Some of the Institute’s lectures have been recorded and are available to watch online. These include recent installments of the annual George Rogers Clark Lecture, a program launched in 1975 to recognize the work of leading historians of the American Revolution; the Society of the Cincinnati Prize, awarded to the author of a distinguished work of history of the era of the American Revolution; and the Catesby Jones Lecture, which highlights the latest research on Revolutionary War history.
On Tea, Taxes and World History: The British East India Company and the Origins of the American Revolution
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…
Society of the Cincinnati Eagles of the Twentieth Century
The Institute’s deputy director and curator, Emily Parsons, discusses Society of the Cincinnati Eagles of the twentieth century. The Eagle insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati is one of the most historic American medals and has been worn…
A Scrapbook Documenting Isabel Anderson’s Gift of Anderson House to the Society of the Cincinnati
Larz Anderson, the great grandson of a Revolutionary War officer, was a devoted member of the Society of the Cincinnati. Upon his death in 1937, his widow, Isabel, oversaw the gift of their Washington, D.C. home, Anderson House, to…
Spanish and American Diplomacy and Partnership in the Time of the Revolution: A Celebration of Trans-Atlantic Friendship
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 Surveyor’s Eyes: Mapping Empire in the Era of the American Revolution
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…
All the World’s a Stage: The Role of Architecture and Interior Decor in Entertaining at Anderson House, 1905-1929
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…
The Wandering Army: The British Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War
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…
The Diplomatic Uniform of Larz Anderson
Museum Collections and Operations Manager Paul Newman discusses a diplomatic uniform made for Larz Anderson by Davies & Son of London, England, for his appointment as the U.S. minister to Belgium in 1911. At the time, U.S. diplomats…
François-Jean de Chastellux and American Independence
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…
In League with Liberty: The Persistence of Patriots of Color and the Formation of the First Rhode Island Regiment of the Continental Army
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…
Charles Stedman’s History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War
Historical Programs Manager Andrew Outten discusses Charles Stedman’s History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War that contains detailed annotations made by British general Sir Henry Clinton. Stedman, who served as an officer in the British…
The Battle of St. Louis and the Attack on Cahokia
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…
The Real Miracle at Valley Forge: George Washington’s Political Mastery
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…
A Captured British Light Dragoon Carbine
Deputy Director and Curator Emily Parsons for a discussion of a British Pattern 1756 light dragoon carbine and the winding road it took to seeing action in the American Revolution. In May 1776, just two months after the British had…
Environmental Legacies: How the War of Independence Affected the Natural World in Predictable and Surprising Ways
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…
A Presentation Sword Awarded to Commodore Joshua Barney
Museum Collections and Operations Manager Paul Newman discusses a presentation sword awarded to Commodore Joshua Barney (1759-1818) by the city of Washington, D.C., for his service at the Battle of Bladensburg, fought on August 24, 1814. Barney, who…
The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution
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…
“As long as I have served, I have not left a battlefield in such deep sorrow”: The Archaeology of a Mass Burial Discovered at Red Bank Battlefield
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…
A Series of 1778 Prints Satirizing the Carlisle Peace Commission
Research Services Librarian Rachel Nellis discusses the art of satire and Matthew and Mary Darly, the English husband and wife print shop owners and caricaturists. This Lunch Bite explores the Darly’s careers and focuses on their series of four…
The Other 1776: Reform and French Military Dress in the Late Ancien Regime
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…
Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America
“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…
Chinese Tea and American Rebels: The Global Origins of the Revolutionary Crisis
Drawing from his book, An Empire on the Edge, a 2015 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, historian Nick Bunker delivers the annual George Rogers Clark lecture and re-examines the Boston Tea Party and the onset of the…
Women at War: Confronting Challenges and Hardships in the American Revolution
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…
First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity
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…
North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution
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…
Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade
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…
William Faden’s 1778 and 1784 maps of the Battle of Brandywine
Historical Programs Manager Andrew Outten discusses two maps produced by British cartographer William Faden depicting the Battle of Brandywine. William Faden is well known for his maps of major battles of the Revolutionary War. Unusually, he produced two maps of…
“To Have The Bed Made”: Invisible Labor and the Material Culture of Nursing in the Revolutionary War
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…
The Habsburg Monarchy and the American Revolution
During the Revolutionary War, the Habsburg monarchy, the largest continental European power of the eighteenth century, never formally recognized the United States, but its ruling and mercantile elites saw opportunity, especially for commerce. Bringing together materials from nearly fifty international…
“A Kind of Partisan War”: An Archaeological Perspective on Francis Marion
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…
The Artifacts of Arnold’s Bay: Following the Diaspora of Material Culture Over Time
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…
The Art and Science of Siege Warfare in the American Revolution
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…
Nathanael Greene’s Pistols
The Institute’s historical programs manager, Andrew Outten, discusses a pair of holster pistols that was owned by Gen. Nathanael Greene and given to his aide-de-camp, Nathaniel Pendleton, who served under Greene during the Southern Campaign of the…
Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778
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…
Dr. James Tilton’s Society of the Cincinnati Eagle Insignia and Treatise
The Institute’s deputy director and curator, Emily Parsons, discusses Dr. James Tilton’s Society of the Cincinnati Eagle insignia and 1813 medical treatise.
James Tilton served in the Revolutionary War first as a military physician for the Delaware Regiment…
Medicine in the American Revolution
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…
The Burning of His Majesty’s Schooner Gaspee
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…
A Portrait of Capt. Francis Lord Rawdon
Museum Collections and Operations Manager Paul Newman discusses a portrait of Capt. Francis Lord Rawdon by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, ca 1777. Lord Rawdon, an Irish-born officer in the British army, saw extensive service in the northern and southern theaters…
Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War
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…
America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution
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…
Benjamin Rush’s Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers
Library Director Ellen McCallister Clark discusses Benjamin Rush’s Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers from our library collections and a feature of our exhibition, Saving Soldiers: Medical Practice in the Revolutionary War. Published in 1778, Directions for Preserving…
Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero
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…
Mercy Otis Warren’s Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous
Research Services Librarian Rachel Nellis discusses Mercy Otis Warren’s Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, published in 1790, that contains two plays and several allegorical or satirical poems on the Revolution that were dedicated to George Washington and praised by Alexander…
Displaced: The Siege of Boston and the “Donation People” of 1775
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…
Cornwallis: Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World
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…
A Most Gallant Resistance: The Delaware River Campaign, September-November 1777
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…
A German Military Jaeger Rifle
Historical Programs Manager Andrew Outten discusses a German military jaeger rifle. The soldiers who comprised the German auxiliary forces that supported Great Britain during the Revolutionary War were a formidable foe. They were well trained and highly disciplined. Among these…
The Untold War at Sea: America’s Revolutionary Privateers
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…
A Portrait of Sir William Green
Museum Collections and Operations Manager Paul Newman discusses a portrait of General Sir William Green, Baronet, by George Carter, ca 1784. As the chief engineer for Gibraltar prior to and during the Franco-Spanish siege of the British territory, it…
Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding
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…
Surviving the Winters: Housing Washington’s Army during the American Revolution
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…
George Washington, the Society of the Cincinnati, and the Origins of American Neutrality
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…
The British Are Coming: The War for America Begins
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…
Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History
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…
The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina
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…
Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution
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…
French Memoirs from the War for American Independence
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…
The Battle of Saratoga and “the Compleat Victory”
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…
George Washington and the District of Columbia
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…
The Boston Massacre: A Family History
Serena Zabin, professor of history and director of the American studies program at Carleton College, discusses her book on the personal and political conflicts that erupted in the Boston Massacre. Following the British troops dispatched from Ireland to Boston in…
The Cabinet: Washington and the Creation of an American Institution
Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections and constitutional challenges—and finding congressional help lacking—George Washington decided he needed a group of advisors. Washington modeled his new cabinet on the councils of war he had led as commander of the…
The Future of the American Revolution
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…
America’s First Veterans
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…
A Second of July Concert
David and Ginger Hildebrand perform eighteenth-century songs—including ballads, marches, and songs inspired by women—in costume with period instruments for our 2020 Independence Day concert. The Hildebrands have performed for our traditional “Second Day of July” concert for…
Deborah Sampson at War
Librarian Rachel Nellis discusses Herman Mann’s The Female Review: or, Memoirs of an American Young Lady, a 1797 biography of Deborah Sampson, a soldier in the Massachusetts Line and one of the first female pensioners of the American Revolution…
1774: The Long Year of Revolution
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…
Prisoners of War in the American Revolution
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…
American Veterans through Two Centuries
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…
Louis XVI and the War of American Independence
Aid sent by Louis XVI tipped the scales in favor of a Patriot victory in the War for American Independence. However, this assistance was far from assured. John Hardman argues that the French monarch possessed sharp political insight and talent…
The American Revolution and the French Military Enlightenment
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…
Nathanael Greene’s Last Campaign
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…
The Revolutionary Life of Daniel Morgan
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…
Rebels on the Pennsylvania Frontier
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…
A Portrait of American Loyalist James DeLancey
American loyalist Colonel James DeLancey of Westchester County, New York, who led several loyalist cavalry and infantry units during the American Revolution is the subject of this portrait ca. 1778-1782 attributed to itinerant artist John Durand. Portraits of American…
Battlefield Burial during the Revolutionary War
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…
The American Revolution on the Spanish Borderlands
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…
Historians on Hamilton the Musical
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…
A Fratricidal Affair of Honor: Reactions to the Burr-Hamilton Duel
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…
Washington’s Farewell Address
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…
Andrew Pickens: War Hero and Founder
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…
Was the American Revolution Inevitable?
“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…
The Social Community of the Continental Army
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…
The Execution of Isaac Hayne, South Carolinian
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…
The British Empire and the Causes of the American Revolution
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…
The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War
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…
American Prisoners in the Revolutionary South
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…
How Revolutionary Americans Imagined George Washington
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…
Archaeology at Parker’s Revenge
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…
American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
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…
Two Narratives of the French Army’s March to Yorktown
French narratives of the march to Yorktown from the American Revolution Institute’s collection—written by Henri-Dominique de Palys, chevalier de Montrepos, and Robert Guillaume, baron de Dillon—are highlighted in this presentation by Rachel Jirka, an Institute librarian…
The March to Yorktown
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…
Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War
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…
The American Revolution in the Caribbean
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…
George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy
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…
Naval Warfare in the Spring of 1778
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…
Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution
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…
Revolutionary War Heroes in the Art of the U.S. Capitol
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…
Women in the American Revolution
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…
The Boston Tea Party
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…
From George Washington’s Crossing to Victory in Princeton
In summer of 1776, George Washington suffered many crushing defeats and lost 90 percent of the army under his command. British and Hessian forces had recovered much of New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. By late November, thousands of…
The Greatness of George Washington
Gordon Wood examines the virtues of George Washington that aided the Chief Commander of the Continental Army and first President of the United States to shape the young country. Wood highlights Washington’s concerns with his reputation—citing his letters…
The Political Path to Revolution and War, 1760-1776
Why did the British government pass the Stamp Act, the Townshend Duties, the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts? Why did they pass a series of measures seemingly calculated to offend and provoke North American colonists? These measures cannot be…
The Coming of the Revolution in Massachusetts
Did events in the Massachusetts colony make the American Revolution inevitable? The people of Massachusetts had more power over their own government than anyone else in the British empire. As the British crown raised taxes on American goods and soldiers…
The American Revolution in the South
The American Revolution in the South is neglected in many accounts of the period, Walter Edgar explains, but it involved some of the most vicious battles and intense partisan struggles of the entire war. The British failed in their first…
The People Debate the Constitution
The ratification of the Constitution is usually treated as an afterthought. There are dozens of books about the Federal Convention, and history textbooks conventionally deal with debates in the convention, but few studies deal with the critical process through which…