In April 1775, Isaac Bissell was a crucial link between the Patriots of Massachusetts and the government of neighboring Connecticut. His actions contributed to alerting many communities along the Atlantic coast about the outbreak of war in Lexington. Nevertheless, through a chain of circumstances, Isaac Bissell’s name has been overwritten in history books.[1] This story […]
On June 1, 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, the newly appointed governor, Lt.-Gen. Thomas Gage, shut down the towns’ harbor. All shipping and commerce came to standstill. Ships-of-war appeared in the harbor, army regiments arrived from England and only food was allowed to enter the town (by way of the town of […]
We often remember the controversy surrounding the Hutchinson Letters, which inspired many colonists to oppose the provincial government in Massachusetts, by talking about Benjamin Franklin (who found and sent the letters) and Samuel Adams (who helped publish them). Our memory of the letters’ author, Thomas Hutchinson, is often colored by a 1774 print by Paul Revere, […]
As recounted in a previous article, in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army of holding him captive, interrogating him about the Boston Tea Party, and shipping him off to London in irons. Unable to file a lawsuit for damages, Dyer attacked two army officers […]
While 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 a co-commander of the forces on the ground that fateful winter. Both Shays and Day were battle-hardened Continental army captains who returned home to rural Massachusetts to find their fellow farmers […]
BOOK 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 trials, The Witches: Salem, 1692 (2015), has written an excellent biography of who Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “man of the Revolution,” Samuel Adams. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams focuses on the activities […]
The Articles of Confederation described the first government of the new United States. As one may imagine from understanding the later debates on the Constitution in 1787, there were a number of points of contention on the Articles that were later re-argued for the Constitution. But there was one issue in the debate on the […]
In the Spring of 1776, as the American Revolution was underway the movement of the Colonies towards independence was just starting to gain steam. In the Second Continental Congress, John Adams, with an eye towards the future, championed a resolution that would allow each of the “united colonies” to assume the powers of government and […]
On a trip to the southern colonies in 1773, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts visited the coastal region of North Carolina. He was introduced to North Carolina Patriot leadership, toured coastal Fort Johnston, and visually inspected the disposition and military capabilities of the South. It was on this southern tour that Quincy, a Boston born Patriot […]
The status of Thomas Ditson, Jr., as a minor hero of the American Revolution has more to do with the perception that he was an average, unpretentious farmer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time than with specific displays of courage. A deeper look at his activities reveals years of service first as […]
When they heard the news in 1757, some New Englanders smirked. Others grew angry. The British were mounting a major expedition against the powerful French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, next to Nova Scotia. Sometimes called “the Gibraltar of the North,” Louisbourg was the key to the French empire in North America. New […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor James M. Smith on the political, legal, and philosophical influences considered by the First Continental Congress in the formulation of their Declaration of Rights, a 1774 draft that declared the American colonies independent, yet was never brought up for a full vote in that congress. […]
After his exploits during the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers (1732-1795) was indisputably the most famous military leader born in the thirteen colonies; however, he played only a cameo role in the Revolution because both the British and American commanders-in-chief, Thomas Gage and George Washington, not only scorned him but actually arrested him for […]
During the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the political philosophers of Europe were writing and discussing some new and radical ideas on what a government should look like and how it should function. They would reshape the political landscape in the late eighteenth century and well into the twentieth. One of the most […]
In October 1774, in a stunning and radical move, delegates of the First Continental Congress signed a pledge for the thirteen mainland colonies not to participate in the African slave trade. Perhaps equally astounding, Americans largely complied, turning the pledge into an outright ban. Congress’s ban and widespread compliance with it during the Revolutionary War […]
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 and expert on terrorism Jeffrey Simon on the Sons of Liberty and the use of propaganda and terrorism in the run-up to the American Revolution. Simon reassesses the role of the Sons of Liberty in light of modern research on political change. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles […]
The day did not start out well for Andrew Oliver. The recently appointed Stamp Act Distributor for colonial Massachusetts awoke on the morning of August 14, 1765, to learn that his effigy was hanging on an elm tree in Boston by a road that everyone who traveled into town had to pass by. The initials […]
There were many attempts, before and during the American Revolution, to avoid armed conflict via negotiation, or to stop the war after it began. I’d like to tell you about one of the early ones, the most serious push for reconciliation to occur between the Stamp Act crisis and the Declaration of Independence.[1] The outcome […]
The year was 1773. On May 10, Parliament had passed the Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to the American colonies without paying any customs or duties in England. This gave the company a monopoly over the production, distribution, and sale of tea. The colonists saw the Act as a […]
If 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 swept through Massachusetts in the late summer and fall of 1774. He did in fact play a role in that uprising, but not the one commonly granted him.[i] In 1772, working […]
On March 9, 1764, George Grenville proposed a stamp tax in a speech to Parliament; its purpose was to reduce the cost of maintaining 10,000 garrisoned soldiers in North America. Grenville claimed it would be similar to the one administered in England in 1694.[1] Eleven months later, on February 17, the Act was passed in […]
In his 1936 biography Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, John C. Miller wrote this about the leader of Boston’s Whig activists: Sam Adams discovered these taverns with their “tippling, nasty, vicious crew” excellent recruiting grounds for the mobs he later raised against the Tories and Crown officers. Adams himself was a familiar figure in Boston […]
Myth: Toward evening on December 16, 1773, Francis Rotch, beleaguered owner of one of the tea-laden ships in the Boston Harbor, announced to thousands of people assembled at Old South Meeting House that Governor Hutchinson remained firm and would not allow his vessel to return to Britain with its cargo still on board. At that […]
Dear 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 lot of friends send me e-mails. From: Tina O’Rourke To: Michael “Mr. History” Schellhammer Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 9:12 AM Subject: RE: Boston Massacre Hi Mike. I recently took the […]
