One day in the late winter of 1788 in Paris, the Marquis de Lafayette and two other champions of republicanism, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, held a little “convention of our own,” according to Lafayette. They were discussing the latest news from America about the debates taking place over ratifying the Constitution of 1787.[1] Jefferson […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
John Adams said of his Whig contemporaries that they had views as “various as the Colors of their Cloths.”[1] Such was the paradigm in the civil yet often contentious political relationship of Abraham Clark and William Livingston. Both men were, as the saying goes, cursed with being born in interesting times. They were the top […]
After the outbreak of hostilities Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Congress met at Philadelphia to address issues of the new war. Initially the decisions made were not made for independence, but to compel the British Parliament to change its policy toward America. Congress took legislative and executive authority into its hands and was an […]
The January 6, 2021 assault on the Capital rocked America, but it was by no means the largest, or even the most threatening, armed rebellion in the post-Revolutionary War era. In 1786 and 1787, Daniel Shays, a middle-class farmer and decorated Continental Army captain, was one of several leaders of as many as four thousand […]
The Articles of Confederation described the first government of the new United States. As one may imagine from understanding the later debates on the Constitution in 1787, there were a number of points of contention on the Articles that were later re-argued for the Constitution. But there was one issue in the debate on the […]
After seven years of fighting in the Revolutionary War, Otho Holland Williams returned home. It was the Spring of 1782. When he left Frederick, Maryland, in 1775 he was the first lieutenant in a company of riflemen; now he was back from a long campaign in the Carolinas and was receiving a commission as a […]
BOOK REVIEW: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021) The eminent historian and author Gordon S. Wood has turned a series of recent lectures into his latest work, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. The focus of the book is what Wood considers […]
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared America’s Independence from the British Empire. Approximately five years later, on March 1, 1781, Congress recorded Maryland’s procrastinated ratification of the Articles of Confederation and concomitantly gave them legal effect. The Articles of Confederation are generally regarded as America’s first Constitution, though in many respects they […]
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel Shays’s Honorable Rebellion: An American Story by Daniel Bullen (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2021) There is truth to the adage that history is told by the victors. It is no coincidence that we are taught that the rebellion named after Pelham, Massachusetts, farmer Daniel Shays was the event that led to the Constitutional Convention. Massachusetts […]
At the beginning of March 1777, Arthur Lee, a delegate to the United States Congress, urgently requested to meet with the Marquis de Grimaldi, who until just a few weeks before had been the Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs of King Carlos III of Spain, and who was now on his way to take […]
Scholars generally view that the Framers of the United States Constitution “recalled the historical tyrannies of Great Britain and France in establishing the prohibitions against ex post facto laws (laws having retroactive effect) and bills of attainder (forfeiture of property and civil rights without due process).”[1] In reality, things are more complicated than this simple […]
John Rutledge was born into Charleston’s elite in 1739 and by April 1775 had established himself as a defender of English rights in the colonies. A British-educated lawyer, he served in South Carolina’s General Assembly and represented the colony in the Stamp Act Congress, the First Continental Congress, and the early days of the Second […]
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 a campaign to ensure its ratification among the several states. The most significant effort was the publication of the Federalist in New York, published anonymously in a long series of newspaper articles […]
The image of a nation united in the aftermath of the American Revolution, content with hard-fought for and hard-won independence, is largely a grade school fairy tale. The early years of the American republic were often tumultuous, and competing conceptions of liberty meant that popular unrest was not uncommon. As it had in the period […]
The Colonists’ American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783, by Guy Chet (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020) To my way of thinking, when we try to understand people and events in the past, we benefit more from channeling their understanding of their actions and beliefs, rather than identifying motivating forces that were hidden from them at […]
In the last two decades, the Electoral College has come under harsh, though derivative, criticism as a result of the presidential elections in 2000 and 2016. Comparing the Electoral College at its inception to the Electoral College of 2020 is a distortion. For one, the twelfth amendment ended the practice of affording the presidency and […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Christopher Warren, historian and Curator of American History in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, on his recent article in JAR discussing important documents of the American Revolution that are held in the collection. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published […]
Those familiar with American history know that the Articles of Confederation served as the first constitution of the unified states during the American Revolution. A foundational document, it begins by establishing the name of the confederation of colonies as “The United States of America.” The creation of the Articles is intimately tied with the drafting […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews professor and librarian Keith Muchowski on Rufus King, forgotten founder. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a free podcast that puts a voice to the writing in JAR, and features both contributors to the journal and other […]
There are many ways to reach Jamaica, Queens, via public transit. From Brooklyn or Manhattan one could catch a Queens-bound F Train and remain aboard until getting off at Parsons Boulevard near the end of the line. Hundreds of thousands of commuters pass through Jamaica every day, either on the F Train, via the many […]
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 Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787; material from Madison’s notes is identified by quotation marks or indented block quotes. The best print source, annotated by Adrienne Koch and […]
On Saturday September 17, 1938 New York governor Herbert H. Lehman and 5,000 others assembled in Poughkeepsie to observe the sesquicentennial of the Empire State’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution. One hundred and fifty years previously delegates had gathered in that Hudson Valley hamlet to debate whether New York should ratify that document and thus […]
As adopted by the Constitutional Convention, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution mandated that the population numbers forming the basis for calculating representation in the House of Representatives would “be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding […]
Speaking at South Carolina’s ratification convention in 1788, Charles Pinckney derided the Articles of Confederation as a “miserable, feeble mockery of government.” Pinckney was a young but significant figure at the Constitutional Convention along with his cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. While coastal South Carolinians, rooted in Charleston, were likely to prevail in support of the […]
This month, we asked our contributors to consider the many changes of fortune that occurred over the tumultuous four decades that transformed thirteen British colonies into the nascent United States: What was the best strategic defeat, whether political or military, of the American Revolution and the founding era (roughly 1765 thru 1805)? That is, what […]
The year 1780 ended badly, and the new year boded worse for America’s War of Independence. Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold’s treason and defection to the British army had left Gen. George Washington’s officer corps in disarray, demoralized. Officers of all ranks eyed each other suspiciously, questioning each other’s decisions, while distrust of officers provoked mutinies […]
There is a gap in most histories of the United States Navy. The blank space lies between the end of the American Revolution and the re-establishment of the Navy in the 1790s. This is not the product of poor research; it is difficult to write about a Navy that did not exist. After the standing […]
Through four months in the summer of 1787, passionate arguments over political principles filled the Pennsylvania State House while hard-nosed political horse-trading buzzed in the taverns and drawing rooms of Philadelphia. Fifty-five American politicians were writing a new charter of government for the United States, the Constitution. They produced the longest-surviving constitutional republic in human […]
The charge was leveled often in his own time, as it has been ever since: James Madison is and was a hypocrite—a man inconstant in principles; “a mind mired in confusion and inconsistency, or perhaps even one suffering from schizophrenia or tainted by dishonesty.”[1] This judgment is only a recitation of the verdict first rendered […]
Perhaps you’ve seen this mythbuster: “WHO WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? I suspect George Washington was your best guess. After all, who else comes to mind? But think back to your history books – The United States declared its independence in 1776, yet George Washington did not take office until […]
On June 12, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee to prepare a plan of confederation for the young colonies. The articles directed the states to supply whatever requisitions Congress requested. Article VIII stated that expenses “Shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states, in proportion to […]
Myth: The framers were anti-tax, and it is no accident they failed to provide for income taxes in the Constitution. Busted: “No taxation without representation” was the rallying cry of the Revolution, but the purpose of the Constitution was to create an effective government, and for that to happen, the framers granted Congress broad powers […]
