Supporting scholarship and promoting popular understanding of the American Revolution is central to the work of the American Revolution Institute. The Institute welcomes distinguished scholars and authors to share their insights and discuss their latest research with the public at Anderson House through lectures, author's talks and panel discussions. The Institute also hosts a variety of other historical programs throughout the year, including our Lunch Bite object talks, battlefield tours, special Anderson House tour programs and other events. Many of the events we offer are free.
December 2019
Lunch Bite – Nisbet Balfour’s Letter Book of 1781
Join Kathleen Higgins, historical programs associate, for a discussion of Nisbet Balfour's letter book recording his correspondence in early 1781. The British commander at Charleston, South Carolina, communicated with notable figures from the war, including Sir Henry Clinton, Benedict Arnold and Sir James Wright. The presentation will last approximately 30 minutes with time afterwards for up-close viewing of the letters.
Find out more »January 2020
Lunch Bite – British Military Wall Gun
Join History and Education Associate Evan Phifer for a discussion of a Revolutionary War-period British military wall gun and its unique role in eighteenth-century warfare. With an overall length of more than six feet, a weight exceeding thirty-five pounds and a .98-caliber bore that fired a lead ball up to a mile, the wall gun was intended as a fixed weapon in the defense of fortifications during siege warfare. In America, where they were imported beginning before the French and…
Find out more »Lecture – Sealed with Blood: Gratitude for Revolutionary Veterans and American National Identity
Sarah Purcell, L.F. Parker Professor of History at Grinnell College, discusses how public memories and commemorations of the Revolutionary War and its veterans helped early Americans form a common bond and create a new national identity. Officers were often remembered as national heroes in newspapers, songs, pamphlets, sermons and theater productions. Martyred heroes such as Joseph Warren and Richard Montgomery created powerful images of a nation united by grief. Common veterans also sought to claim some measure of public gratitude…
Find out more »Author’s Talk – The Insurgent Delegate: Selected Letters and Other Writings of George Thatcher
William C. diGiacomantonio, chief historian of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, discusses and signs copies of his edited volume of selected letters of George Thatcher, a U.S. representative from Maine throughout the Federalist Era—the most critical and formative period of American constitutional history. The more than two hundred letters Thatcher wrote during his forty-year career as a country lawyer, national legislator and state supreme court justice document his experiences as a New England Federalist, abolitionist, religious dissenter and pedagogical innovator.…
Find out more »February 2020
Author’s Talk – The Soldier’s Two Bodies: Military Sacrifice and Popular Sovereignty in Revolutionary War Veteran Narratives
James M. Greene, assistant professor of English at Indiana State University, discusses and signs copies of his book exploring Revolutionary War veterans’ narratives and how soldiers have been represented in two contrasting ways from the nation’s first days: as heroic symbols of the body politic and as people whose sufferings have been neglected by their country. Greene discusses several well-known examples of the genre, including narratives from Ethan Allen, Joseph Plumb Martin and Deborah Sampson, along with Herman Melville’s fictional…
Find out more »