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From the outset of the American Revolution and the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the…
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…
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After the outbreak of hostilities Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Congress met at Philadelphia to address issues of the new war. Initially the…
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The January 6, 2021 assault on the Capital rocked America, but it was by no means the largest, or even the most threatening, armed…
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The Articles of Confederation described the first government of the new United States. As one may imagine from understanding the later debates on the…
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After seven years of fighting in the Revolutionary War, Otho Holland Williams returned home. It was the Spring of 1782. When he left Frederick,…
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…
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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…
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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…
At the beginning of March 1777, Arthur Lee, a delegate to the United States Congress, urgently requested to meet with the Marquis de Grimaldi,…
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Scholars generally view that the Framers of the United States Constitution “recalled the historical tyrannies of Great Britain and France in establishing the prohibitions…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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In the last two decades, the Electoral College has come under harsh, though derivative, criticism as a result of the presidential elections in 2000…
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…
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Those familiar with American history know that the Articles of Confederation served as the first constitution of the unified states during the American Revolution….
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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As adopted by the Constitutional Convention, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution mandated that the population numbers forming the basis for…
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…
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This month, we asked our contributors to consider the many changes of fortune that occurred over the tumultuous four decades that transformed thirteen British…
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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…
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There is a gap in most histories of the United States Navy. The blank space lies between the end of the American Revolution and…
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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…
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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…
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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….
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On June 12, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee to prepare a plan of confederation for the young colonies. The articles directed the…
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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…