BOOK REVIEW: Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777-1778 by Norman E. Donoghue II. )Penn State University Press 2023) This carefully researched book supplements much of what has been previously known about Quaker history. The Quaker faith proclaims, “take no part in carrying on war on any occasion or under any power but lead […]
There are many, many founding fathers in the story of America’s Revolution and unfortunately only a few are really known to the general public. Yet without those who are less known, there would have been no revolution. One of those men was the official secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thomson. He was the sole […]
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 scribe of the Declaration of Independence—and perhaps the first man to read it in public—was born on March 28, 1736 in Haddonfield, New Jersey. His family moved to Philadelphia eight years later. At the age of thirteen, Timothy Matlack began an apprenticeship under a prosperous Quaker merchant named John Reynell. Looking forward to a […]
The first article of this series discussed the increasing chorus of American Patriots in New England raising their voices against the African slave trade. This article focuses on the Middle and Southern Colonies, as well as a few select thinkers from Philadelphia. Those who opposed the African slave trade in colonies ruled by royal governors […]
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 […]
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. […]
We recently ran an article about monuments commemorating the American Revolution. We asked our contributors: If you could commission a monument, what would you commemorate and where would it be located? They provided a wide range of worthy candidates. Nancy K. Loane On December 19, 1777, over 400 women—and an unknown number of children—struggled into […]
James W. Whitall (1717-1808) was a prominent Quaker businessman and farmer in the southern region of New Jersey. In 1739 he married Ann Cooper (1716-1797), a devout, no-nonsense Quaker, and together they built a house situated on a farm consisting of over four hundred acres of land along the Delaware River in Red Bank, New […]
In 1793, a widely circulated American editorial observed, “A few years ago, to say of any man that he was ‘a friend to toleration,’ was to place his temper in the fairest point of view.” By the 1790s, people knew better. “Now every friend to the rights of man perceives that toleration was founded on […]
The Consequences of Loyalism: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Calhoon edited by Rebecca Brannon and Joseph S. Moore (University of South Carolina Press, 2019) Anyone who has ever picked up a book concerning Loyalism in the American Revolutionary era has likely encountered the work of Robert M. “Bob” Calhoon. A renowned academic, author, and advisor […]
When George Washington died in 1799, partisan infighting and international crises threatened the survival of the American experiment. Many Americans believed in Washington’s unique ability to unite the country, and his death exacerbated national uncertainties. Enter Mason Locke Weems, whose contributions to Washington mythmaking dwarf those of any individual then or since. As national yearning […]
A Quaker miller named Daniel Byrnes (1730-1797) began appearing in New Castle County, Delaware land records in 1760, buying and selling land bordering the south side of Wilmington’s Brandywine River.[1] That year, Byrnes and William Moore built a mill with an overshot wheel “across the Brandywine near French Street” and fellow Quaker, William Marshall built […]
On the afternoon of April 5, 1778, four feisty women, accompanied by an escort, Israel Morris, boarded their coach in British-occupied Philadelphia and set out for a visit with General George Washington. The journey took the four friends—Elizabeth Drinker, Susanna Jones, Phebe Pemberton, and Mary Pleasants—twenty miles or so from Philadelphia to the Continental Army, […]
On December 8, 1776, British soldiers, supported by a large fleet, easily invaded and occupied Newport, Rhode Island, and the rest of Aquidneck Island. The first commander of the British garrison, Lieutenant General Earl Hugh Percy, immediately turned his attention to British sympathizers, known as Loyalists or Tories, in southeastern New England. Nestled in Earl […]
