This Week on Dispatches: J. L. Bell on the Secrets of Samuel Dyer, PART I
byOn this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR Associate Editor and historian, J. L. Bell on Samuel Dyer, a person few have heard of,…
Boston Tea Party
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The Secrets of Samuel Dyer
byAs recounted in a previous article, in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army…
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The Return of Samuel Dyer: An Attempted Assassination in Revolutionary Boston
byOn October 10, 1774, the brigantine Charlotte arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, from London. On board was a sailor named Samuel Dyer, and he told a…
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Jonathan Trumbull: the Sixteenth “Pope” of Connecticut
byIn 1817, as popular sentiment finally forced Connecticut to adopt a new constitution separating church and state, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams: “I…
A Painter Abroad: John Singleton Copley Writes to His Wife
byIt may have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s patriotic paean that belatedly canonized a heroic horseman as a key figure of the American Revolution, but…
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Tea in 18th Century America
byTea in 18th Century America by Kimberly K. Walters. (K. Walters at the Sign of the Gray Horse, 2019) Best-selling author Lucinda Brant offers enthusiastic…
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“The Americans Have Hoisted Their Standard of Liberty at Salem”
byThe skirmishes at Lexington and Concord are often considered the beginning of the American Revolution, a violent change in the controversy between Great Britain…
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The Tea that Survived the Boston Tea Party
byThe Boston Tea Party famously saw the destruction of the almost 300 chests worth of tea, tossed into the harbor by “Indians” on December 16,…
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Catharine Macaulay, England’s First Female Whig Historian, 1773–1774
byBy the end of 1772, Catharine Macaulay had completed and published the first five volumes of her History of England from the Accession of…
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Tides and Tonnage: A Different Take on the Boston Tea Party
byThe story of the Boston Tea Party has been told and retold endlessly. It has become a part of American mythos. On the evening…
George Washington Makes the Case for a Boycott
byThe news that many dreaded reached Virginia in May 1774. The British parliament, determined to punish the inhabitants of Boston for the destruction of…
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Paul Revere’s Other Rides
byMyth: “The fate of a nation was riding that night,” Longfellow wrote. Fortunately, a heroic rider from Boston woke up the sleepy-eyed farmers just…
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The Signal of Sam Adams
byMyth: Toward evening on December 16, 1773, Francis Rotch, beleaguered owner of one of the tea-laden ships in the Boston Harbor, announced to thousands…
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A Very Special Boston Tea Party Reenactment
byHave you ever tried to imagine what it would have been like to witness an important historical event? If so, the Boston Tea Party…
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They Destroy’d the Tea!
byOn 6 December 1773, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie of the 64th Regiment of Foot wrote a letter to the highest ranking official in the…
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7 Myths about the Boston Tea Party
by1. MYTH: The Tea Act imposed a tax on American colonists (which is why tax protestors often revere the Boston Tea Party). BUSTED: The…
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Revolutionary News: 10 Breaking Stories
byIn April 1775, reports about the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord took five days to reach Philadelphia and nearly three weeks to reach Charleston,…
Searching for Loyalists: Boston Harborfest (part 2)
by“No Tax on Tea! A Colonial Tea Debate”[1] On Friday July 5, I returned to the Old South Meeting House for the “No Tax…
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Searching for Loyalists: Boston Harborfest (part 1)
byMy Quest As a historian, I am interested in how people understand and interact with the past. I find the question of how present-day…