Hell’s Half-Acre: The Fall of Loyalist Crean Brush
byOn October 18, 1777, New York provincial assemblyman, and tory, Crean Brush, penned his final will and testament from prison in Boston. After nineteen…
Loyalists
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The Odyssey of Loyalist Colonel Samuel Bryan
byColonel Samuel Bryan is thought to be the highest-ranking Loyalist officer to remain in the United States after the Revolutionary War. Despite being a…
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William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham and the Bloody Scout
byOn or about November 19, 1781, a Loyalist officer named William Cunningham and his regiment of approximately three hundred men rode toward Hayes Station,…
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Showdown Over a Schooner: The Battle of East Guilford, the Final Engagement in Connecticut
byAt dawn, on Sunday, May 19, 1782, “a large new schooner” moved steadily eastward across Long Island Sound. At the helm was Capt. James…
Review: Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic
byResisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic by Brad A. Jones (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021) In Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the…
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Loyalist Slave-Owning Refugees in Postwar Jamaica
byThe two forces of paternalism and slavery shaped the lives of Loyalist slaveowners in the postwar British Empire. Historians rarely connect these forces in…
This Week on Dispatches: Todd Braisted on Benjamin Thompson’s Black Dragoons
byOn this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews researcher, writer, and JAR contributor Todd Braisted on loyalist Benjamin Thompson—later Count Mumford—and the provincial mounted regiment that…
This Week on Dispatches: Mark Sullivan on Francis and Gottlieb Otto, Loyalists or Rebels?
byOn this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews writer, historian, and twenty-five year US Army veteran Mark Sullivan on his recent JAR article about…
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Colonel Tye: Leader of Loyalist Raiders—and Runaway Slave
byJohn Corlis (sometimes spelled Corlies) was a Quaker land owner who resided in Shrewsbury Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. He along with his mother…
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Francis and Gottlieb Otto: Rebels or Loyalists?
byDuring the American Revolution it could be difficult to determine who was supporting the American cause and who remained loyal to Great Britain. Many…
This Week on Dispatches: Kevin A. Conn on the Remarkable Career of Loyalist Soldier and Spy James Moody
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews AP History teacher and JAR contributor Kevin A. Conn on the remarkable career of New Jersey Loyalist…
Biographical Sketches of Royal Militia Commanders in the South Carolina Mid- and Lowcountry, North Carolina, and Georgia, 1780–82
byIntroduction This article supplements one relating to royal militia commanders in the South Carolina Backcountry that appeared in the Journal of the American Revolution…
This Week on Dispatches: Eric Wiser on the Outlaw Cornelius Hatfield
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Eric Wiser tells the fascinating story of notorious Loyalist partisan and British spy, Cornelius Hatfield,…
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The Battle of Shallow Ford, October 14, 1780
byIn September 1780, writing from Hillsborough, North Carolina, just one month after the disastrous defeat at Camden, Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates penned a disconcerted…
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The First Efforts to Limit the African Slave Trade Arise in the American Revolution: Part 2 of 3, The Middle and Southern Colonies
byThe first article of this series discussed the increasing chorus of American Patriots in New England raising their voices against the African slave trade….
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Minorcans, New Smyrna, and the American Revolution in East Florida
byBeyond Florida’s state boundaries the history of New Smyrna is seldom mentioned.[1] Well known to the locals of New Smyrna Beach, the region’s settlement by…
A Painter Abroad: John Singleton Copley Writes to His Wife
byIt may have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s patriotic paean that belatedly canonized a heroic horseman as a key figure of the American Revolution, but…
This Week on Dispatches: Matthew Reardon on the Whaleboat Wars on the Connecticut River
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews history teacher and JAR contributor Matthew Reardon on the Loyalist raid up the Connecticut River in 1782 when…
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1774: The Long Year of Revolution
by1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton (Knopf, 2020) Although previous works have tried to draw attention to “The Missing 16…
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Cornwallis and the Winter Campaign, January to April 1781
byLeaving Colonel Francis Lord Rawdon to command in the field from Georgetown to Augusta, Lt. Gen. Charles Earl Cornwallis, the British General Officer Commanding…
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Teaching the American Revolution with Simulations
byWhat most Americans know about the Revolutionary War they learned when they were in elementary or middle school. The curricular timing is fortunate in…
The East Florida Gazette, 1783–1784
byEast Florida only had one newspaper in the colony’s entire history. The newspaper went live during the final year of the American War for…
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Plight of the Loyalist Refugees of Lloyd’s Neck, Long Island
byQueens County of Long Island, New York, had an overwhelming Loyalist population throughout the Revolutionary War period. After the war many Loyalists remained on…
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Maj. Gen. John Sullivan and the Occupation of Easton, Pennsylvania, May 7–June 18, 1779
byFor a brief seven weeks, the Pennsylvania frontier village of Easton became the second largest community within the state. With an estimated 25,000 inhabitants,…
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Tapping America’s Wealth to Fund the Revolution: Two Good Ideas that Went Awry
by“Unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place,” Gen. George Washington wrote from Valley Forge on December 23, 1777,[1] to Henry Laurens, the…
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Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation: Information and Slavery
byLord Dunmore, John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore (1730-1809) and Royal Governor of Virginia (1771-1776),[1] was an important political and military figure during…
St. Paul’s Church, New York: A Revolutionary War Site
byNestled amid factories, automotive shops and diners in an industrial section of southern New York, just a short walk from the Bronx boundary, sits…
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Isaac Roosevelt: Merchant, Federalist, Banker, New Yorker
byOn Saturday September 17, 1938 New York governor Herbert H. Lehman and 5,000 others assembled in Poughkeepsie to observe the sesquicentennial of the Empire…
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Enoch Crosby: A Hudson Valley Spy in Fact and Fiction
byJames Fenimore Cooper published his wildly popular second novel, The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground, in 1821. The book tells the story…
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Milton’s Odyssey: The Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Service of Georgia’s John Milton
byGeorgia’s fragile independence within the new American republic was shattered on December 29, 1778, when British troops attacked Savannah. Despite clear signs that the…
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Worthy of Commemmoration
byWe recently ran an article about monuments commemorating the American Revolution. We asked our contributors: If you could commission a monument, what would you…
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Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789
byRevolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789 by Joseph M. Adelman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) An explosion of new…
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James Moore’s Commission in the East Florida Rangers
byUnder the leadership of Royal Governor Patrick Tonyn, East Florida remained in the hands of the British Crown during the Imperial Crisis, not an…
This Week on Dispatches: Joseph Wroblewski on the Queen’s Rangers during the British Occupation of Philadelphia
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews educator and JAR contributor Joseph Wroblewski on the operations of the Queen’s Rangers during the British occupation of…
Cornwallis Quits Charlotte, Abandoning the Autumn Campaign of 1780
byThis article is a companion piece to one of mine that appeared in this journal on July 18, 2017. Beginning with the start of the…
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Jacob Duché: Mixing Religion and Politics During the Revolution
byIn a country in which one of the main constitutional principles is separation of church and state, it is counter-intuitive to find that there…
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“That Damned Absurd Word Liberty:” Les Habitants, the Quebec Act, and American Revolutionary Ideology, 1774–1776
byThe American invasion of Quebec of 1775-1776 failed to achieve its primary objective: to bring into the fold what the Continental Congress referred to…
This Week on Dispatches: Tristan J. New on Joseph Galloway’s Efforts for a Peaceful Resolution with Great Britain
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews budding scholar Tristan J. New about Joseph Galloway and his proposal for a peaceful political resolution with…
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Midsummer 1780 in the Carolinas and Georgia—Events predating the Battle of Camden
byBesides dealing with events elsewhere, this article relates in particular the plight of the Carolina loyalists and the way in which British ascendancy in…