Following the ratification of the Franco-American Alliance on February 6, 1778, France informed Great Britain that it had joined forces with America in its war with England. As an integral part of this arrangement, France and the United States had agreed that neither would form a treaty with Britain without the approval of the other. […]
For Maj. Arent Schuyler De Peyster, his assignment as commandant of British forces at Detroit was growing increasingly frustrating. For years, British officers at Detroit had encouraged Indian allies to strike the American backcountry, rendering the frontier a scorched arc stretching from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. But by the late summer of 1782, De Peyster was […]
In June 1783, while a formal peace agreement was being negotiated in Paris, what British arms had not been able to accomplish was effectively achieved by the very soldiers who had sworn to protect and maintain the American government. A military insurrection unfolded on streets of the national capital of Philadelphia, the only successful insurrection […]
Many followers of the history of the American Revolution are aware of the attempted invasion of Canada by Colonial forces in late 1775. The attack failed, and American designs on Canada were thwarted, for a time anyway. This was not the end of their pursuit to incorporate Canada into the Revolution on the American side. […]
The British Library in London, England, houses an internationally significant and relatively understudied copy of Dr. John Mitchell’s renowned 1755 map, renamed and reprinted circa 1775 A Map of the British Colonies in North America. . .[1] This map garnered particular attention due to its use in the 1782 boundary negotiations conducted by the British […]
When Don Diego Gardoqui stepped onto Philadelphia’s docks in May 1785, he was a hero of the American Revolution. A merchant from Bilbao, Spain, Gardoqui, forty-nine, had early on in the war transformed his trade connections with Massachusetts into a pipeline for delivering the arms and supplies desperately needed by American troops. Following the war, […]
The Revolutionary War was formally ended by the Treaty of Paris in early 1783. Problems with compliance arose on both sides nearly immediately on several issues. One was the continued occupation by Great Britain of the so-called “Western Forts.” These forts should have reverted to American hands according to the terms of the Treaty. The […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor John E. Happ on the commemorations to Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution that can be seen in Paris. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Dispatches can […]
The surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1781 was implemented by the three-party Articles of Capitulation (“the Articles”), one of the most important documents of the Revolutionary War, since the surrender eventually led to the Peace of Paris (1783) and American independence. Curiosity as to the current location of the original Articles, i.e., […]
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 […]
