June, the surrender of Charlestown on May 12 became known. […]
The “Ten Crucial Days” winter campaign of 1776-1777 reversed the tide of war just when Washington’s army appeared near collapse. Beginning with the Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River, Washington recorded his first three significant victories over the British and their Hessian auxiliaries under the overall command of Maj. Gen. William Howe and the […]
Estimates have appeared in print for generations that 3,000 to 5,000 Black soldiers served in the American military in the Revolution. These claims seldom offer documentation, being instead what historian Michael Lanning defined as only a “general consensus” of the number of African American patriots. Lack of records, reliance on anecdotal evidence, and other factors […]
Nathanael Greene is rightly remembered as one of the great combat leaders of the American Revolution. But he was also a deep political thinker, a Rhode Island politician before the war who did not hesitate to discuss the broader ramifications of the American Revolution with a wide range of Patriot notables, some of whom never […]
Andrew Pickens is the very image of the hard-nosed Patriot, but after the surrender of Charleston, South Carolina on May 12, 1780, he gave the British good reason to hope he would join them. In order to understand Pickens’ thinking, it is instructive to begin with Andrew Williamson, who did join the British and lived […]
During the trial years under the Federal Constitution, some political observers contributed to the national discourse by employing one of the period’s most ambitious and creative ornaments: the classical pseudonym. Cloaked behind these ancient disguises, commenters added a historically nuanced layer to their arguments that enlisted the ubiquitous gravity of the classical past.[1] These signatures […]
The standard interpretation of the Continental Army in the dark and waning months of 1776 often features ragged soldiers, devoid of clothing and basic human comforts, facing harsh winter conditions while encamped in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, prior to crossing the Delaware River. Dramatic imagery of cold and discomfort, with regiments, or what was left of […]
Information has been as powerful a weapon as any in the history of warfare. Modern militaries continue to grapple with the power of information by developing and incorporating specific information strategies into their warfighting arsenals. In 2017, the U.S. military established information as a warfighting function to define and harness “the military role of information […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author, historian, and JAR Editorial Board member Ray Raphael on the memories of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas McKean about the Declaration of Independence and when it was actually signed. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor William Welsch on the importance of the overlooked battle of Petersburg, April 25, 1781. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Dispatches can now be easily accessed on […]
Early in 1814, thirteen years into his retirement, John Adams received a bizarre letter from Thomas McKean, a former colleague in the First and Second Continental Congresses. “I will give you an historical fact respecting the declaration of Independence, which may amuse, if not surprize,” McKean wrote. “In the printed public journal of Congress for […]
Unique among the Continental Army generals, Charles Lee expressed prescient insights into the upcoming political issues dividing Americans during the Early Republic era. Born and educated in England, Lee espoused pre-Revolution British Whig views seeking to moderate the monarchy’s powers and engender a more representative government. As a recent immigrant, Lee brought his radical republican […]
The Battle of Hobkirk Hill (or Hobkirk’s Hill), sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of Camden, remains one of the less prominent engagements of the Revolutionary War, even as John Buchanan’s masterful study of the campaign in the Deep South terms it “a major and controversial battle” in the American effort to reclaim South […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Douglas R. Dorney, Jr. on his recent article about how Lord Cornwallis has been viewed by many as the general that lost the American Revolution, but his commitment to his own personal values made him a valuable asset to the larger British Empire, particularly in India. New […]
When one mentions the Battle of Petersburg in Civil-War-centric Virginia, the immediate reaction is Ulysses S. Grant versus Robert E. Lee in 1864 and 1865. True. But the first Battle of Petersburg was a revolutionary encounter on April 25, 1781, between the Americans and their British adversaries. And instead of Grant and Lee, the leaders […]
The Battle of Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, on September 8, 1781 was the last major open-field battle of the Revolutionary War and perhaps its most savage. The close-quarter fighting that occurred there ranks among the bloodiest and most intensely contested military encounters in young America’s quest for independence.[1] It has, however, been eclipsed in historical […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Mike Matheny on the highs and lows of General Horatio Gates’s career and reputation. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Dispatches can now be easily accessed on […]
