On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor and writer Eric Sterner on the Siege of Fort Henry on the Virginia frontier in 1782. The siege is notable for the bravery of Elizabeth “Betty” Zane, who risked her life to bring much needed gunpowder back to the fort. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the […]
In the fall of 1777, the Continental Congress had reached one of its most desperate points of the American Revolution. In September of that year George Washington had been defeated by the forces of Sir William Howe at Brandywine, the Battle of the Clouds, Paoli, and Germantown. Because of this failure the British captured the […]
In Hollywood terms, biographies of Daniel Boone might be advertised as, “Based on a true story.” Daniel Boone being known as a legendary Kentucky trailblazer is an undisputed fact in American history. That he was a backcountry militia leader during the Revolutionary War is a fact substantiated primarily by sketchy frontier rosters and pension statements […]
Taxation without representation has been the traditionally accepted cause of the American Revolution. Such an understanding of the Revolution, while valid, does not give credit to its complexity. An often-neglected aspect of Virginia’s American Revolution experience is the importance of the frontier. Soil exhaustion, a recurrent problem of Virginia’s tobacco economy, turned planters into land […]
The British defeat at Yorktown in October 1781 did little to convince those fighting that peace was near. Gen. George Washington pleaded with his French naval ally, Admiral de Grasse, for a campaign against other British strongholds, perhaps in the Carolinas. When Grasse, instead, returned to the Caribbean, Washington began planning for his 1782 campaign […]
From the outset, it was a military operation whose strategic goals were combined with a fierce quest for vengeance. On January 3, 1778, Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark received a congratulatory note from Virginia’s executive council, which had approved a campaign into the far reaches of the Illinois country. Although the British post at Kaskaskia […]
Remember when I wrote that nobody ever said life on the Pennsylvania frontier was easy?[1] Well, as it turns out, it was a lot more difficult than even I previously thought. Between battling it out with Connecticut Yankees and Indians, dealing with localized violence, and having to put up with a relatively untrained and undisciplined […]
While the War of American Independence was won on the Eastern seaboard by American and French battling the British, the future of the United States was determined in small, seemingly inconsequential battles in the western theatre. The battles west of the Appalachian Mountains would shape the destiny of the American nation by determining what land would become the United […]
Throughout time men have cringed at the notion of being thought a coward. A reputation for lack of courage can be and always has been devastating to a young man. This was never more true than on the American frontier in the 18th century when a man’s ability to defend his family and his value […]
Because the heat was oppressive, and perhaps because the dinner and drink sat heavy in his gut, John Jouett Jr. curled up beneath the great elm in the yard at Cuckoo Tavern to catch a few winks.[1] Despite the revelry droning on in the background, “Jack,” as his friends called him, was soon fast asleep. […]
