On December 2, 1767, there appeared in the Pennsylvania Chronicle the first letter in a series collectively called “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” The anonymous first letter came at a critical time in the growing debate between Britain and her colonies over colonial policy. By late 1767, when the first of the letters appeared, […]
On November 16, 1775, Robert Dixon lay dying not far from Quebec. Among the first American troops commissioned by the Continental Congress, he was a sergeant in Matthew Smith’s Company of Thompson’s Rifle Battalion. The previous July, he had walked with his company from the backcountry of Pennsylvania all the way to Boston, a distance […]
On March 26, 1772, The Massachusetts Spy ran an unusual item on page 3 of that day’s newspaper: an advertisement for a dramatic performance of The Adulateur at the Grand Parade in Upper Servia. Filling nearly half the page, the notice contained a list of dramatis personae and a couple of scenes from the play. In the […]
Nearly every American knows the name of John Hancock, but often for little more than his signature on the Declaration of Independence. Hancock was one of the most popular men in eighteenth-century North America, winning people over with his style, personability, and generosity. These ten quotations offer a fuller picture of the character, political temper, […]
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, […]
General Charles, 1st Marquess, Cornwallis remains one of the most recognizable British figures of the American Revolution. Over the past two centuries, he has come to be invariably known as one of the “men who lost America.” This appellation has greatly overshadowed his less heralded service in Parliament, India, Europe, and Ireland. In Parliament, during […]
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 […]
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), a French philosopher, once said that the definition of a traitor was “a patriot whose cause was lost.” In the time of the American Revolution, it could well be said of those who were considered Loyalists, that a “Loyalist was a patriot whose cause was lost.” Born in Switzerland in 1724, Hans […]
In 1817, as popular sentiment finally forced Connecticut to adopt a new constitution separating church and state, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams: “I join you therefore in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood [Connecticut] is at length broken up, and that a Protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history […]
The increasingly turbulent years preceding the American Revolution were fueled by an exchange of laws promulgated by Great Britain to maintain political and economic control over its American Colonies and the reactions of her unruly colonies to those laws. One of the events in the lead-up to the Revolution was the issuance by Great Britain […]
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. […]
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 […]
BOOK REVIEW: 1764: The First Year of the American Revolutionby Ken Shumate (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2021) When did the Revolution begin? This seemingly simple question has been answered in a variety of ways over the last three centuries. John Adams thought it was effected in “the minds and hearts of the people” long before shots […]
“It is Hoped that this People will Unitedly Exert Themselves:”[1] In August 1765, crowds gathered on the streets of Boston protesting Parliament’s Stamp Act, which they deemed a tyrannical effort to tax them against their consent. Eventually, protests turned destructive as rioters ransacked the home of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. The violent outburst posed a […]
As part of the debate over the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, John Adams wrote a series of letter to the Boston Gazette discussing the nature and duties of the British government. He signed these letters “Clarendon” rather than using his own name.[1] In his January 27, 1766 “Clarendon” letter Adams penned this line: Were I to […]
“The sad story of colonial oppression commenced in the year 1764. Great Britain then adopted new regulations respecting her colonies, which, after disturbing the ancient harmony of the two countries for about twelve years, terminated in a dismemberment of the empire.”—David Ramsay, 1789 JAR contributor Ken Shumate’s new book, 1764: The First Year of the […]
John Rutledge is one of those members of the founding generation who often get overlooked. Yet, for every Jefferson, Adams, or Washington, there were many like Rutledge who focused on the nitty gritty work of building a new country. Rutledge was born in 1739 to an Irish father and his fifteen-year-old bride. The oldest in […]
James Lovell, delegate from Massachusetts to the Second Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress from 1777 to 1782, the only member of Congress to be continuously present during those years,[1] is known for being the Secretary for the Committee for Foreign Affairs; for his expertise in cryptography, earning him Edmund Burnett’s description of “decipherer extraordinary to […]
Common wisdom paints William Allen, a wealthy and prominent Pennsylvanian, as a traitor to the cause of American independence. As the revolution grew, the politically powerful Allen, unwilling to break entirely with Britain, retired from public life, while three of his sons—attainted of treason and forced into exile—had much of their property confiscated. Despite their […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Director of Education for Slater Memorial Museum and JAR contributor Dayne Rugh on his recent article about the Sons of Liberty in Connecticut. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a free podcast that puts a voice […]
The role of Connecticut’s Sons of Liberty is one that exemplifies the state’s rich history of self-governance and fiercely independent spirit. Their swift reaction to the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 shattered the political landscape of Connecticut, known ironically as “the land of steady habits.” Later, a few select Sons and their respective […]
Despite the rescission of the Stamp Act in 1766, many imperial controversies persisted in New York City. Leading among them were: The annual demands of the royal governor for funds to support the troops quartered in the town;[1] The continuing post-(French and Indian) war recession; The Townshend taxes of 1767, which of course distressed all the […]
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 […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Dean Caivano, Lecturer of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus, on the growing resistance to tyranny as colonists reacted to the prospects of their lives being reduced to a state of political and economic domination by Parliament and the Crown. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published […]
Charles Lee served as second-in-command of the Continental Army, subordinate only to George Washington. Born in England, Lee was the best-educated and most widely-read of all the Continental Army generals. He also had the most military experience, first serving as a British officer in the French and Indian War and later as a soldier of […]
The threat of continued oppression and an encroaching condition of slavery was central to the American colonists’ call for separation from Great Britain and the corresponding shift to direct resistance. While the lack of effective political representation was crucial, importantly the colonists held other more acute concerns than the issue of representation in Parliament. Crucially, […]
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 […]
On Saturday September 17, 1938 New York governor Herbert H. Lehman and 5,000 others assembled in Poughkeepsie to observe the sesquicentennial of the Empire State’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution. One hundred and fifty years previously delegates had gathered in that Hudson Valley hamlet to debate whether New York should ratify that document and thus […]
The skirmishes at Lexington and Concord are often considered the beginning of the American Revolution, a violent change in the controversy between Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies. John Adams opined that the Revolution started many years before: “But what do We mean by the American Revolution? Do We mean the American […]
Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789 by Joseph M. Adelman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) An explosion of new media! News editors and writers under attack for their views! Increasing media polarization along partisan lines. Readers expecting the news to be free. Newspapers teetering on the edge of profitability. A […]
In 1984, Ross Perot purchased a copy of the 1297 reissuance of the Magna Carta from the Brudenell family who had held the document for centuries. In 1988, it became a permanent fixture of the National Archives Museum where it stayed in the rotunda along with the American charters of freedom for several years. Nearly […]
India, the fabled land of rubies, diamonds, gold, tigers, and mystery, captured the imagination of the British people in the mid 1700s. Robert Clive provided fodder for gossip when he returned to England in 1760 with a reported “£1,200,000 in cash, bills, and jewels. He is said to be the richest subject in the three […]
“I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence.”— John Adams[1] A one penny per gallon import duty on molasses was the only important exception to the American demand for “no taxation without representation.” The duty was a tax, levied by Parliament in 1766, and collected […]
The American Revolution produced different meanings for Patriots and Loyalists. After the end of the Revolutionary war, the pressing issue was no longer the problem of independence or the Imperial Crisis, but the problem of nationhood, and how this newly created nation should be run. Arthur Shaffer argued that the fact that “a diverse group […]
In early 2017, the Washington Post debuted a new masthead with the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” At about the same time, the New York Times announced a new advertising slogan: “The truth is more important now than ever.” With their new slogans, these papers hoped to renew their commitments to the value of truth and […]
In American history, the name James Grant became synonymous with advocacy for British supremacy in colonial matters. For much of Grant’s early military career, he was stationed in North America where he participated in the French and Indian War. His time spent on the continent allowed for him to form his own opinions on the […]
The Stamp Act of 1765 is closely associated with Lord George Grenville, First Lord of the Treasury and the Prime Minister of England. However, there were other members of the British Government who played a roll in the direct construction and enactment of the Act. Some of them were Charles Jenkinson, Senior Secretary of the […]
On March 22, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 205 to 49. The Act caused both anger and resentment in the colonies – not so much because of its imposition of a tax, but rather because of its manner of enactment and means of enforcement. […]
Barlow Trecothick was born in Stepney, England in 1720. At seven, his family moved to Boston where he became an apprentice for six years to Charles Apthorp, a local merchant. He lived in Boston until he was 22, then he moved to Jamaica where he represented Apthorp’s firm for five years. While in the West […]
