Most stories have a chief villain. The story of the American Revolution is no different. One man stands out amongst all the rest in the minds of Massachusetts revolutionary leaders. James Otis, Samuel Adams, and especially John Adams accused Thomas Hutchinson as being the architect of all the oppressive laws that were being passed by […]
Americans made repeated unsuccessful attempts during the Revolution to capture Canada and incorporate it into the nascent United States. The British, meanwhile, attempted to incorporate additional territory into Canada. This territory, though not yet part of the United States, would eventually become so. As such, this effort also failed. If that weren’t enough, as with […]
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 […]
When John Adams returned to Massachusetts after the session of the First Continental Congress, he was surprised to find that there was growing opposition to the radicals and the work of the Congress. It was led by a man who identified himself as “Massachusettensis.” On December 12, 1774 Massachusettensis published the first of a series […]
On May 7, 1757, Thomas Pownall sailed from England for Boston to take his post as the governor of Massachusetts. Aboard the ship was George Lord Howe, an army officer. The two men developed a friendship over the three month voyage. On July 8, 1758, Lord Howe, a brigadier general, led the right center column […]
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 slave trade and then slavery itself had to start somewhere, and a strong argument can be made that it started with the thirteen American colonies gaining independence from Great Britain, then […]
At about midnight on September 29, 1792, Ashley Bowen and his young assistant, Tucker Huy, heard a carriage clatter up the Boston Road and arrive at the Marblehead gate. Upon learning the “coach-full of men” had come from Boston, Bowen brooked no complaints when he approached the carriage and informed the passengers, “You must be […]
The British approach to its American colony in 1775 offers valuable lessons for historians and military professionals in the synthesis between the levels of wartime leadership and their effect on direct action at the tactical level. As such, it is worthwhile to reflect on the British experience in 1775, and how guidance from strategic and […]
Following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Grand Army surrounded Boston and began to lay siege to it. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety quickly recognized that in order to drive the British army from the town, it had to starve them out.[1] The British military had a longstanding practice of acquiring fresh provisions […]
For much of the Revolutionary War, the relative obscurity and isolation of the three Massachusetts counties of York, Cumberland, and Lincoln along the coast of present day Maine protected the inhabitants from British threats. This changed in June 1779, when Gen. Francis McLean and 700 British troops, escorted by a handful of British warships and […]
While the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was on holiday in the summer of 1774, his office continued to receive and send communications concerning the political divergence with the American colonies. The general issues were the Quebec Act, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the Non-Importation Agreement, […]
On July 2, 1778, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hanged Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner and Continental soldier Ezra Ross, together with British soldiers Sgt. James Buchanan and Pvt. William Brooks. They had been convicted of the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Joshua Spooner, in “the most extraordinary crime ever perpetrated in New England.”[1] The trial was the first […]
Mary Robie, a Massachusetts refugee living in revolutionary Nova Scotia, did not mince words when she criticized her friends for simply “passing thro life” in late May 1783. Despairingly, the nineteen-year-old mocked the tedium of her peers’ routines as fitting for those “whose views extend no higher” than the daily humdrum of Halifax. In Robie’s […]
It was August 1775 and Belcher Noyes, worried about his son Nathaniel, was writing to him from Boston for a third time. “My dear son: Have received no letter from you since May 27, which I duly answered 3d June … I wrote you May 25, both of which I hope came safe to your […]
“I have nothing to send you but love. I hope I shall have some money soon.”[1] So wrote Lt. Joseph Hodgkins from his “Camp on Long Island” to his wife, Sarah, back home in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The letter was dated June 10, 1776, so Sarah’s husband had already been away from his wife and family […]
The winter of 1774-75 had been difficult for the colonists nestled near the falls of the Machias River on the far eastern edge of Massachusetts (present day Maine). First settled in 1763, the small village of Machias, just 30 miles from the border of Canada, was a lonely outpost on the rocky coast. Heavily dependent […]
“For it’s a tall old tree and a strong old tree. And we are the sons, yes, we are the sons… the sons of liberty”[1]. So went the catchy song that the tea-dumping Sons of Liberty sang loudly in the streets that night, all in perfect harmony and accompanied by mysterious instruments that came out […]
On April 24, General Gage sent his account of the confrontations at Lexington and Concord aboard the 200-ton, cargo-ladened Sukey to Lord Barrington, the Secretary of War and to the Earl of Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the Colonies.[1] His letter to Lord Barrington, written on the 22nd, began with an understated opening sentence: […]
The story of the Boston Tea Party has been told and retold endlessly. It has become a part of American mythos. On the evening of December 16, 1773 in Boston a group of 100 to 150 citizens, dressed like Indians, descended on three ships loaded with tea from England. Politely, but firmly, they demanded the […]
When historians think of Continental generals of the Revolutionary War, many familiar names come to mind. Henry Knox, who rose from a bookseller to the commander of the Continental Army’s artillery. Benedict Arnold, the dynamic battlefield leader whose name has become a synonym for traitor. Daniel Morgan, the “Old Wagoner” that defeated Britain’s best in […]
Joseph Paugenit, Jonas Obscow, Anthony Jeremiah, Simon Peney, Obadiah Wicket, and Alexander Quapish. These are not household names to the average history enthusiast. But they are among the two hundred Indians from eastern Massachusetts who fought in the Revolutionary War. Few people are aware of the contributions that these and another thousand or more Native […]
On March 9, 1764, George Grenville proposed a stamp tax in a speech to Parliament; its purpose was to reduce the cost of maintaining 10,000 garrisoned soldiers in North America. Grenville claimed it would be similar to the one administered in England in 1694.[1] Eleven months later, on February 17, the Act was passed in […]
On the 5th of March, 1770, Newton Prince heard Boston’s church bells start to ring. He ran to the door of his house and heard “the cry of fire.” Putting on his shoes, Prince went out to help fight the blaze, as town inhabitants were supposed to do. On the streets he asked other men […]
On Tuesday, October 9, 1781, at 5:00 that afternoon, as an American flag unfurled over Grand Battery 13A at Yorktown, George Washington personally set light to an eighteen-pounder announcing to Charles Cornwallis that his end was not far off. As the hurtling ball spent itself, it left behind a wake of devastation killing the British […]
The biggest myth of Paul Revere’s ride may not be that Revere watched for the lantern signal from the North Church spire, as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem described. Nor that he was a lone rider carrying Dr. Joseph Warren’s warning all the way from Boston to Concord. Nor even that Revere yelled, “The British are […]
Myth: “The fate of a nation was riding that night,” Longfellow wrote. Fortunately, a heroic rider from Boston woke up the sleepy-eyed farmers just in time. Thanks to Revere, the farmers grabbed their muskets and the American Revolution was underway: “And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, / Kindled the land […]
I’m a scientist by training. I received my master’s degree from MIT, which is incidentally where I fell in love with Boston’s revolutionary history. So, when I first began researching my forthcoming book on Revolutionary Boston, I approached the research very scientifically, considering things like moonlight phases, sunsets,[1] horse gaits and their associated speeds,[2] and […]
In his 1936 biography Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, John C. Miller wrote this about the leader of Boston’s Whig activists: Sam Adams discovered these taverns with their “tippling, nasty, vicious crew” excellent recruiting grounds for the mobs he later raised against the Tories and Crown officers. Adams himself was a familiar figure in Boston […]
Richard C. Wiggin is the author of Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783. This book is a very detailed study of all the Revolutionary War soldiers from one American town, designed to preserve their names and biographical information. In the late nineteenth century, many town histories contained a chapter […]
If Ray Raphael had a personal mission statement, it would likely be three sentences from a recent profile story in Reed magazine: Ray wants to rescue history from mythology. He wants our understanding of revolutionary America to be based on evidence, not ideological convenience. And he won’t stop until he gets it right. I’ve had […]
In mid May 1775, just weeks after the bloody Battle of April Nineteenth had sparked the start of the American Revolution, the perhaps first naval skirmish of the Revolution was waged. I am not referring to the Battle of Chelsea Creek near Boston on May 27-28, 1775. True, British warships were involved at Chelsea Creek, […]
“Tory Stories” After attending the “No Tax on Tea!” program at the Old South Meeting House, I walked to nearby King’s Chapel, the first Anglican Church in Massachusetts.[1] The steeple-less, hand-hewn, granite-block church sits on the edge of Boston’s first burial ground. In 1686, Governor Edmund Andros thwarted the Puritans’ refusal to sell land to […]
My Quest As a historian, I am interested in how people understand and interact with the past. I find the question of how present-day Americans relate to the American Revolution and War for Independence particularly fascinating. This curiosity led me to explore the 32nd Annual Boston Harborfest, the largest Fourth of July celebration in the […]
Dear Mr. History: I’m familiar with General John Glover and believe he is an unsung hero (except for Billias’s book over 50 years ago). From his exploits as the first privateer to holding off the flanking force at Pell’s Point and managing the boat lifts from Brooklyn and crossing the Delaware, among other efforts, he […]
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 […]
Myth: Americans did not formally resolve for independence until 1776. Busted: On October 4, 1774, the town meeting of Worcester, Massachusetts, declared that British rule was over and it was time to form a new government, not answerable to the Crown and Parliament. This act by a public body was twenty-one months before Congress approved […]
When researching the biography of Revolutionary War hero Dr. Joseph Warren, I had the unexpected pleasure of becoming acquainted with his fiancée Miss Mercy Scollay. Readers of the Journal of the American Revolution may already be familiar with Joseph Warren as the author of the foundational Suffolk Resolves, head of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety […]
Myth: The American Revolution started at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Busted: All of contiguous Massachusetts – except Boston! – cast off British rule in a revolution that swept through the countryside more than half a year earlier, from August to October, 1774. On September 6, 1774, at dawn and through the morning, […]
