The scene is one of the most famous in the annals of the American Revolutionary War. The commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington, confronts his second-in-command, Charles Lee, in the midst of a retreat by Continental Army forces during the Battle of Monmouth Court House on June 28, 1778. Washington arrives at the […]
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 […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews college student and JAR contributor Alexander Lenarchyk on his discovery that Washington mused on the idea of needing an “asylum” should the war go terribly wrong. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, […]
George Washington’s appointment as commander of the Continental Army filled him with doubt from the start. In his address to the Continental Congress on June 16, 1775, Washington described himself in the best light while at the same time signaling doubt. He declared himself humble to accept the position and explained that he did so […]
BOOK REVIEW: Washington at the Plow: The Founding Father and the Question of Slavery by Bruce A. Ragsdale (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021) In Washington at the Plow: The Founding Father and the Question of Slavery, Bruce Ragsdale provides an in-depth examination of George Washington’s passion for agriculture and the way it changed his […]
Since James Thomas Flexner’s 1974 Pulitzer recognition for his biography of George Washington, one of the axioms of the American founding is that the general, George Washington, was the “indispensable man.”[1] The selection, therefore, of Washington as the commander of the Continental Army was undoubtedly among the most critical decisions in the history of the […]
Mount Vernon was George Washington’s lifetime project, from his inheritance of the property in the mid-1700s until his death in 1799. It was his prized home and final resting place. Today it’s one of the most visited historic sites in the country. This was my first time at Mount Vernon, and I was eager to learn […]
Jonathan Trumbull, Senior is the most important governor in Connecticut’s long history. This is not only because of the many key contributions he made as a patriotic leader to his beloved state of Connecticut during the American Revolution, but just as importantly, what he contributed to help ease the suffering of soldiers under Gen. George […]
After his exploits during the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers (1732-1795) was indisputably the most famous military leader born in the thirteen colonies; however, he played only a cameo role in the Revolution because both the British and American commanders-in-chief, Thomas Gage and George Washington, not only scorned him but actually arrested him for […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Richard Werther talks about his recent article about how small pox threatened to derail the American cause by depleting troops strengths and George Washington’s realization that ordering universal inoculation for his army was necessary to prosecute the war. New episodes of Dispatches are available for […]
BOOK REVIEW: Surveying in Early America: The Point of Beginning, An Illustrated History by Dan Patterson and Clinton Terry (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2021) One of the first things that people may learn about George Washington is that his earliest professional experience was in the field of surveying. He did this briefly, until his half-brother […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews distinguished historian and writer Gregory J. W. Urwin about his recent JAR article, “The Yorktown Tragedy,” examining George Washington’s order following the American and French victory at Yorktown to round up enslaved persons who had fled to the British, and return them into bondage. New episodes of Dispatches […]
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the founders of the new American Republic were lurching forward from the shockingly successful outcome of their increasingly remote Revolution, and finding themselves immersed in the uncharted waters of nation-building. The political landscape was inflamed by passionate partisanship and varying, often vituperatively expressed visions of what course […]
The debate over mandatory vaccination for Covid-19 has led to many articles referring to how George Washington handled a similar issue, this one involving smallpox, with the Continental Army early in the American Revolution. With the advantage of hindsight, the decision Washington made to fully inoculate (not vaccinate) his army may today seem obvious, but […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian, decorated Marine veteran, and JAR contributor Patrick Hannum on the historic meeting between George Washington, French admiral, Comte de Grasse, and French general Comte de Rochambeau during the Yorktown campaign. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, […]
On October 19, 1781, Gen. George Washington attained his apex as a soldier. Straddling a spirited charger at the head of a formidable Franco-American army, Washington watched impassively as 6,000 humiliated British, German, and Loyalist soldiers under the command of Lt. Gen. Charles, Second Earl Cornwallis, emerged from their fortifications to lay down their arms […]
On March 6, 2019, a chilly late winter afternoon, the Virginia Beach Historic Preservation Commission dedicated a Virginia Historical Highway Marker to commemorate a historic meeting of three commanders. On September 18, 1781, Adm. François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, Gen. George Washington, and Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, met on board […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews USMA instructor and JAR contributor Jonathan Curran on his research into how public opinion about those protesting the taxes on whiskey in Western Pennsylvania changed over the course of the conflict. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Patriotism & Profit: Washington, Hamilton, Schuyler & the Rivalry for America’s Capital City by Susan Nagel (Pegasus Books, 2021). In Patriotism & Profit: Washington, Hamilton, Schuyler & the Rivalry for American’s Capital City, Susan Nagel recounts the drama surrounding the Compromise of 1790 and the protracted struggle over the location of the nation’s capital. […]
At the beginning of March 1777, Arthur Lee, a delegate to the United States Congress, urgently requested to meet with the Marquis de Grimaldi, who until just a few weeks before had been the Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs of King Carlos III of Spain, and who was now on his way to take […]
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 […]
George Washington slept here. After the commander in chief was summoned to Princeton, New Jersey during the summer of 1783, and finding no rooms for rent, certainly not anything sizeable enough to serve his needs, Washington, his wife Martha, their servants and enslaved persons, and a small company of soldiers managed to find a place […]
First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington by Peter R. Henriques (University of Virginia Press, 2020). With so many books already written about the Founding Fathers, some believe there is nothing new to be learned about those men. George Mason professor emeritus and George Washington scholar Peter Henriques shows us in First and […]
In the weeks before it declared independence, the Continental Congress was already hard at work building the institutions it would need to maintain the new republic. In June 1776, a committee was appointed to explore articles that would link the thirteen provincial legislatures in a loose confederation. A second was tasked to consider how the […]
In this week’s program from the Dispatches archives, recorded in February 2019, host Brady Crytzer interviews distinguished historian Colin G. Calloway about his book, The Indian World of George Washington, winner of the 2018 Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year. Later this month, the 2020 Journal of the American Revolution Book Award will be […]
William “Will” Costin was found dead in his own bed on the morning of May 31, 1842. Washington City’s leading newspaper, the Daily National Intelligencer, reported the passing of this “free colored man, aged 62 years,” then praised Costin’s years of service to the Bank of Washington, the capital’s largest. Costin’s job sounds modest today—he […]
When the major European powers began to use light troops in the mid-eighteenth century, they typically employed them in a manner of war that the French labeled as la petite guerre. Troops participating in la petite guerre operated separately from the main army, often using speed and maneuver for quick attacks and ambushes in support of […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Pulitzer-prize winning historian Thomas E. Ricks on his new book, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, recently reviewed in JAR. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, […]
First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned From the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks (New York, NY: Harper Colins Publishers, 2020) Author Thomas E. Ricks (Churchill and Orwell, 2017; Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006) started his work on First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned From the […]
This month we asked our contributors: If George Washington had not run for President in 1789, who would you like to have had as a candidate (regardless of whether they were eligible based on the rules of time)? Michael J. F. Sheehan Dr. Benjamin Franklin, aside from Washington, was the only person in America […]
Alexandria, Virginia, is well known as George Washington’s hometown, but its role during the American Revolution is not widely understood. Like the rest of Northern Virginia, Alexandria was largely spared the fierce warfare that raged across the country. Nonetheless, the Revolution profoundly affected the community. Founded in 1749 along the Potomac River, Alexandria was a […]
Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2020) George Washington and Early Republic scholar Edward J. Larson (author of The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783-1789 and A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign) has produced a new work focusing on […]
This list presents the graves of ten soldiers who made remarkable contributions to the founding of the United States and who have a headstone or memorial that is unique in its design. Each of the tombs or graves on the list are in the eastern United States. After George Washington, this list is not in […]
The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington by Martha Saxton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) Historians who have studied Mary Ball Washington described her in a not so favorable light. She was overbearing, overprotective, selfish, imposing, and crude; it is from her that historians have credited George Washington’s desire to escape the clutches […]
It was the one of the worst defeats suffered by the Americans during the War for Independence, certainly the worst over which George Washington had direct command. Historian David McCullough perhaps characterized the debacle best, writing that after experiencing “one humiliating, costly reverse after another,” during the New York campaign of 1776, “the surrender of […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews White House historian and author Lindsay M. Chervinsky about her new book on George Washington and the creation of the Cabinet of the United States. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a free podcast that puts […]
On the 170th anniversary of Washington’s Birthday in 1902, the Delaware Society of the Cincinnati formed a procession of dignitaries and marched up Quaker Hill, the southwestern residential area of Wilmington. The ceremony continued to West Street, a north-south avenue named after an early settler. They stopped in the middle of a row of houses […]
The 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 Washington, a seminal work published in 1904, has long been considered by collectors as the most prized of all the portraits of Washington. Among other reasons, it is the first engraved […]
The Philadelphia Campaign of 1777 took definitive shape when Gen. William Howe successfully landed his 16,000 officers and men near Head of Elk (now Elkton), Maryland, on August 25, 1777, the very day that Washington set up his headquarters at a house atop Quaker Hill in the southwestern portion of Wilmington, Delaware, while his advanced […]