The Winter of 1774–1775 in Boston
byOn June 1, 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, the newly appointed governor, Lt.-Gen. Thomas Gage, shut down the towns’ harbor. All…
Samuel Adams
2
Thomas Hutchinson and His Letters
byWe often remember the controversy surrounding the Hutchinson Letters, which inspired many colonists to oppose the provincial government in Massachusetts, by talking about Benjamin…
2
The Secrets of Samuel Dyer
byAs recounted in a previous article, in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army…
1
Captain Luke Day: A Forgotten Leader of “Shays’s Rebellion”
byWhile Daniel Shays (1747-1825) has basked posthumously in the glory of leading the 1786-87 populist rebellion that bears his name, Luke Day (1743-1801) was…
2
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
byBOOK REVIEW: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown and Company, 2022) Stacy Schiff, who previously authored an acclaimed book on the Salem witch…
4
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…
3
John Adams and the Rule of Law
byIn the Spring of 1776, as the American Revolution was underway the movement of the Colonies towards independence was just starting to gain steam….
1
The Samuel Adams of North Carolina: Cornelius Harnett and the Burning of Fort Johnston
byOn a trip to the southern colonies in 1773, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts visited the coastal region of North Carolina. He was introduced to…
1
Thomas Ditson: Puritan to Bumpkin to Patriot
byThe status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was…
4
The Two Sieges of Louisbourg: Harbingers of American Discontent
byWhen they heard the news in 1757, some New Englanders smirked. Others grew angry. The British were mounting a major expedition against the powerful…
This Week on Dispatches: James M. Smith on How America Declared Its Rights
byOn this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor James M. Smith on the political, legal, and philosophical influences considered by the First…
5
Major Robert Rogers and the American Revolution
byAfter his exploits during the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers (1732-1795) was indisputably the most famous military leader born in the thirteen colonies;…
3
How America Declared its Rights
byDuring the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the political philosophers of Europe were writing and discussing some new and radical ideas on…
5
The First Efforts to Limit the African Slave Trade Arise in the American Revolution: Part 3 of 3, Congress Bans the African Slave Trade
byIn October 1774, in a stunning and radical move, delegates of the First Continental Congress signed a pledge for the thirteen mainland colonies not…
6
The First Efforts to Limit the African Slave Trade Arise in the American Revolution: Part 1 of 3, The New England Colonies
byThe American Revolution changed the way Americans viewed one of the world’s great tragedies: the African slave trade. The long march to end the…
This Week on Dispatches: Jeffrey Simon on Propaganda, Terror, and the Sons of Liberty
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and expert on terrorism Jeffrey Simon on the Sons of Liberty and the use of propaganda and terrorism in…
6
The Sons of Liberty and Mob Terror
byThe day did not start out well for Andrew Oliver. The recently appointed Stamp Act Distributor for colonial Massachusetts awoke on the morning of…
1
Reconciliation between the Colonies and Great Britain—A Close Call
byThere were many attempts, before and during the American Revolution, to avoid armed conflict via negotiation, or to stop the war after it began….
Resolutions Shared by Two Towns 300 Miles Apart
byThe year was 1773. On May 10, Parliament had passed the Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to the…
8
When Rabble-Rousing Samuel Adams Slowed Down the Revolution
byIf Samuel Adams was Boston’s “leading agitator” and “engineer of rebellion,” as textbooks and popularizations commonly proclaim, we might assume he engineered the rebellion that…
5
The Seed from which the Sons of Liberty Grew
byOn March 9, 1764, George Grenville proposed a stamp tax in a speech to Parliament; its purpose was to reduce the cost of maintaining…
25
You Won’t Believe How Samuel Adams Recruited Sons of Liberty
byIn his 1936 biography Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, John C. Miller wrote this about the leader of Boston’s Whig activists: Sam Adams discovered…
2
The Signal of Sam Adams
byMyth: Toward evening on December 16, 1773, Francis Rotch, beleaguered owner of one of the tea-laden ships in the Boston Harbor, announced to thousands…
1
Hyping the Boston Massacre
byDear Readers: For this month’s Mr. History, I offer a recent e-mail exchange between a friend and me. Maybe this is why not a…