Video Category: Historical Programs

The son of a British soldier, William Hunter accompanied his father, a non-commissioned officer in the British army’s 26th Regiment of Foot, while on campaign during the American Revolution. Throughout the war, Hunter witnessed the first-hand terrors of combat, was captured twice, and produced the only surviving account written by a child of a British […]

In the early days of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress rushed to form an army but soon realized that, to win its freedom, America would need men who could fight both on land and sea. Enter the Marines. As Washington struggled to preserve his command after defeats in New York and New Jersey in […]

In 1777, Congress labeled a group of Philadelphia Quakers who refused to help defend the city against the imminent invasion by British troops as “the most Dangerous Enemies America knows.” They ordered Pennsylvania to apprehend them. In response, state officials sent twenty men—seventeen of them Quakers—into exile, banishing them to Virginia, where they were held […]

Far from a harmonious collaboration, the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War was so filled with political strife that the delegates feared the Revolutionary War would end in disunion or civil war. But instead of disbanding, these founders managed to unite for the sake of liberty and self-preservation, forging grueling compromises and holding the young […]

In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which instituted a tax of three cents per pound on all British tea sold in America. The act effectively granted a monopoly on the sale of tea in the American colonies to the British East India Company, which was looking to reduce its excessive stores of tea […]

The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, The Queen Sofía Spanish Institute and the Embassy of Spain in the United States host a celebration of Spanish-American friendship at the international headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, Anderson House, to commemorate the signing of the Treaty of Aranjuez on April 12, 1779, […]

In the second half of the eighteenth century, British surveyors came to North America and the West Indies in unprecedented numbers. Their images of coastlines, forts and frontiers helped win the French and Indian War and pictured a triumphant British Atlantic world. The American Revolution shattered this vision of peace, commerce and settlement. Once tasked […]

Anderson House, the winter home of Larz and Isabel Anderson between 1905 and 1937, stands as a testament to all that was gracious and in good taste in entertaining during the waning decades of America’s Gilded Age. An architectural masterpiece based on the English late Baroque period, with elements from the French Beaux-Arts tradition, the […]

In 1774, Gen. Henry Clinton embarked on a “martial grand tour,” visiting the battlefields of Europe with his friend, the military theorist Henry Lloyd. What the two observed on their travels would change the British approach to the war that broke out in North America the following year. From his practical and theoretical study of […]

With a smallpox epidemic raging during the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington was forced to order the mandatory inoculation of the Continental Army. Washington, however, did not have to convince fearful colonists to protect themselves against smallpox—they were the ones demanding it. In his new book, The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the […]

Following its catastrophic defeat in the Seven Years’ War, the French military undertook a comprehensive series of reforms affecting everything from warship design to soldiers’ uniforms, which dramatically altered the army’s appearance. This uniform provided unheard-of amenities for French soldiers but was widely disliked and quickly replaced. The fallout surrounding the 1776 uniform reflects the […]

George Washington, hero of the French and Indian War, commander in chief of the Continental Army and first president of the United States, died on December 14, 1799. Shortly thereafter, the myth-making surrounding Washington began and has persisted today. Washington is frequently portrayed by his biographers as America at its unflinching best: tall, shrewd, determined, […]

At the start of the Revolutionary War, independence had its limits as patriots were surrounded by indigenous peoples and loyalists throughout the northern regions that straddled the colonial borders, and these foreign neighbors were far from inactive during the Revolution. Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and especially the homelands that straddled […]

Historian Christian McBurney discusses the harrowing voyage of the Marlborough, an American privateer vessel that sailed across the Atlantic to attack British slave trading posts and ships on the coast of West Africa during the Revolutionary War. His new ground-breaking book is the first to explore the efforts of the Marlborough’s officers and crew, along […]

Disease was a major part of everyday life in the American colonies, especially during the Revolutionary War. For every soldier dying of wounds in the war, seven died of infections including smallpox, malaria and typhus. Doctors were influenced by ancient medical thought, and with the best intentions, treated diseases with bleedings, leeches and purges. Ronald […]

Four scholars who contributed to Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past dissect the musical’s phenomenon and what it means for our understanding of America’s past. Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical, has become so popular that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is this Broadway […]

In British America in 1776, there were twenty-six, not thirteen colonies—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 not rebel. Andrew O’Shaughnessy argues that the economic and political differences in the British colonies in the Caribbean […]