On January 20, 1781, near New Windsor in the Hudson Highlands of New York, Dr. Samuel Adams wrote a brief entry in the diary he had kept throughout his service as a surgeon attached to the Continental Army’s artillery: “inoculated my waiter and three children of Mr. Smith for the smallpox.”[1] Adams did not seem […]
“The number of sick increasing every day, in all the different Camps of the army,” wrote Capt. John Peebles in his diary on September 5, 1779.[1] Encamped on Manhattan Island eight miles north of the city of New York, at the time rural farmland, the army was beginning to suffer from the consequences of an […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews archivist and JAR contributor Justin McHenry about the heated rivalry between John Morgan and William Shippen over control of the Continental Medical Department. Their professional feud provides an insight into the petty politics and personalities that were as much a part of the Revolutionary era as the great decision […]
