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The Year in Revolution: 1781 Unity video explains how the need for national unity among the thirteen states was greater than ever by 1781, when all thirteen former colonies finally ratified the Articles of…

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The Year in Revolution: 1781 Eutaw Springs video recounts the clash between Patriot and British forces at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, a fierce fight that ended with heavy losses, withdrawal, and Britain’s…

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The Year in Revolution: 1781 Black Americans in the American Revolution video explains how over 5,000 Black Americans shaped the Revolutionary War as both free and enslaved laborers, soldiers and sailors, and spies…

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The Year in Revolution: 1783 Overview video chronicles events of the final year of the war, including: the Provisional Articles of Peace and the Treaty of Paris, the Newburgh Conspiracy, the establishment of the…

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The Year in Revolution: 1783 Newburgh, New York video takes place in Newburgh, New York. With no formal articles of peace in place by March 1783, Continental officers could not yet formally disband. They…

Award-winning historian Michael Auslin discusses his new book that demonstrates how Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence have inspired implausibly varied causes, from suffragists and civil rights leaders to groups waging war on the United States…

Historian Friederike Baer focuses our attention on the varied experiences of the German auxiliaries in the American Revolution. Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels…

Adm. John Palmer (Ret.), U.S. Navy, discusses his new book that tells the riveting narrative of Peter Francisco, who was born in the Portuguese Azores in 1760, was kidnapped and brought to Virginia in 1765, and joined the Continental…

Paul Staiti, professor of fine arts at Mount Holyoke College, discusses his new book that, for the first time, undertakes a comprehensive investigation into the life, death, and legacy of Jane McCrea, who was killed by a Native American warrior…

Historian Emily Sneff discusses her new book that reveals the stories of how the Declaration of Independence was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic World. In 1776, people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public…

The Institute’s historical programs manager, Andrew Outten, discusses a 1773 register of British Army officers, annotated with casualties suffered during the first battles of the Revolution—most notably at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Beginning in 1740, the British…

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution, the Institute’s deputy director and curator, Emily Parsons, discusses an American-made hanger sword carried during the early months of the Revolutionary War by James Taylor, a…

The Institute’s library director, Thomas Lannon, discusses the orderly book of Edmund Bancroft. Initially a non-commissioned officer in Col. William Prescott’s Regiment from May-December 1775, Edmund Bancroft was likely a participant at the Battle of Bunker…

The marquis de Lafayette’s farewell tour of the United States produced a staggering number of images of the general, from original oil portraits commissioned by government entities and wealthy individuals to prints mass produced for sale at public events…

The Institute’s museum collections and operations manager, Paul Newman, for a Lunch Bite object talk highlighting a recent acquisition for our museum collections: a Chinese porcelain punch bowl depicting the Battle of the Saintes. Produced around 1783, the punch…

At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Loyalists traveled to Canada, sailed for Britain, and journeyed to the Bahamas and the…

The Oneida nation was the only one of the Iroquois Confederacy to ally with the Americans during the Revolutionary War. Congress formally honored the Oneida in 1794 for their service to the American cause, yet over time the Oneida sacrifice…

American general Benedict Arnold secretly conspired with the enemy to surrender West Point and George Washington. Disaster for the Americans was thwarted only when Arnold’s co-conspirator, John André, was captured with plans of the West Point fortifications in…

Professor Cornell delves into the complicated history and interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He argues that the amendment neither guarantees the right to own guns nor simply protects the rights of states to maintain militias…

There were twenty-six colonies, not thirteen, in British America in 1776, and the majority of the colonies outside the mainland were in the Caribbean. Even though they shared many important similarities and connections with the mainland colonies, they did…

In this segment of Collections Corner, the Institute’s research services librarian, Rachel Nellis, highlights a rare map from our Robert Charles Lawrence Fergusson Collection, Carte des Etats-Unis de l’Amerique suivant le Traité de Paix de 1783, engraved…

Deputy Director and Curator Emily Parsons discusses an allegorical portrait from our museum collections. Completed in 1783 by Parisian artist Nicolas René Jollain, the painting depicts Thomas François Lenormand de Victot, a fallen French naval officer from the Revolutionary…

It’s back to school season! To celebrate, this month’s Collections Corner features the Institute’s director of education, Stacia Smith, discussing The Patriot’s Monitor, an 1810 American primer written by Rev. Ignatius Thomson of Pomfret, Vermont. As…

Coping with the sunset that followed Louis XIV’s death, battered by a string of costly military defeats, and influenced by the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment, the French army was primed for reform in the mid-eighteenth century. Scholar…

The Society of the Cincinnati’s Eagle insignia has been the most recognizable symbol of the organization and its members for more than two hundred years. Designed in 1783 by Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, the double-sided gold insignia bears…

Explore our exhibition, Revolutionary Beginnings: War and Remembrance in the First Year of America’s Fight for Independence, in this short video. Drawn principally from the Institute’s library and museum collections, Revolutionary Beginnings,  explores three critical early battles of…

On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution, the marquis de Lafayette embarked on a tour of the United States, returning for a final time to the country he helped established and whose republican form of government…

Diplomacy and entertaining have always gone hand in hand in the nation’s capital. Anderson House, headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, has played a historic role in that story during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—but one…

Explore our exhibition Saving Soldiers: Medical Practice in the Revolutionary War in this short video tour featuring a few highlight objects. Drawn principally from the Institute’s collections of rare books, manuscripts, portraits and artifacts, Saving Soldiers examined medical practice…