No front of the American War of Independence was more consistently violent than the northern frontier in what is today central New York State. Relative to the size of the forces involved, the costliest battle of the war took place at Oriskany near present-day Rome, New York, where the Patriot casualty rate exceeded 50 percent. […]
Information has been as powerful a weapon as any in the history of warfare. Modern militaries continue to grapple with the power of information by developing and incorporating specific information strategies into their warfighting arsenals. In 2017, the U.S. military established information as a warfighting function to define and harness “the military role of information […]
Despite the imperative nature of his unusual name, Remember Baker has garnered significantly less historical attention than fellow Green Mountain Boys Ethan Allen and Seth Warner. Baker seemed destined for an important role in the Revolutionary War, but his life was cut short in an August 22, 1775 incident across the Quebec border. As a result of […]
John Adams was making his way from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania for a convening of the delegates tasked to craft a response to the Coercive Acts when he and his entourage arrived in Manhattan on the morning of Saturday August 20, 1774. He met that day with numerous dignitaries and dined late into the evening at […]
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 […]
The coming of the American Revolution traumatized the North American frontier, and many old orders were left shattered in its wake. While historians often focus on the establishment of a new nation, few recognize the destruction of one of the continent’s oldest superpowers. The battle of Oriskany in New York’s Mohawk River Valley stands out […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR contributor Andrew Zellers-Frederick on the 0ccupation of Easton, Pennsylvania, by Continental forces gathering for the 1779 invasion of Iroquois territory in New York in order to quell Indian and Tory attacks along the New York and Pennsylvania frontiers. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the […]
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. […]
For a brief seven weeks, the Pennsylvania frontier village of Easton became the second largest community within the state. With an estimated 25,000 inhabitants, Philadelphia was the largest city in Pennsylvania (and North America); under normal circumstances, Lancaster was second with between 3,000-3,500 inhabitants followed by York with under 2,000.[1] In 1752 it was estimated that […]
