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The Fall of 1774 in Boston
byParliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by imposing on the colony of Massachusetts four laws including the Boston Port Bill. This bill received…
Boston
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Thomas Ditson: Puritan to Bumpkin to Patriot
byThe status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was…
Election Sermons and Collective Identity in Massachusetts, 1760–1775
by“It is Hoped that this People will Unitedly Exert Themselves:”[1] In August 1765, crowds gathered on the streets of Boston protesting Parliament’s Stamp Act,…
This Week on Dispatches: Brooke Barbier on Paul Revere’s Boston
byOn this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews writer and podcast host Brooke Barbier about historic sites in Boston that were familiar to Paul Revere….
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Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution
byOccupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution by Donald F. Johnson (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) Several cities in Revolutionary…
Coronavirus 2020? Nope. The Speckled Monster of 1764
byIn January 1764, a “speckled monster” struck Boston, forcing businesses to shutter and residents to isolate themselves in their homes or flee the city…
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It’s in the Details: A Recently Identified View of Boston
byThe exceedingly rare mezzotint of His Excellency George Washington Esqr (above) listed by Charles Hart as no. 1 in his Catalogue of the Engraved Portraits of…
This Week on Dispatches: Jeffrey Simon on Propaganda, Terror, and the Sons of Liberty
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and expert on terrorism Jeffrey Simon on the Sons of Liberty and the use of propaganda and terrorism in…
Contributor Close-Up: Katie Turner Getty
byWhat inspired you to start researching and writing about the Revolution? It was perhaps inevitable that I would end up studying the Revolution as…
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Smoking the Smallpox Sufferers
byAt about midnight on September 29, 1792, Ashley Bowen and his young assistant, Tucker Huy, heard a carriage clatter up the Boston Road and…
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The Fear of Domination: Resistance Against Tyranny
byThe threat of continued oppression and an encroaching condition of slavery was central to the American colonists’ call for separation from Great Britain and…
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The Sons of Liberty and Mob Terror
byThe day did not start out well for Andrew Oliver. The recently appointed Stamp Act Distributor for colonial Massachusetts awoke on the morning of…
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Lexington and Concord: A Case Study in Leadership and Direct Action
byThe British approach to its American colony in 1775 offers valuable lessons for historians and military professionals in the synthesis between the levels of…
This Week on Dispatchers: Frederic C. Detwiller on the Mysterious “Monsr Dubuq”
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews architect and preservationist Frederic C. Detwiller on the enigmatic French engineer, “Monsr Dubuq,” who was one of the…
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Massachusetts Privateers During the Siege of Boston
byFollowing the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Grand Army surrounded Boston and began to lay siege to it. The Massachusetts Committee of…
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The Beeline March: The Birth of the American Army
byOn a late spring afternoon in 1825, the two Bedinger brothers—Henry and Michael, old men now, seventy-four and sixty-nine respectively, proud immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine—commanded…
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Eyewitness to the British Retreat from Lexington: The Timothy Pickering Letter
byA newly appointed colonel in the Essex County militia, Timothy Pickering led some 700 men of the Salem and Essex militia toward Boston, Massachusetts,…
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Henry Mowatt and the “Wretched” Ship HMS Albany
byIn 1782, when the sixteen-gun sloop-of-war HMS Albany was determined to be at the end of her usefulness, nobody seemed truly surprised or sad about…
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Casualty of Revolution: The Sad Case of Betty Smith
byOn October 1, 1768, two regiments of British infantry with an artillery detachment—witnesses estimated 700 to 800 men in all—disembarked from transports in Boston…
Resolutions Shared by Two Towns 300 Miles Apart
byThe year was 1773. On May 10, Parliament had passed the Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to the…
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Putting a Price on Loyalty: Mary Loring’s List of Losses
byThe Revolutionary War took a heavy toll on Great Britain. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 left it not just bereft of former colonies…
The Dorchester Heights Memorial, South Boston, and the Celebration of Evacuation Day
byOn my way to Boston’s Logan Airport a while ago a taxi driver pointed towards Boston Harbor and started telling me about a Revolutionary…
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Communities Divided: Massachusetts, January to March 1775
byOn January 1, 1775, Charles Stockbridge visited his neighbor’s house in Hanover, Massachusetts, twenty five miles south of Boston. He heard a rumor that…
Struggle for a Lighthouse: The Raids to Destroy the Boston Light
byIn the days following the British pyrrhic victory of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, Gen. George Washington, in his new role as commander-in-chief,…
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The House at Penny Ferry, Burnt: Skirmishes on the Mystic
byIn the summer of 1775, American forces had succeeded in bottling up the British army on the Boston peninsula and laying siege to the…
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The Route is by Way of Winnisimmet: Chelsea and the Refugees
byIt was August 1775 and Belcher Noyes, worried about his son Nathaniel, was writing to him from Boston for a third time. “My dear…
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Anxiety and Distress: Civilians Inside the Siege of Boston
byOver the years, historians have written countless works on the military and political aspects of the Siege of Boston. Unfortunately, little attention has been…
William Ferguson’s Walk on the Ice
byOn Saturday, December 17, 1774, the 10th Regiment of Foot marched out of Boston and into the Massachusetts countryside “to give the men a…
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Visiting Boston’s Liberty Tree Site
by“For it’s a tall old tree and a strong old tree. And we are the sons, yes, we are the sons… the sons of…
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Martin Hurley’s Last Charge
byBy the time he arrived in Boston with the 44th Regiment of Foot, Martin Hurley was an experienced soldier. He’d joined the army in…
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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…
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The Seed from which the Sons of Liberty Grew
byOn March 9, 1764, George Grenville proposed a stamp tax in a speech to Parliament; its purpose was to reduce the cost of maintaining…
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Newton Prince and the Struggle for Liberty
byOn the 5th of March, 1770, Newton Prince heard Boston’s church bells start to ring. He ran to the door of his house and…
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Why Did a Boston Mob Kill a French Officer?
bySome twelve years ago, as I was walking along Boston’s Freedom Trail with my family, I noticed an obelisk and monument in the front…
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The Stamp Act – A Brief History
byWithin a decade of the passage of the Stamp Act, England and her colonies would go to war. The Act would have a profound…
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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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Dissecting the Timeline of Paul Revere’s Ride
byI’m a scientist by training. I received my master’s degree from MIT, which is incidentally where I fell in love with Boston’s revolutionary history….
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Dr. Joseph Warren’s Informant
byWith April 19 nearing, marking the anniversary of the start of the American Revolutionary War (the official regional holiday of Patriot’s Day in New…
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Walking the Streets
of the Revolutionary City
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This article was originally published in Journal of the American Revolution, Vol. 1 (Ertel Publishing, 2013). It was a day of mourning all across…