The January 6, 2021 assault on the Capital rocked America, but it was by no means the largest, or even the most threatening, armed rebellion in the post-Revolutionary War era. In 1786 and 1787, Daniel Shays, a middle-class farmer and decorated Continental Army captain, was one of several leaders of as many as four thousand […]
The status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was an average, unpretentious farmer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time than with specific displays of courage. A deeper look at his activities reveals years of service first as […]
Jemima Howe (1724–1805), a pioneer woman of the early Vermont frontier wilderness, survived a 1755 abduction along with her seven children ranging from six months to eleven years old, three years of captivity in French-Canada, and three husbands, the first two killed by Abenaki.[1] The early American literary genre of Indian captivity narratives presented the […]
Discussions about the American evacuation of Mount Independence and Fort Ticonderoga on the night of July 5, 1777 frequently address the question: could shot from artillery on Mount Defiance (commonly called Sugar Hill in the eighteenth century) reach Mount Independence and Ticonderoga? Those who believe it could use that potential as support for the decision […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews writer, editor, researcher, and JAR contributor Edna Gabler on her recent study of images of enslaved persons in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraits and paintings of Revolutionary War subjects. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, […]
“His Britannic Majesty shall with all convenient speed, and without causing any Destruction, or carrying away any Negroes or other Property of the American inhabitants, withdraw . . . from said United States.” These words from the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially brought the seven-year American Revolution to a close guaranteed America’s independence from […]
The booming roar of cannon shattered the stillness of the warm summer air around Boston. A thirty-two pound cannonball screamed through the sky toward the Continental army encampment in Roxbury. Smashing through the wall of a house and tearing through two partitions, the shot ripped through a room where soldiers were eating breakfast. The ball […]
Yesterday marked the 170th anniversary of the commemoration of the Bunker Hill Monument. It took the Bunker Hill Monument Association, thousands of individual donors, a craft and bake sale organized by Sarah Josepha Hale, a large donation from philanthropist Judah Touro, and seventeen years to complete construction of the 221-foot tall obelisk, the first major […]
The American Revolution and the decade of disputes with Great Britain that preceded it marked a major turning point in the development of political thought in the colonies. The new ideologies often reflected where an individual’s political loyalties lay. While much attention has been focused on the political transformation that occurred during this era, little […]
