Sons of Britannia: New York’s Triumvirate from Colony to Revolution
byJohn Adams was making his way from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania for a convening of the delegates tasked to craft a response to the Coercive…
John Adams was making his way from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania for a convening of the delegates tasked to craft a response to the Coercive…
Between heroes like George Washington and villains like Benedict Arnold, the Revolutionary War was full of historical actors of all stripes. But one man…
It would be hard to find a more strident, vocal supporter of popular government during America’s founding period than Thomas Paine. The proposals put…
In 1812 when the British attacked the United States for the second time, Captain James Morris of the South Farms District of Litchfield, Connecticut,…
Scholars typically cast the outcome of the second presidential election as either a forgone conclusion or a non-event.[1] After all, George Washington ran unchallenged…
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews actor, research, and JAR contributor, Sarah Swift on her research on the service record of Loyalist Samuel…
The American Revolution was perhaps America’s first civil war—a dispute that forced neighbors to choose between country and King; to declare themselves Patriots or…
One of the most insightful monologues in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton musical comes from King George, who raps to the following effect: Well, now that…
The January 6, 2021 assault on the Capital rocked America, but it was by no means the largest, or even the most threatening, armed…
After seven years of fighting in the Revolutionary War, Otho Holland Williams returned home. It was the Spring of 1782. When he left Frederick,…
Alexander Hamilton penned most of the famous series of essays called the Federalist Papers. In Federalist 71, published in March 1788, he wrote this…
BOOK REVIEW: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher (Princeton University Press, 2021). While Alexander Hamilton has attracted his fair share of attention…
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the founders of the new American Republic were lurching forward from the shockingly successful outcome of…
BOOK REVIEW: Patriotism & Profit: Washington, Hamilton, Schuyler & the Rivalry for America’s Capital City by Susan Nagel (Pegasus Books, 2021). In Patriotism & Profit:…
BOOK REVIEW: Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons From a Misunderstood Founder by Christian Parenti (New York: Verso, 2020) Alexander Hamilton’s legacy has undergone a radical shift…
The Whiskey Rebellion often falls into the background of the Federalist Era, overshadowed by the rise of a divisive two-party political system. This armed…
On the morning of Saturday, July 14, 1804 the funeral cortège for Alexander Hamilton proceeded northward to Trinity Church where the former Revolutionary War…
Late in his life, after retiring the presidency, James Monroe drafted his own history. He was still struck, five decades after the War for…
We asked our contributors: Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era (other than Benedict Arnold) is remembered for the wrong reasons,…
Political Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency edited by Ben Lowe (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2021) In Political Thought and the…
When you are a spy, you want to go unnoticed. With a colorful name like Hercules Mulligan, that can sometimes be difficult, especially if…
Colonel Hamilton and Colonel Burr: The Revolutionary War Lives of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr by Arthur S. Lefkowitz (Stackpole Books, 2020) Students of…
On the morning of October 9, 1779, one of the bloodiest and most forgotten battles of the American Revolution took place during the Siege…
Following the Constitutional Convention’s completion of the United States Constitution in the Fall of 1787, many of those involved in its creation embarked on…
This month we asked our contributors: If George Washington had not run for President in 1789, who would you like to have had as…
Alexander Hamilton’s life has been documented extensively and his exploits as an adult are well known. His early childhood, however, has long been a…
This list presents the graves of ten soldiers who made remarkable contributions to the founding of the United States and who have a headstone…
On the afternoon of April 30, 1789, George Washington stepped onto the balcony of the freshly-renovated and renamed Federal Hall on Wall Street in…
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, in the first half of the eighteenth century, and John Taylor of Caroline in the 1790s, both feared that…
From 1792 to 1794, John Taylor of Caroline, a senator from Virginia, was engaged in a heated party struggle between Jeffersonian Republicans and Hamiltonian…
Celebrated for his stirring words in the Declaration of Independence, and having profited upon the popularity since, Thomas Jefferson was now America’s chief magistrate—and…
In 1796 Daniel Hylton, a wealthy Virginian farmer, brought a suit before the United States Supreme Court arguing that a federal tax on carriages…
On the 170th anniversary of Washington’s Birthday in 1902, the Delaware Society of the Cincinnati formed a procession of dignitaries and marched up Quaker…
The Philadelphia Campaign of 1777 took definitive shape when Gen. William Howe successfully landed his 16,000 officers and men near Head of Elk (now…
Hamilton Versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics by Nancy Bradeen Spannaus (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2019) “The purpose of this book,”…
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and University of Central Florida historian David Head on his recent article about events leading up…
A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution by David Head (New York: Pegasus Books, 2019)…
Author’s Note: Selections from all resolutions and working drafts are italicized. Most of what we know about the framers’ discussions comes from James Madison’s…
The officers of the Continental Army were sullen. It was December 1782, and they were stationed in and around Newburgh, New York, and neighboring…