William and Benjamin Frank, brothers and freeborn men of color, joined the Second Rhode Island Regiment in the spring of 1777, joining a cohort of free Black soldiers serving in an integrated Continental Army. Following the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, they were transferred to the newly segregated First Rhode Island Regiment, a unit composed […]
In 1824-1825, the marquis de Lafayette embarked on a tour of the United States, returning for a final time to the country he helped establish and whose democratic experiment he saw as a model for the rest of the world. Throughout his thirteen-month tour, he visited all twenty-four states of the union, where he was […]
In February 2023, the Museum of the American Revolution opened the acclaimed special exhibition Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia. The exhibition introduced visitors to three generations of the family of James Forten (1766-1842), a free Black Revolutionary War veteran and sailmaker, as they battled slavery and defended freedom in the early United States. Matthew […]
The American Revolution in the West is often neglected from the overall history of the conflict, though it had a significant impact on how it was conducted. Larry Nelson, assistant professor of history at Bowling Green State University, discusses this important component of the war by examining American ambitions in the Old Northwest, the vast […]
The American founders were men of high intellect, steely integrity, and enormous ambition—but they were not all of one mind. They came from diverse colonies, and they all sought their futures on different horizons. Without reliable maps of even nearby terrain, they contributed in different, and sometimes conflicting, ways to the expansion of a young […]
In the final words of the Declaration of Independence, the signatories famously pledged their lives, their fortunes and their “sacred Honor” to one another, but what about those who made the opposite choice? By looking through the lens of honor culture of the period, Timothy Compeau, assistant professor of history at Huron University College at […]
The Stamp Act riots in Rhode Island and the Regulator Rebellion in North Carolina, although movements in smaller colonies, tell a broader story about the evolution of American political thought in the decades surrounding the American Revolution. Without pre-existing local tensions, the fury of the Stamp Act crisis might not have spilled over during the […]
On the night of December 16, 1773, a party of Bostonians boarded three British vessels and dumped over three hundred chests of tea into Boston Harbor. In addition to objecting to taxation without representation, the participants were also protesting the Tea Act of 1773, which forced them to pay a tax on top of the […]
For more than two centuries, all most Americans have ever known about Benedict Arnold is that he committed treason—yet he was more than a turncoat. He was a superb leader, a brilliant tactician, a supremely courageous soldier and one of the most successful military officers of the early years of the Revolutionary War. His capture […]
During the Revolution, American policymakers were divided into two factions—radicals and moderates. Radicals saw the United States as a great power, equal to France and worthy of alliances with as many foreign powers as possible. Moderates, however, doubted American military power and were content to rely on military assistance from France alone. In each case, […]
John Hancock is often associated with the radical commencement of the Revolution and his audacious signature at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence, but his politics were not nearly as bold as they may have seemed. Throughout the Revolution, he frustrated both patriots and loyalists alike but remained the most popular and powerful man […]
Historian Lord Andrew Roberts and Gen. David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.) deliver the 2023 George Rogers Clark Lecture through a conversation of how King George III could have won the American Revolution. Together, they have recently published the new book, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. Presented annually since 1975, the Society […]
The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways—and from different sides. Jane Welborn Spurgin was a patriot who welcomed Gen. Nathanael Greene to her home and aided the Continental forces. Her husband was a loyalist and an officer fighting for King George III in the […]
Ashli White, professor of history at the University of Miami, explores the circulation of material culture during the American, French, and Haitian revolutions and argues that radical ideals in the eighteenth century were contested through objects as well as in texts. In this lecture on her new book, Dr. White considers how revolutionary things brought […]
For this special lecture, Dr. Ricardo Herrera of the U.S. Army War College explores the events that led to the Battle of Monmouth, along with the subsequent global nature of the American Revolution and its impact on British strategy for the remainder of the conflict. This lecture was part of our larger two-day battlefield tour program […]
The 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize honors Friederike Baer, Ph.D., professor of history at Penn State Abington and her book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford University Press, 2022). In this special event, Dr. Baer receives Cincinnati Prize and discusses her deeply researched examination of the German auxiliaries. Between 1776 and […]
Drawing from his recent book, Unfriendly to Liberty: Loyalist Networks and the Coming of the American Revolution in New York City, historian Christopher Minty, Ph.D., explores the origins of loyalism in New York City between 1766 and 1776, and adds to our understanding of the coming of the American Revolution. Focusing on political culture, organization, […]
From 1778 to 1788, future president John Adams lived in Europe as an American diplomat. Joined by his wife, Abigail, in 1784, the two shared rich encounters with famous heads of the European royal courts. Jeanne E. Abrams, professor of history at the University of Denver, shows that the Adams’ journey not only changed the […]
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 […]
The Loyalists who supported the British during the American Revolution have frequently been neglected in accounts of that conflict. Nevertheless, Loyalists made significant efforts to assist British forces in restoring royal control of the thirteen colonies. This was especially true in South Carolina, where backcountry Loyalists under almost-forgotten leaders such as Joseph Robinson and Euan […]
Jean-Baptiste Dupleix de Cadignan (1738-1824) entered the French army’s Régiment de Bourgogne-Infanterie as a lieutenant on April 15, 1754, five weeks before his sixteenth birthday. That same day, he began a diary that forms the basis for his over four-hundred page, two-volume journal owned by the Society of the Cincinnati. Commencing in April 1755, when […]
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 […]
François-Jean Chastellux, a major general in the French army, member of the Society of the Cincinnati and cousin of the marquis de Lafayette, played a central role in the Franco-American alliance during the Revolutionary War. Recently, a collection of more than four thousand pages of Chastellux’s private papers were discovered at his estate in Burgundy, […]
As states struggled to fill enlistment quotas in late 1777, the Rhode Island General Assembly, drawing from a proposal from Rhode Island general James Varnum, voted to allow the enlistments of indentured servants, indigenous peoples and former slaves. With that, the First Rhode Island Regiment, known as “the black regiment,” was formed. Although met with […]
Compared to events in the East, the American Revolutionary War in the West has received sparse attention despite its major impact on the geographical extent of the United States after the war. In 1779, in response to George Rogers Clark conquering the Illinois country and Spain entering the war, Lord George Germain set in motion […]
Throughout the punishing winter at Valley Forge, Gen. George Washington preserved the Continental Army while also forging it into an effective fighting force. This achievement not only reflected military leadership but also deft political action that allowed the commander-in-chief both to repel an attempt to supersede him and to command the congressional and national support […]
When one considers the effects of war on the environment, their thoughts probably turn to modern events such as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. The American Revolution, however, also had a major impact on the natural world in the eighteenth century. At Valley Forge, […]
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 […]
For nearly a decade, Red Bank Battlefield Park, N.J., has been the focus of a series of archaeological studies investigating the Hessian attack on Fort Mercer on October 22, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign. During a public archaeology program conducted in the summer of 2022, a mass burial space was discovered and is thought to […]
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 […]
“Fake news” is nothing new. Just like millions of Americans today, the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century worried that they were entering a “post-truth” era. Their fears, however, were not fixated on social media or clickbait, but rather on peoples’ increasing reliance on reading news gathered from foreign newspapers. News was the lifeblood of early […]
Women participated in the American Revolution in complex and varied ways, and the Revolution transformed their place in the new nation. This panel discussion convenes several contributors to a new anthology, Women Waging War in the American Revolution, and will be moderated by Dr. Holly Mayer, professor emerita of history at Duquesne University. Panelists Benjamin […]
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 […]
Alongside the surgeons and physicians, the medical care of the thousands of sick and wounded Continental soldiers relied upon the tireless work of army nurses, camp followers, housewives, cooks, laundresses and local families. In contrast to the voluminous records of soldiers’ and military leaders’ wartime experiences, the contribution of women has often been summarized fleetingly […]
When Nathanael Greene was appointed commander of the southern Continental forces in the fall of 1780, he wrote to George Washington that he would be forced to fight “a kind of partisan war,” until he could raise an army large enough to contend with the British. Greene’s strategy was to check the main British army […]
During the last engagement in the 1776 northern campaign season, Gen. Benedict Arnold burned the remaining vessels of his American fleet in Lake Champlain to prevent capture by the British. In 2020, the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program funded an archeological survey project of this area, now classified as a Revolutionary War battlefield […]
Fortification and siege doctrine were a critical component of any eighteenth-century military. Drawing mainly from the Siege of Yorktown, Dr. Glenn F. Williams of the U.S. Army Center of Military History explores the intricacies and technical expertise required to carry out an effective and successful siege in the Revolutionary War. This lecture focuses on eighteenth-century […]
In this new history of the Continental Army’s Grand Forage of 1778, award-winning military historian Ricardo A. Herrera uncovers what daily life was like for soldiers during the darkest and coldest days of the American Revolution: the Valley Forge winter. There the army launched its largest and riskiest operation—not a bloody battle against British forces […]
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 […]
On June 9, 1772, a group of prominent Rhode Islanders rowed out to the British schooner Gaspee, which had run aground six miles south of Providence while on an anti-smuggling patrol. After threatening and shooting its commanding officer, the raiders looted the vessel and burned it to the waterline. Despite colony-wide sympathy for the raid, neither […]
Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired an estimated thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians, the soldiers and accompanying civilians, including hundreds of women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada, West Florida and Cuba. They […]
The American Revolution was a watershed in the principles of government between centuries of monarchical and aristocratic rule and free societies based on moral principles that shaped the Revolutionary ideal of universal equality. Professor Thompson, author of America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It, explores the logic […]
Dr. Joseph Warren, a respected physician and architect of the Revolutionary movement, was one of the most important figures in early American history—and might have gone on to lead the country had he not been killed at Bunker Hill in 1775. Warren was involved in almost every major protest against British policies in the Boston […]
In 1775, the British army seethed within Boston as the Continental Army besieged the city, compelling thousands of civilians to flee to the surrounding countryside. General George Washington and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress coordinated efforts to support the influx of displaced persons while attempting to protect the Continental Army from smallpox flaring in Boston. Many […]
Charles Cornwallis was a leading figure in late eighteenth-century Great Britain. His career spanned the American War of Independence, Irish Union, the French Revolutionary Wars and the building of the second British Empire in India. Focusing on the first part of his new major biography, Richard Middleton offers insight into Cornwallis’ time in America and […]
By October 1777, British forces occupied Philadelphia. Yet an elaborate American defense of the Delaware River crippled the British supply lines and threatened their ability to hold the city. Historian Jim Mc Intyre discusses the massive effort by the Crown forces to gain control of the strategic waterway. He highlights the British occupation of Philadelphia, […]
Action at sea played a critical role in European and Anglo-American conflicts throughout the eighteenth century. Yet the oft-told narrative of the American Revolution tends to focus on battles on American soil or the debates and decisions of the Continental Congress. The Untold War at Sea is the first book to place American privateers and their experiences […]
Unassuming but formidable, American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the new nation. As Hannah Farber demonstrates in her new book Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding, the international information insurers gathered and the capital they generated enabled them to play central roles in state […]
George Washington and his Continental Army braving the frigid winter at Valley Forge forms an iconic image in the popular history of the American Revolution. Such winter camps were also a critical factor in waging and winning the War of Independence. Exploring the inner workings of the Continental Army through the prism of its encampments, Surviving […]
George Washington and his cabinet issued the Neutrality Proclamation in 1793 to shield the United States from European warfare. This proclamation owed its existence to numerous sources, including Washington’s military experiences and European diplomatic precedents. A lesser known, but highly influential, inspiration came from the Society of the Cincinnati, whose French members had served alongside […]
Who can doubt that the creation story of our founding in the American Revolution remains valid, vivid and thrilling? Even in 2021, at a moment when national unity is elusive, when our partisan rancor seems ever more toxic, when the simple concept of truth is assailed, that story informs who we are, where we came […]
For most of the eighteenth century, British Protestantism was driven neither by the primacy of denominations nor by fundamental discord between them. Instead, it thrived as part of a complex transatlantic system that bound religious institutions to imperial politics. As Dr. Carté argues, British imperial Protestantism proved remarkably effective in advancing both the interests of […]
Years before shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, backcountry settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont launched their own defiant bid for economic independence and political liberty. The Regulator Rebellion of 1766-1771 arose from the conflict created by competing ideologies and goals between the religious outlook of evangelical Protestants and mainstream Anglicans; between the aspirations […]
In January 1785, a young African American woman named Elizabeth was put on board the Lucretia in New York Harbor, bound for Charleston, where she would be sold to her fifth master in just twenty-two years. Leaving behind a small child she had little hope of ever seeing again, Elizabeth was faced with the stark […]
The American Revolution marked the beginning of an age of democratic revolutions that swept over France and challenged the old order throughout the Atlantic world. The French officers who served in the American War of Independence, whether as idealistic volunteers or resolute soldiers of their king, remembered the experience for the rest of their lives. […]
Following the successful expulsion of American forces from Canada in 1776, the British forces were determined to end the rebellion and devised what they believed a war-winning strategy. They were to send General John Burgoyne south to rout the Americans and take Albany. When British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga with unexpected ease in July of […]
The first president is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitutional Convention and forging a new nation, but less well known is the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart. In this video Robert P. Watson, professor of […]
What is the place of the American Revolution in the future we are making? In this lecture presented in the North Carolina Museum of History’s American Revolution Lecture Series (sponsored by the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati), the executive director of the American Revolution Institute argues that the American Revolution is properly understood as […]
Executive Director Jack Warren discusses America’s First Veterans, a book published by the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati. Using eighty-five manuscripts, rare books, prints, broadsides, paintings and other artifacts, America’s First Veterans introduces the stories of the men—and some women—who bore arms in the Revolutionary War. The book follows their fate in […]
Mary Beth Norton discusses her book, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, analyzing the revolutionary change that took place between December 1773 and April 1775—from the Boston Tea Party to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In those months, Britain’s American colonists were finally and irrevocably alienated from the British government by a series of […]
Prisoners of war presented an enormous challenge for patriot forces during the American Revolution. Patriots captured more than seventeen thousand enemy soldiers during the war. At times the prisoners in American hands outnumbered the Continental Army. At the outset of the war, Americans treated British prisoners in accordance with the conventions of eighteenth-century warfare, but […]
For Veterans Day 2019, the Institute presented an examination of the experiences of American veterans from the Revolutionary generation to our own time. Held in conjunction with our exhibition America’s First Veterans, the program opened with remarks from Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Executive Director Jack Warren. Video […]
Christy Pichichero illustrates how the French Enlightenment philosophies of foreign officers in the American Revolution informed their perspective of American customs. Selecting the marquis de Chastellux and the comte de Rochambeau—whose memoirs are a part of the Institute’s rich archival collections—among her examples, Dr. Pichichero labels these men “military philosophers” who brought Enlightenment philosophy to […]
John Buchanan discusses his book about the dramatic conclusion of the American Revolution in the South led by Major General Nathanael Greene. Greene’s Southern Campaign was the most difficult of the war. Insufficient manpower a constant problem, Greene attempted to incorporate black regiments into his army, a plan angrily rejected by the South Carolina legislature. […]
Daniel Morgan, one of America’s greatest battlefield commanders, arose from humble beginnings. Following a fight with his father, Morgan left home as an illiterate teenage laborer. Through ambition, determination and a great deal of luck, he became a landowner, congressman and Revolutionary War general. This lecture uncovers Morgan’s tumultuous life and recounts his leadership in […]
Patrick Spero examines the overlooked conflict between the Black Boys of Pennsylvania, Native American forces and the British Empire prior to the American Revolution. As the Stamp Act riled eastern seaports, frontiersmen clashed with the British Empire over another issue: Indian relations. When British officials launched a risky diplomatic expedition into Pennsylvania’s Allegheny frontier to […]
Although battlefield burial is seldom covered by modern historians, following almost any military engagement, corpses needed to be buried. Who was responsible for disposing of these corpses? How can we tell who buried whom? Were officers and other ranks buried together or separate? Historian Robert Selig answers these and related questions about burying the dead […]
Kathleen DuVal illuminates the American Revolution on the Spanish borderlands—recounting clashes between the Spanish and British forces over the territory along the Gulf of Mexico. The capture of Mobile and the Siege of Pensacola were critical to the outcome of the Revolutionary War, the future of the American South and the lives of the people […]
Colonel Jeremiah Lee was a fabulously wealthy colonial merchant who turned against the British Empire and became a leader of the rebel movement in Massachusetts. Historian Robert Booth brings this outspoken revolutionary to life as part of the 250th anniversary celebration of Lee’s achievements, hosted by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and the Marblehead […]
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 […]
The Hamilton-Burr duel has become one of the most infamous altercations in U.S. history. Officers in the Revolutionary War and original members of the Society of the Cincinnati—Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr squared off in Weehawken, New Jersey, in the hours of the early morning on July 11, 1804. Although Hamilton led the Society as […]
George Washington’s Farewell Address is an essential document for the Republic. Its message, a “warning from a parting friend,” remains starkly relevant to a modern audience. By the end of his second term, President Washington was viciously attacked in the press and alarmed by intense partisan bitterness. Determined to avoid the mistakes that had doomed […]
Andrew Pickens (1739–1817) was the hero of many American Revolution victories against British and Loyalist forces. Rod Andrew vividly depicts the hard-fighting South Carolina militia commander founding churches, acquiring slaves, struggling over Indian territorial boundaries on the southern frontier and joining the patriot cause. Combining insights from military and social history, Andrew argues that while […]
“Was the American Revolution inevitable?” is a complex question posed by Robert Allison in the 2017 George Rogers Clark Lecture. The achievement of independence hinged upon the cooperation of colonists from diverse backgrounds to unite in a common cause. The people in British North America had profound differences—religious, social, political and economic—that surfaced in local […]
Rachel Engl charts social community—the ways individuals initiated and maintained casual and intimate relationships—in the Continental Army. Over the course of the Revolutionary War, tens of thousands of men served in the Continental Army, many of whom formed strong friendships while fighting. Personal connections sustained men within the Continental Army and opened new opportunities for some […]
Col. Isaac Hayne was hung for treason on August 4, 1781, in Charleston, South Carolina, by the British army. The death of a patriot for the cause of liberty was not a unique occurrence, but the unusually well-documented events surrounding the execution of Hayne and the involvement of his friends and family make his story […]
Andrew O’Shaughnessy argues that the drive to centralize control over its growing empire led Britain to adopt authoritarian policies to govern its American colonies and was one of the main causes of the American Revolution. Britain’s North American colonists resisted and ultimately rebelled to avoid the fate of Irish, a people denied the rights enjoyed […]
The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War unfolds a vignette from the beginning of the American Revolution. In the early spring of 1775, British army spies located four brass cannon belonging to Boston’s colonial militia that had gone missing months before. British general Thomas Gage devised plans to regain the […]
American prisoners in the revolutionary South held captive by the British forces were a logistical and financial burden that contributed to their failure in the South. During the Siege of Charleston in 1780, British forces under General Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot captured nearly six thousand American troops, the largest number of prisoners […]
Prints of an imagined George Washington circulated around the country in the late eighteenth century as Americans yearned for images of their new leaders. At the start of the Revolutionary War, almost any fictitious image could pass as a portrait of an American hero. George Washington, as commander-in-chief, warranted extra efforts and American printmakers searched […]
Parker’s Revenge, the scene of intense fighting between the retreating British and militia on April 19, 1775, is the site of recent archaeological discoveries. Because contemporary documents reveal little about this fight, an archaeological survey was needed to reveal clues left behind in the soil. Meg Watters and her team, using ground penetrating radar and […]
Global migration of American Loyalists following the Revolutionary War is a topic easily overlooked by scholars and educators as they trace the path of the victorious Patriot forces. However, 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, […]
The epic march to Yorktown undertaken by the French and patriot forces was the largest troop movement in the Revolutionary War. From 1781-1782 French forces marched under the command of the comte de Rochambeau to and from Yorktown, alongside their American allies led by George Washington, as they traveled from Newport, Rhode Island, and West […]
The experience of young soldiers in the Revolutionary War was shaped by their drive to achieve personal independence and autonomy. The war offered an entire generation of young men unusual opportunities for social advancement, honor and distinction, but diverted those who served from the established path through young adulthood. John Ruddiman focuses on soldiers as […]
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 […]
In March of 1783, the Newburgh Conspiracy threatened to derail the fragile calm at the end of the Revolutionary War. The rumors of peace after Yorktown brought anxiety to soldiers in the Continental Army. The Continental Congress had not paid them for some time, and they would soon return home, many impoverished. The soldiers had […]
Dennis Conrad recounts the significant alterations the Continental Navy underwent during the American Revolution in the spring of 1778. Naval warfare in the Revolutionary War took place in the Atlantic and beyond—stretching as far away as the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. The internationalization of naval conflicts and an increase in the number and […]
Nathaniel Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to the Battle of Bunker Hill. The real central character in this battle is Boston—where vigilantes fill the streets with a sinister and frightening violence, even as calmer patriots struggle to see their way to rebellion. The core of Philbrick’s lecture, building on his book Bunker Hill: A City, a […]
The Revolutionary War portraits that adorn the U.S. Capitol serve a purpose beyond artistic decoration. In the early nineteenth century, Americans searched for icons to unite them as a new nation, particularly ones that evoked civic virtue. The only symbols that the fractured and growing nation could agree on were Revolutionary War heroes. Learn how […]
The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed and danger into the life of every American, women included. While men left to fight, women shouldered greater responsibility as they maintained their farms alone and tried to prevent confiscation of property. Patriot women maintained boycotts of imported goods, joined the army disguised as […]
In addition to objecting to taxation without representation, Bostonians protested the Tea Act of 1773 in part because it forced them to pay a tax on top of the monopoly prices set by the East India Company. They also opposed supporting the sons of the royally appointed governor who would benefit from the tax revenue. […]