Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2020) George Washington and Early Republic scholar Edward J. Larson (author of The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783-1789 and A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign) has produced a new work focusing on […]
The participation of the French on the side of the newly declared independent American colonies is widely acknowledged as the factor that tipped the balance in the American Revolution and ultimately led to the defeat of the British. This alliance, actually two alliances—one of commerce and one of military cooperation—was concluded in early 1778, but […]
The efforts of the American Provincial Congress at the beginning of the revolutionary war against Great Britain offer the perfect case study to understand how best to utilize information against an enemy during conflict. After the initial skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, the Provincial Congress sought to influence Great Britain’s political […]
“Unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place,” Gen. George Washington wrote from Valley Forge on December 23, 1777,[1] to Henry Laurens, the recently-appointed president of the Continental Congress, “the Army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other of these three things. Starve—dissolve—or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence.” A week later, […]
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 […]
The Rise of Thomas Paine and the Case of the Officers of Excise by Paul Myles (Lewes: The Thomas Paine Society UK, 2018) When John Adams noticed in the American Crisis II, which first appeared in January 1777, Thomas Paine’s comment that he had never published “a syllable in England in my life,” the declaration might have raised […]
In 1984, Ross Perot purchased a copy of the 1297 reissuance of the Magna Carta from the Brudenell family who had held the document for centuries. In 1988, it became a permanent fixture of the National Archives Museum where it stayed in the rotunda along with the American charters of freedom for several years. Nearly […]
In the chaos of war, there are, and have always been, schemers who will try to take advantage of disorder to enrich themselves, either with power, financial gain, or both. In the turbulence of the outset of the American Revolution, especially the period in which the colonies were trying to form an alliance with France, […]
In 1793, a widely circulated American editorial observed, “A few years ago, to say of any man that he was ‘a friend to toleration,’ was to place his temper in the fairest point of view.” By the 1790s, people knew better. “Now every friend to the rights of man perceives that toleration was founded on […]
Put yourself, in your mind’s eye, back in June 1776, specifically, the period between June 7 and July 1. It is precisely at that time that one of the most crucial political battles in the history of the American republic was fought—the battle over whether the American colonists would, as thirteen united colonies, declare independence […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and historian J. L. Bell on the Declaration of Independence and which stories surrounding the document are probably true or probably not. As your host Brady Crytzer says, “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the interview. . . .” New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every […]
Close the window. No, leave the window open. Cold night air can be toxic to one’s health. No, what’s truly toxic is stifled, fetid air . . . . What has for centuries been an argument between couples long-married was, on one evening in September 1776, an impassioned dispute between temporary bedfellows John Adams and […]
When we picture the Declaration of Independence, most of us immediately think of the document handwritten on parchment and signed at the bottom by fifty-six members of the Second Continental Congress. Few individuals from the first two generations of Americans shared that view, however. The vast majority of those citizens never saw the Congress’s document, […]
John Paul Jones has earned enduring fame in American history for his sailing and fighting exploits during the American Revolution. His influence on the war, however, went far beyond his alleged immortal words while engaging the HMS Serapis with his vessel, the Bonhomme Richard. For a period in 1778, the mere mention of his name caused terror […]
There are many myths associated with the American Revolution, and at JAR we do our best to set the record straight on as many as we can. There are, however, stories for which there is simply no evidence either way: we cannot say they’re false, but we also have no evidence that they’re true. With […]
Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s name is rarely mentioned in history books. This is because his name never appeared at the top of any leaderboard, that is, he was not a member of the Continental Congress, a military hero, a leader of a movement or group, or an author of an influential work, and because he died […]
George Washington Dealmaker-In-Chief: The Story of How the Father of Our Country Unleashed the Entrepreneurial Spirit in America by Cyrus A. Ansary (Lambert Publications, LLC, 2019) Few writers on George Washington have examined his economic vision for the new American nation. Cyrus A. Ansary sets out to do just that. He argues that Washington, as […]
There were many attempts, before and during the American Revolution, to avoid armed conflict via negotiation, or to stop the war after it began. I’d like to tell you about one of the early ones, the most serious push for reconciliation to occur between the Stamp Act crisis and the Declaration of Independence.[1] The outcome […]
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 […]
Almost forty years ago, I led a team of nautical archaeologists in the study of the steamboat Phoenix, which had burned on Lake Champlain the night of September 4, 1819. In researching the Phoenix’s history, I came across the reference that “in July, 1818 the remains of General Richard Montgomery, the dashing American leader who […]
Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity by Nick Bunker. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018) This is a tome that, as Gordon S. Wood is quoted on the dust jacket, attempts “the nearly impossible—to say anything new about Benjamin Franklin.” Young Benjamin Franklin is by Nick Bunker, a British journalist and businessman turned historian of […]
Catharine Sawbridge was born in Wye, Kent, England to John Sawbridge and Elizabeth Wanley on April 2, 1731. Her father was a landed proprietor; her mother was an heiress. She was the their second child. She had an older sister Mary and two younger brothers, John and Wanley. Catharine’s education was left to a governess […]
Wars have a way of creating strange alliances, and the American Revolution was no exception. I encountered one such unusual relationship while researching my article on American naval officer Lambert Wickes, who completed many daring privateering captures in European waters in 1776-77 before relinquishing the stage to John Paul Jones. By all accounts, Wickes was […]
Revolutions are complex multi-sided economic, political, social, and technological events. They begin as conservative movements. As each side fears losing, all of these different interests radicalize but when the struggle is over, as historian Robert Calhoon points out, each side will adopt constructive compromise to find a way to govern together.[1] In the American Revolution […]
While the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was on holiday in the summer of 1774, his office continued to receive and send communications concerning the political divergence with the American colonies. The general issues were the Quebec Act, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the Non-Importation Agreement, […]
The Continental Navy. Words that didn’t exactly strike fear into the heart of the mighty British Royal Navy. For most Americans, knowledge of the early American Navy likely begins and ends with the daring exploits of John Paul Jones, starting in 1778. Indeed, it was not the Continental Navy, but the French Navy, that was […]
As the Revolutionary War was coming to an end, financial problems came to the forefront: to name a few, the country’s debts to France, Spain, and Holland, the payment of war reparations, the establishment of public credit, the states’ inability to meet their financial requisitions, and the most immanent, back pay to the disbanding Continental […]
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 […]
“Diplomacy is seduction in guise …”, whispered Benjamin Franklin to his fellow commissioner John Adams. “One improves with practice.” Although the quote isn’t real and was written into the script of the HBO/Playtone miniseries John Adams, the spirit of the words rang very true when it came to the infant “United American-States”[1] trying to find […]
Early one morning in late June 1778, an unknown passerby tossed a package of documents that clanged against the gate at Benjamin Franklin’s home in Passy, France.[1] In it was a letter addressed to Franklin dated June 16, 1778 from one “Charles de Weissenstein,” writing from Brussels. In addition to the letter, the package contained […]
Antoine Félix Wuibert was one of the earliest foreign volunteers to the War of the American Revolution, arriving even before the United States pronounced its independence from Britain. Although commissioned as an officer of engineers, he served his newly-adopted nation in a variety of roles throughout the entirety of the war, popping up in key […]
In the Spring of 1775, Benjamin Franklin, still stationed in England, made what he thought was a last attempt to secure a plan of reconciliation between Great Britain and her American colonies. One of the men he worked with was Adm. Lord Richard Howe. Though their efforts proved unsuccessful, at their final meeting on March […]
Benjamin Franklin made two missions to London prior to the Revolution; the first from 1757 to 1762, the second from 1764 to 1775. In the final four months of his second mission he became involved in three efforts to secure a peaceful solution to the constitutional divergence that was growing between England and her American […]
On May 9, 1751, Benjamin Franklin published a satirical article in the Pennsylvania Gazette commenting on British laws that allowed convicted felons to be shipped to the American colonies. As an equal trade, Franklin wryly suggested that the colonists should send rattlesnakes to Great Britain and carefully distribute them among “Places of Pleasure.”[1] Although these […]
Thomas Penn, the son of founder William Penn, inherited majority control of the proprietorship of the colony of Pennsylvania in 1746. At the time the colony’s legislative body was called the Assembly; it was unicameral, made up of thirty-four popularly elected members and had been autonomous for the first half of the eighteenth century. Penn […]
Benjamin Franklin was appointed an American Commissioner to France on September 26, 1776. [1] One month later he set sail for France where he arrived safely on December 3. His mission was to gain French support for American Independence. Little did he know that shortly after he arrived he would be confronted with an issue […]
Though not always able to offer definitive evidence of a link between the two men, since the nineteenth century Jewish scholars have affirmed that Sefer Heshbon Ha-nefesh (The Book of Spiritual Accounting) — a Hebrew work published in 1808[1] by the early Eastern European maskil (Jewish enlightener)[2] Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanow (1749-1826)[3] — […]
If there was ever a theme song for Benjamin Franklin, it would definitely be the 1970 Steven Stills folk-rock ditty, “If You Can’t Be With the One You Love, Love the One You’re With.” Walter Isaacson summed up Franklin’s personal life: “Throughout his life he had few emotional bonds tying him to any one place, […]
If one looked into Benjamin Franklin’s time on Craven Street, they might initially believe he lived at 36 Craven Street the entirety of his two stays in London based on the plethora of articles on the internet that say so. If they dug a little deeper they might read that he lived at No. 27 […]
