The description of the United States as an “Empire of Liberty” is one of the most often repeated phrases of the American founding. Long associated with Thomas Jefferson, the phrase has been used by statesmen and authors alike. But what does “Empire of Liberty” mean? What were Jefferson’s intentions with the phrase and what are […]
In 1777, the third year of the American War for Independence, little had gone in the favor of the Patriots especially in the borderlands. They controlled Fort Pitt and several other outposts, but they were far from the main fighting; the region was considered a backwater theater. British governor of Detroit Henry Hamilton issued a […]
Book Review: Cavalry in the Wilderness: Cavalry in the Western Theater of the American Revolutionary War and the French and Indian War by Stephen L. Kling, Jr. (St. Louis, MO: THGC Publishing, 2021) As author Steven L. Kling, Jr., notes in the preface to Cavalry in the Wilderness, until recently cavalry operations in the American Revolution […]
We asked our contributors: Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era (other than Benedict Arnold) is remembered for the wrong reasons, and why? Jason Yonce Silas Deane, like his friend Benedict Arnold, contributed so much to the patriot cause only to fall from grace. His infamous letter to Robert Morris could have […]
The phrase “fourteenth colony” describes a province in British North America that did not revolt alongside the original thirteen colonies. Such a province usually had one or more connections to the American Revolution. The phrase is misleading and has been thrown around freely in literature on the Revolutionary era. There have been at least eight […]
The settlers who chose to make their homes in the upper Ohio in the mid to late eighteenth century faced a wide variety of challenges to survive in this backcountry, ranging from the distance to centers of trade and population to the difficulty in practicing agriculture in old-growth forests. That this frontier, the area surrounding […]
When the American Revolution began, the Virginia Colony faced not one military-territorial contest, but four. Its ousted Royal governor, Lord Dunmore, was in the Chesapeake actively plotting a forcible return to power. A longstanding dispute with Pennsylvania over the headwaters of the Ohio had turned violent. A formal peace with the Shawnee on the northwest […]
George Rogers Clark and William Croghan: A Story of the Revolution, Settlement, and Early Life at Locust Grove by Gwynne Tuell Potts (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020) “The phenomenon of fame confounds and fascinates, indiscriminately raising some to glory while consigning apparent equals to exile.” This is Gwynne Tuell Potts’s insight in her new book […]
In 1774, as tensions between colonials and Native Americans living along the upper Ohio River grew, settlers either fled east of the mountains or forted up. During the summer, Maj. Angus McDonald of the Virginia militia marched over the Appalachians to Wheeling on the Ohio River and joined the locals like Ebenezer Zane, the town’s founder, […]
During the American Revolution, British-allied Native Americans raided American homesteads and settlements all along the Ohio Valley. As the war progressed, the increased frequency and ever-widening circle of Indian raids forced the Continental Congress and Army to respond. In 1778, a Congressional committee studied the matter and concluded that a defensive war “would not only […]
The story of the Revolutionary War tends to focus on operations and events east of the Appalachian Mountains, with good reason as most of the war took place in at area. West of the mountains, the story of George Rogers Clark in the Ohio Valley is famous and found in many history books. The expedition […]
For a high ranking British official about to be captured by Rebel forces, it was an ominous portent of future treatment. Surrounded at the frontier outpost of Fort Sackville on the Wabash River, Detroit Lt. Gov. Henry Hamilton received a less than cordial demand for surrender on the morning of February 24, 1779. In an […]
Having recently discovered Journal of the American Revolution, I have spent many hours reading through the archive. I particularly enjoy reading the discussions that Top 10 Lists provoke and benefiting from such an incredible exchange of information and opinions. As there is a Top 10 List for Continental Army Generals, I decided to compile this […]
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 […]
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 […]
