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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 narratives detail the French army’s march to Yorktown in 1781 and provide insight into the French experience marching […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 attempt to suppress the American Revolution in the South when a Royal Navy flotilla was […]
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 the Constitution was ratified by the states in a succession of state conventions. Ratification, as […]