When General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur Comte de Rochambeau arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 10, 1780 with over 5800 troops, most of the officers and men could not speak or read English. Admiral Charles Louis d’Arsac, Chevalier de Ternay’s fleet brought a printing press, probably aboard Rochambeau’s flagship Ville de Paris or the […]
“My fate is hard,” Sir Henry Clinton remarked after learning that he had been named commander of the British army in May 1778, adding that he expected to someday bear “a considerable portion of the blame” for Britain’s “inevitable” lack of success.[1] There were good reasons for Clinton’s pessimism. Not only was France entering the […]
Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution by Donald F. Johnson (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) Several cities in Revolutionary America were taken by British forces and the residents found themselves in an unexpected predicament. Many welcomed the return of law and order and a stable economy under British rule; the […]
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 […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author, attorney, and JAR contributor, Christian M. McBurney on the enigmatic General Charles Lee and his role in imposing an oath of allegiance on Newport, Rhode Island, Tories in 1775. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a […]
Major General Charles Lee visited Newport, Rhode Island, in late December 1775, where he—controversially—insisted that local Loyalists take an oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress. This approach, and a similar one he took in New York City shortly thereafter, created concern in Congress on how best to handle Loyalists. But by mid-1778, Lee had changed […]
One would expect that a country that had been at war for five years would welcome its first ally with open arms. We might have mental images of civic officials leading throngs of eager citizens to greet the allies or of platoons of soldiers firing salutes. It didn’t happen. No government officials, no military officers […]
On July 10, 1780, a French fleet of seven ships of the line and four frigates under Admiral Chevalier de Ternay, along with thirty-six transport vessels carrying about 6,000 French soldiers commanded by Lieutenant General Comte de Rochambeau and their supplies, arrived off of Newport, Rhode Island. The plan was to use the port town […]
