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John Adams was making his way from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania for a convening of the delegates tasked to craft a response to the Coercive…
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Thomas Jefferson has a Thucydidean, or fact-based, approach to the praxis of history. Evidence of that approach appeared early in his life, in his…
“I, A. B.do promise and declare that I will remain in a peaceable Obedience to His Majesty, and will not take up Arms, nor…
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It would be hard to find a more strident, vocal supporter of popular government during America’s founding period than Thomas Paine. The proposals put…
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor David Otersen on the influence of political philosopher Alergnon Sidney on Thomas Jefferson, John Adams,…
Georgia did not send a delegation to the first Continental Congress in 1774. The least populous colony of the thirteen British colonies in North…
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Algernon Sidney was a seventeenth-century British political theorist, Member of Parliament, and Whig politician who was executed for treason on December 7, 1683, during…
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR contributor Shawn David McGhee explains how a plot was devised to unseat Vice President…
Scholars typically cast the outcome of the second presidential election as either a forgone conclusion or a non-event.[1] After all, George Washington ran unchallenged…
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As a collateral descendant of Daniel Hitchcock (first cousin, nine times removed), I have always been fascinated by the short but important life of…
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In the Spring of 1776, as the American Revolution was underway the movement of the Colonies towards independence was just starting to gain steam….
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The American Revolution spurred the world’s first significant movement to abolish slavery and the African slave trade.[1] Before then, there was virtually no antislavery…
Alexander Hamilton penned most of the famous series of essays called the Federalist Papers. In Federalist 71, published in March 1788, he wrote this…
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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…
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BOOK REVIEW: Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence by Robert G. Parkinson (Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early…
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor James M. Smith on the political, legal, and philosophical influences considered by the First…
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It is not exactly a secret that John Adams was a fan of cider. The Massachusetts-born second President’s love of the drink has been…
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During the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the political philosophers of Europe were writing and discussing some new and radical ideas on…
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the founders of the new American Republic were lurching forward from the shockingly successful outcome of…
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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…
At the beginning of March 1777, Arthur Lee, a delegate to the United States Congress, urgently requested to meet with the Marquis de Grimaldi,…
The story of Thomas Knowlton in the American Revolution is brief but meaningful. He was only thirty-five at his death, arguably a full-fledged hero…
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Speaking on Independence Day, 1821, John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the Unites States and the son of John Adams, a signer of the…
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We asked our contributors: Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era (other than Benedict Arnold) is remembered for the wrong reasons,…
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After the events at Lexington and Concord on April 19, it appeared that military force of some sort might be warranted in dealing with…
As part of the debate over the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, John Adams wrote a series of letter to the Boston Gazette discussing the…
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When John Adams returned to Massachusetts after the session of the First Continental Congress, he was surprised to find that there was growing opposition…
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Thomas Read (1740-1788) was the middle son of the Read family of New Castle, Delaware. His older brother George was a delegate to the…
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Here’s one of the things I love most about Boston: If it were possible to drop Paul Revere in downtown today, he could, quite…
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In the weeks before it declared independence, the Continental Congress was already hard at work building the institutions it would need to maintain the…
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John Adams was certain he made a mistake by going to church. Philadelphia’s yellow fever outbreak only ended in November 1793. On Sunday, December…
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…
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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…
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The Routledge Guide to Paine’s Rights of Man by Frances A. Chiu (London & New York: Routledge, 2020) The American Revolution, John Adams famously wrote…
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The American Revolution changed the way Americans viewed one of the world’s great tragedies: the African slave trade. The long march to end the…
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and former White House webmaster, Jane Hampton Cook on Abigail Adams’s advice to her husband John…
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Women in all states won the universal right to vote one hundred years ago through the ratification of the United States Constitution’s 19th Amendment…
In 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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To Thomas Jefferson, great plagues were within the genus of republican antibodies. Like the occasional popular insurrection that warned rulers “the spirit of resistance”…