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 minute man from western Massachusetts. A native of Pelham, Taylor was an ensign in Capt. David Cowden’s […]
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 West Indies. Some ventured still farther afield, to Africa and India. Wherever they went, this voyage […]
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 faded in American memory and was eventually forgotten. Professor Martin describes their important contributions to […]
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 his boot. Professor Martin tells Arnold’s full story, from his childhood and support for the American cause […]
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—the two most common modern interpretations of the amendment. The American founders understood the right to bear […]
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 not rebel. Dr. O’Shaughnessy examines the British colonies in the Caribbean during the American Revolution and […]
The policies of Lord North, the British prime minister during the American Revolution, united the American colonies in rebellion. The Tea Act and the Coercive Acts solidified many colonists’ objections to what they considered British oppression. Dr. O’Shaughnessy examines the successes and failures of Lord North’s administration, which ended with his resignation six months after […]
Mel Gibson’s film The Patriot, released in 2000, is a valuable teaching tool, as Professor Edgar argues in this look at its themes and accuracy. The film illustrates two important themes very well: the vicious, partisan nature of the war in the South, and the wide range of interests and ideals that motivated southerners, whether […]
The American Revolution did not begin and end in Boston. The backcountry in the South was an especially important region in the struggle for American independence. Professor Edgar examines the complicated factors that influenced the conflict in this region, including Southerners’ reactions to the Stamp Act and Townsend Duties and the political empowerment of backcountry […]
African American women longed for freedom as much as anyone in revolutionary America, but few enjoyed its blessings. Liberty proved elusive, whether offered by the British or articulated by American revolutionaries. Some African American women in Virginia liberated themselves in response to Lord Dunmore’s proclamation, only to be sold back into slavery. Others fled to […]
The American Revolution was many revolutions, argues Professor Berkin, transforming the lives of Native Americans while the colonists fought for independence. For many Native Americans, victory meant increased pressure from white settlers. Native American women shared their peoples’ struggles for independence and autonomy. Professor Berkin highlights the story of Molly Brant, a Mohawk woman who […]
The Revolution transformed the role of women in American society. Law and custom in colonial America reflected the idea that women were morally inferior to men. Mothers bore and nursed their infants, but the task of teaching children right from wrong fell, at least in principle, on their fathers. Professor Berkin reveals how the Revolution […]
In the popular imagination, men conducted the Revolutionary War and the Continental Army and its encampments were an all-male environment. Professor Berkin reveals that, in reality, women and children accompanied the army and provided important services to sustain it, including cooking and laundering. The presence of these women decreased desertion and supplied necessary labor, although, […]
Professor Berkin illuminates how women—both supporters of American liberty and loyalists to the Crown—participated in the Revolutionary War and the challenges they faced during the period. Patriot women maintained boycotts of imported goods, joined the army disguised as men, acted as spies, and followed the Continental Army. Loyalist women were often stripped of their property […]
The Boston Tea Party was not just a local story, Professor Carp argues, it was also a global story. The East India Company was becoming a territorial power in South Asia. Its principal import, tea, came from China and was becoming a popular drink among Europeans. These Europeans drank their tea with sugar, planted and […]
Revolutionary Americans regarded civic virtue—a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the good of the community—as vital to the preservation of republican institutions. The ideal of virtuous citizenship was rooted in classical antiquity and influenced American political thought and the art, architecture and literature that helped define the iconography of the new nation. Professor Cornell […]
After winning its independence, the new American republic faced internal threats to its survival political, economic and cultural differences resurfaced during the return to peacetime. These pressures prompted the nation’s leaders to abandon the loose confederacy formed during the Revolutionary War and embrace a more unified country under a federal constitution. Professor Cornell highlights specific […]
The creation and adoption of the U.S. Constitution was a fulfillment of the American Revolution, not a conservative counterrevolution. Professor Cornell details how James Madison, known as the architect of the Constitution, arrived at his proposal for the delegates’ consideration in the Constitutional Convention. He reviewed the new nation’s problems, the literature and history of […]
The Revolutionary War disrupted the institution of slavery in the United States. Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation in Virginia promised freedom to men enslaved by rebel masters if they would fight in the royal army. The additional social unrest provided by war made it difficult for slaveholders to retain their property, and many enslaved people liberated […]
A powerful thread connects the American Revolution and the civil rights movement of the 1960s: the world-shaking proclamation of the Declaration of Independence “that all men are created equal” and have an undeniable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It became the centerpiece of African American political thought for the next two […]
Slavery is the great American contradiction. The independence of the United States held the promise of liberty and equal rights for all, yet the country’s founding documents permitted slavery to endure. Indeed, many of the men who wrote and signed these documents owned enslaved men and women. Professor Hershman examines eight leading revolutionaries—George Washington, John […]
Many people assume that the Revolutionary War ended with the surrender of the British army at Yorktown in October 1781. In fact, the war continued for two more traumatic years. During that time, the Revolution came as close to being lost as any time in the preceding six years. When Congress failed to pay the […]
“Listen my children and you shall hear.” With those lines, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began his epic poem about Paul Revere’s ride on the night of April 18, 1775. When it was first published in 1861, the poem was an immediate sensation, and it has remained in Americans’ popular memory of the Revolution ever since. Many […]
The soldiers of the Continental Army suffered extreme hardships during the Revolutionary War. Beyond experiencing the terror of combat, the troops were chronically undersupplied. The close of the war brought further anxiety as many of the soldiers had not been paid in months or even years, and the impending disbanding of the army would send […]
Battles at sea played a key role in securing American independence, even though the size and prowess of the Royal Navy dwarfed that of the nascent Continental Navy. John Paul Jones, who defeated the HMS Serapis, became the great hero of the American navy—both in his own time and to later generations of Americans. French […]
The people of Massachusetts had more power over their own government than anyone else in the British Empire. Bitterness and resentment festered among these independent-minded colonists as the Crown raised taxes on American goods and sent soldiers to enforce the new policies. These rising tensions eventually led to outward expressions of resistance, most notably the […]
For the latter part of the American War of Independence, the British focused on taking control of the South. They captured Savannah and Charleston and launched a campaign to crush rebels in the Carolinas and Virginia. George Washington responded to the threat by entrusting Nathanael Greene with command the American army in the South. Greene […]
Winston Churchill called the Seven Years’ War the first world war. Yet, Americans typically think of this conflict only in terms of its North American theater, where it is most often referred to as the French and Indian War. The Seven Years’ War was a much bigger conflict involving world powers France, England, Prussia, Hanover […]
The marquis de Lafayette and the comte de Rochambeau were each vital to the fight for American independence, but they took different paths to their service in the American war. Unlike most other French officers, Lafayette did not seek a position in the American army to bolster his military resume or to simply follow his […]
In August 1781, British commander Lord Cornwallis moved his troops to Yorktown, Virginia, hoping he could more easily receive supplies and reinforcements via the York River, near the Chesapeake Bay. Professor Osman details the events that followed, leading to the allied victory at Yorktown. The allied Franco-American forces, most under the command of the comte […]
King Louis XVI’s people called him the “Liberating King” for his support of the American Revolution, so how did he end up beheaded at the guillotine? Professor Osman assesses Louis XVI’s conduct during the American and French Revolutions and how he met his downfall. The fortune he spent in support of the American War of […]