When Bryan McSweeny stepped ashore on Staten Island in August 1776, it must have looked like a paradise. He had spent the previous three years in Jamaica, in a tropical climate that was often fatal to Europeans; now, he saw a verdant landscape and felt temperatures similar to his native town of Macroom in County […]
“Dear Brother,” wrote Thomas Plumb from Newport, Rhode Island, on February 22, 1777, “this comes with my kind Love to you and hope these lines will find you, my Wife, Child & all Enquiring Friends in as good Health as they do Leave me at this Present time.”[1] Plumb has been in Rhode Island for […]
“The number of sick increasing every day, in all the different Camps of the army,” wrote Capt. John Peebles in his diary on September 5, 1779.[1] Encamped on Manhattan Island eight miles north of the city of New York, at the time rural farmland, the army was beginning to suffer from the consequences of an […]
If a British soldier was absent without leave, he might be charged with desertion; if caught, he could be tried by a general court martial, a board of thirteen officers. The court looked at many factors in deciding guilt and sentencing punishment. In today’s trial, see if you agree with the court’s verdict and sentence. The […]
