The Articles of Confederation and Western Expansion
byThe Articles of Confederation described the first government of the new United States. As one may imagine from understanding the later debates on the…
The Articles of Confederation described the first government of the new United States. As one may imagine from understanding the later debates on the…
“The Chiefs Now in This City:” Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America by Colin G. Calloway (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021) BOOK…
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known…
BOOK REVIEW: Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence by Robert G. Parkinson (Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early…
When John Adams returned to Massachusetts after the session of the First Continental Congress, he was surprised to find that there was growing opposition…
In this week’s program from the Dispatches archives, recorded in February 2019, host Brady Crytzer interviews distinguished historian Colin G. Calloway about his book, The Indian…
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, in the first half of the eighteenth century, and John Taylor of Caroline in the 1790s, both feared that…
In the wake of the Seven Years’ War in North America, the costly British triumph seemed complete. Thus, when a coda to the Seven…
In 1774, as tensions between colonials and Native Americans living along the upper Ohio River grew, settlers either fled east of the mountains or…
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Eric Sterner about the Gnadenhutten Massacre, the murder of ninety-six Delaware Indians—men, women, and children—at a…
We recently ran an article about monuments commemorating the American Revolution. We asked our contributors: If you could commission a monument, what would you…
Along with the Civil War, the American Revolution is one of the two most iconic events in American history. The Revolution has inspired countless…
With the Revolutionary War in full swing by August 1776, George Galphin penned a letter to his nephew, Timothy Barnard. Galphin started his letter…
Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776, by Patrick Spero (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018) In most standard histories of…
In June 1777, Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant governor for Quebec and Superintendent for Indian Affairs at Detroit, held a council at Detroit with…
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…
In February 1791, when local Indian trader Joseph Marie Junin was found dead, shot twice in the head in his cabin in what is…
When war came to down east Maine in the spring of 1775, a rough frontiersman named Andrew Gilman joined the patriot cause. He served…
In 1782, six months after Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, Patriot militiamen committed one of the most heinous war crimes of the Revolutionary War. On…
Setting aside the question of whether or not the American Revolution was as radical as Gordon Wood famously argued that it was, at least…
Two months after Spain entered the American Revolutionary War on June 21, 1779, the governor of Spanish Louisiana, Don Bernardo de Galvez, launched an…
Experience had taught George Washington a great many things. His father had passed away at a young age, denying him the chance for the…
Scalping, the removal of the scalp from the head often for use as a trophy, is usually regarded as a uniquely sanguineous Indian practice…
Taxation without representation has been the traditionally accepted cause of the American Revolution. Such an understanding of the Revolution, while valid, does not give…
Which side do you think benefited the most from the Native American involvement in the war? Why? The British benefited the most, from one…
In many respects it was a sobering testament to Britain’s mounting resolve to suppress the Revolution at all costs. “It is his Majesty’s resolution,”…
Joseph Paugenit, Jonas Obscow, Anthony Jeremiah, Simon Peney, Obadiah Wicket, and Alexander Quapish. These are not household names to the average history enthusiast. But…
“Living on the frontier is easy!” said no one, ever. Case in point, on July 3, 1778, over 100 loyalist rangers under the command…
While the War of American Independence was won on the Eastern seaboard by American and French battling the British, the future of the United…
When one thinks of injuries received in battle during the Revolutionary War wounds from gunshots, bayonets and swords come to mind. A far less…
In mid-May of 1778, startling news swept through the Continental Army at Valley Forge. There were Indians in the camp! But they were not…