Soldiers’ celebrations depended on circumstances, personal beliefs, and family or community traditions. David DeSimone notes in his article “Another Look at Christmas in the Eighteenth Century”: [From the seventeenth century the] celebration of Christmas was outlawed in most of New England. Calvinist Puritans and Protestants abhorred the entire celebration and likened it to pagan rituals […]
The Battle of Kings Mountain was fought on October 7, 1780 in the upcountry of South Carolina near the border with North Carolina. As the gunsmoke dissipated and Patriot officers rallied their men, they found themselves victorious and in possession of the mountain-top; but still in danger. British General Charles, Lord Cornwallis and his army […]
The Race to the Dan is a famous part of the Southern War of the American Revolution, a strategic retreat by Gen Nathanael Greene, that once across the Dan River, allowed the Southern Army to regroup and resupply. Ten days later Greene recrossed the Dan, was reinforced and on March 15, 1781 fought the Battle […]
Many early histories of the War of Regulation, which culminated in the May 16, 1771 Battle of Alamance, paint a picture of a Regulator named James Few as a man of either a simple or unstable mind who was unjustly executed. Upon deeper examination, many of the claims made in these histories have inconsistencies and […]
What most Americans know about the Revolutionary War they learned when they were in elementary or middle school. The curricular timing is fortunate in some ways, unfortunate in others. On the one hand, fifth or sixth graders are at the peak of their learning curve. They are delightfully curious, and they read and converse intelligently. […]
For most of the American Revolution, a community of Lenape/Delaware, Munsey, Mahican, and Mingo Indians who had adopted the Christian faith lived along the Tuscarawas River in present-day Ohio with their missionaries from the Moravian Church.[1] The most famous of these were David Zeisberger (1721-1808) and John Heckewelder (1743-1823), who documented their experiences and studies […]
In 1782, six months after Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, Patriot militiamen committed one of the most heinous war crimes of the Revolutionary War. On March 8, between 100 and 200 militia and frontiersmen from western Pennsylvania slaughtered nearly 100 peaceful Indians at the small village of Gnadenhutten, on the Tuscarawas River in present day Ohio.[1] […]
