On December 22, 1773, the Hayley, a merchant ship owned by John Hancock, departed Boston Harbor; on January 19, 1774, the ship arrived at Dover, England. She was carrying news about the destruction of tea in Boston harbor on December 16. By nightfall the news had reached King George III in London. At first it […]
Most stories have a chief villain. The story of the American Revolution is no different. One man stands out amongst all the rest in the minds of Massachusetts revolutionary leaders. James Otis, Samuel Adams, and especially John Adams accused Thomas Hutchinson as being the architect of all the oppressive laws that were being passed by […]
The Valley Forge winter of 1777-78 is an integral part of America’s national narrative.[1] For many citizens, the name “Valley Forge” relates both a physical and intellectual landscape, specific spatial geography in Pennsylvania and a certain emotional acreage representative of the enduring suffering many Americans embraced during the revolution. At the end of that challenging […]
On March 26, 1772, The Massachusetts Spy ran an unusual item on page 3 of that day’s newspaper: an advertisement for a dramatic performance of The Adulateur at the Grand Parade in Upper Servia. Filling nearly half the page, the notice contained a list of dramatis personae and a couple of scenes from the play. In the […]
On June 1, 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, the newly appointed governor, Lt.-Gen. Thomas Gage, shut down the towns’ harbor. All shipping and commerce came to standstill. Ships-of-war appeared in the harbor, army regiments arrived from England and only food was allowed to enter the town (by way of the town of […]
Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by imposing on the colony of Massachusetts a series of Acts, collectively called the Coercive Acts. The four Acts were the Boston Port Bill, the Quartering Act, the Impartial Administration Act and the Massachusetts Government Act. The first one, the Boston Port Bill, received King George III’s royal […]
On 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, but whose experiences could have changed history. This is part 1 of a 2-part exploration of this fascinating figure. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern […]
As recounted in a previous article, in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army of holding him captive, interrogating him about the Boston Tea Party, and shipping him off to London in irons. Unable to file a lawsuit for damages, Dyer attacked two army officers […]
On 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 shocking story, soon reported in the local newspapers. Three months earlier, on July 6, soldiers of the 4th or King’s Own Regiment had grabbed him off the streets of Boston and […]
In 1817, as popular sentiment finally forced Connecticut to adopt a new constitution separating church and state, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams: “I join you therefore in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood [Connecticut] is at length broken up, and that a Protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history […]
It may have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s patriotic paean that belatedly canonized a heroic horseman as a key figure of the American Revolution, but it was John Singleton Copley who provided posterity with the definitive visual representation of the famous midnight rider. Seven years before Paul Revere spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm—and […]
Tea 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 praise in her Foreword for Kimberly K. Walters’s Tea in 18th Century America, citing their shared interest in “all things 18th century.” Brant briefly describes the contents of the book and […]
The skirmishes at Lexington and Concord are often considered the beginning of the American Revolution, a violent change in the controversy between Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies. John Adams opined that the Revolution started many years before: “But what do We mean by the American Revolution? Do We mean the American […]
The Boston Tea Party famously saw the destruction of the almost 300 chests worth of tea, tossed into the harbor by “Indians” on December 16, 1773. Initial reports described “the total destruction of the Teas aboard the Ships Dartmouth, William, & Eleanor and the Beaver”—the four ships bringing the East India Company’s tea to Boston in […]
By the end of 1772, Catharine Macaulay had completed and published the first five volumes of her History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line. The effort had taken a toll on her health. Instead of continuing to write her History at a feverish pace, she turned her […]
The story of the Boston Tea Party has been told and retold endlessly. It has become a part of American mythos. On the evening of December 16, 1773 in Boston a group of 100 to 150 citizens, dressed like Indians, descended on three ships loaded with tea from England. Politely, but firmly, they demanded the […]
The news that many dreaded reached Virginia in May 1774. The British parliament, determined to punish the inhabitants of Boston for the destruction of thousands of pounds of tea in December 1773, closed Boston Harbor to all commerce until restitution was paid to the East India Company and the King’s treasury. The sum included the […]
Myth: “The fate of a nation was riding that night,” Longfellow wrote. Fortunately, a heroic rider from Boston woke up the sleepy-eyed farmers just in time. Thanks to Revere, the farmers grabbed their muskets and the American Revolution was underway: “And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, / Kindled the land […]
Myth: Toward evening on December 16, 1773, Francis Rotch, beleaguered owner of one of the tea-laden ships in the Boston Harbor, announced to thousands of people assembled at Old South Meeting House that Governor Hutchinson remained firm and would not allow his vessel to return to Britain with its cargo still on board. At that […]
Have you ever tried to imagine what it would have been like to witness an important historical event? If so, the Boston Tea Party Annual Reenactment is a must-attend event. On Monday December 16, 2013, I attended the 240th Anniversary Boston Tea Party Annual Reenactment presented by the Old South Meeting House and the Boston […]
On 6 December 1773, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie of the 64th Regiment of Foot wrote a letter to the highest ranking official in the British army, Lord Viscount Barrington, the Secretary at War. It may seem unusual for an officer of Leslie’s rank to write directly to an officer subordinate only to the King, but […]
1. MYTH: The Tea Act imposed a tax on American colonists (which is why tax protestors often revere the Boston Tea Party). BUSTED: The Tea Act did no such thing; instead the actual law gave the East India Company a tax break on tea shipped to the American colonies, along with special new privileges for […]
In April 1775, reports about the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord took five days to reach Philadelphia and nearly three weeks to reach Charleston, South Carolina. It wasn’t yet immortalized in history books as the start of the Revolutionary War. It was breaking news.[1] In July 1776, the Declaration of Independence took at least two […]
“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 on Tea! A Colonial Tea Debate” program. Unlike “Whispers of Revolution: Plotting the Boston Tea Party,” this event invited audience members to “[assume] the role of a Patriot or Loyalist to […]
My Quest As a historian, I am interested in how people understand and interact with the past. I find the question of how present-day Americans relate to the American Revolution and War for Independence particularly fascinating. This curiosity led me to explore the 32nd Annual Boston Harborfest, the largest Fourth of July celebration in the […]
