Following the ratification of the Franco-American Alliance on February 6, 1778, France informed Great Britain that it had joined forces with America in its war with England. As an integral part of this arrangement, France and the United States had agreed that neither would form a treaty with Britain without the approval of the other. […]
George Washington was famously taciturn, often a man of few words in public gatherings. And though his published works are sparse in comparison to many of his fellow founders, he nevertheless left a voluminous written record of correspondence and diary entries that is still being parsed today.[1] It was while commanding the Continental Army that […]
On September 15, 1787, as the Constitutional Convention drew to a close, James Madison noted that George Mason, a fellow delegate from Virginia and the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, had a specific objection to the intended manner in which the Constitution would be amended. Specifically, Madison observed Mason: Thought the plan […]
As the American Revolution morphed into a world war with the entrance of France and Spain, the diplomatic attempts to settle it became more complex. Europe became a hotbed of diplomatic activity, conducted by both state-sanctioned negotiators and freelancers of various sorts, all with their own agendas for negotiations. There was a series of third-party […]
Governance under the federal Constitution transformed the nature and style of American politics. The spirit of this transformation revolved broadly around fear of political corruption and the vaguely defined yet delicate balance between national authority and state and local power.[1] And while the new republic’s first elected officials deliberated the nation’s most pressing issues in […]
The pre-Revolutionary War history of Vermont centered on a border dispute between the colonies of New York and New Hampshire. It is a complicated but colorful history, one that has been populated through the years with stories of greedy royal governors, show trials by corrupt provincial officials, land hungry settlers, shady land speculators, lawless vagabonds […]
On March 7, 1774 the motion to consider the Boston Port Bill was presented to the House of Commons. On March 14, the first official reading of the bill took place. It was followed by a debate that lasted all day. During the debates members of the House mainly expressed their opinions for or against […]
In June 1783, while a formal peace agreement was being negotiated in Paris, what British arms had not been able to accomplish was effectively achieved by the very soldiers who had sworn to protect and maintain the American government. A military insurrection unfolded on streets of the national capital of Philadelphia, the only successful insurrection […]
On December 22, 1773, the Hayley, a merchant ship owned by John Hancock, departed Boston Harbor; on January 19, 1774, the ship arrived at Dover, England. She was carrying news about the destruction of tea in Boston harbor on December 16. By nightfall the news had reached King George III in London. At first it […]
Most stories have a chief villain. The story of the American Revolution is no different. One man stands out amongst all the rest in the minds of Massachusetts revolutionary leaders. James Otis, Samuel Adams, and especially John Adams accused Thomas Hutchinson as being the architect of all the oppressive laws that were being passed by […]
In 1763, the powers of Europe signed the Peace of Paris bringing an end to the French and Indian War. The Kingdom of Great Britain emerged victorious, seizing from France several new territories throughout Canada and east of the Mississippi. But victory came at tremendous cost. The war debt incurred over the last seven years […]
By an accident of birth Thomas Jefferson (1742-1826) entered Virginia planter society and politics in 1769 when he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses. By an application of his fortuitous talents, he became a political philosopher when America most needed one. Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British America (July 1774, […]
It is in those first frenzied moments of war fever when declarations of patriotism are their most ardent. So it was for the “Young Men of the City of Philadelphia” in the spring of 1798, when the United States stood within a hair’s breadth of war with France. These young Americans, “anxious to preserve the […]
When the stamp act crisis arose, a number of American colonial legislatures opposed the measure and sent remonstrances to Parliament objecting to it. Two of those colonies were Virginia and Massachusetts. The methods utilized by each were different and had differing results. The difference may be attributed to what may be called “Patrick Henry’s Hoax”. […]
In December 2023, intellectual history lost one of its greatest innovators: J. G. A. Pocock. Professor Pocock, who dedicated his life to reconstructing the relationship between written text and historical context, leaves behind a body of work that has dramatically altered our understanding of Atlantic political thought. Underpinning much of his scholarship is a strong […]
The idea that no one is above the law is a long-held and repeated precept of American constitutionalism. Its roots go back to the philosophical and historical foundations of western political thought. Holding a prominent place in this history is the thirteenth-century English Magna Carta. Although it does not explicitly use the phrase, the document—a […]
In 1991, Queen Elizabeth II gave an address to a joint session of the United States Congress, the first address of its kind delivered by a British monarch. As part of her remarks, she reflected on the end of the American Revolution and eventual partnership between the United States and the United Kingdom. “Some people […]
John Clark Ridpath wrote in 1898, The pre-revolutionists are the Titans of human history; the revolutionists proper are only heroes; and the post revolutionists are too frequently dwarfs and weaklings. This signifies that civilization advances by revolutionary stages, and that history sends out her tallest and best sons to explore the line of march and […]
Christopher Gadsden arrived as a South Carolina delegate to the Second Continental Congress three weeks after fighting at Lexington and Concord lit the tinder for the American Revolution. He succinctly captured the backlash of collective anxiety when he created the iconic flag of a coiled and agitated rattlesnake conspicuously warning Britain of the ramifications with […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor David Otersen on Parliament’s reaction to the American contention that they were not subject to the legislative authority of Great Britain, a bedrock principle of eighteenth-century British constitutionalism. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, […]
We asked our contributors for their favorite quotation about the Declaration of Independence, by a person who was alive when it was announced. David Price John Haslet, officer in the Delaware Regiment: “I congratulate you, sir, on this important day, which restores to every American his birthright—a day which every freeman will record with gratitude, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Antiquity and Loyalist Dissent in Revolutionary America, 1765-1776 by Daniel R. Moy (Anthem Press, 2024. $110.00) Daniel R. Moy’s Antiquity and Loyalist Dissent in Revolutionary America attempts to analyze ideological warfare between Whigs and Tories, with particular attention to ancient Greco-Roman and Mediterranean influences. Moy, currently a lecturer at the University of Virginia […]
As an integral part of the American governing system, the United States Congress added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution on December 15, 1791. Whether by accident or design, that same year the British House of Commons also approved the Constitutional Act of 1791 as the governing structure for its newly acquired territory of […]
Many followers of the history of the American Revolution are aware of the attempted invasion of Canada by Colonial forces in late 1775. The attack failed, and American designs on Canada were thwarted, for a time anyway. This was not the end of their pursuit to incorporate Canada into the Revolution on the American side. […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic by Francis D. Cogliano (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2024. $37.95 Cloth) Comparative founder profiles are a crowded book genre with numerous volumes depicting any combination of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin as rivals, friends, or brothers. Professor […]
The Articles of Confederation provided inadequate funding and guidance for the thirteen colonies during the American Revolution. After six years of fighting, the war miraculously ended with victory in 1783. The Articles of Confederation did not give the new Congress of the Confederation adequate power to govern the newly created United States of America. Financial […]
BOOK REVIEW: King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father by Brooke Barbier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023) To my mind, there are three main currents of historiography of the American Revolution in the present day. The first is the de-deification of the Founding Fathers, seen in both published works and in 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 […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Republic of Scoundrels: The Schemers, Intriguers, and Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation edited by David Head and Timothy C. Hemmis (New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2023) Many believe that books written with rigorous academic care are not enjoyable and appropriate only for wonkish readers. Editors and essayists David Head and Timothy C. […]
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 […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Times That Try Men’s Souls: The Adams, the Quincys, and the Battle for Loyalty in the American Revolution by Joyce Lee Malcolm. (New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2023) “All wars are dangerous and painful . . . But the very worst war, that can sever family relationships and bonds of friendship, that touches even those […]
BOOK REVIEW: Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions by Katlyn Marie Carter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023) In our age of freedom of information acts, C-Span, and a never-ending news cycle, we tend to equate transparent government with democracy and sensible public policy. In Democracy in Darkness, however, […]
The national government under the Federal Constitution effectively began its reign on April 6, 1789, as an invisible and unremarkable presence in the lives of most ordinary Americans.[1] The army boasted about 750 men stationed mainly on the western frontier, there were no national buildings, roads or even construction sites, while few federal bureaucrats and […]
BOOK REVIEW: Dishonored Americans: The Political Death of Loyalists in Revolutionary America by Timothy Compeau (University of Virginia Press, 2023) Early American scholars treated Loyalists of the American Revolution as bystanders and stereotypical villains in the story. This was part of a larger attempt to unify American colonists during and after the war. Some Loyalists wrote […]
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 […]
BOOK REVIEW: For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry’s Final Political Battle by John A. Ragosta (University of Virginia Press, 2023) Of all the stories of the Revolutionary era in common memory today, few come to mind as readily as Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech. It may be the most […]
When Don Diego Gardoqui stepped onto Philadelphia’s docks in May 1785, he was a hero of the American Revolution. A merchant from Bilbao, Spain, Gardoqui, forty-nine, had early on in the war transformed his trade connections with Massachusetts into a pipeline for delivering the arms and supplies desperately needed by American troops. Following the war, […]
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 […]
