Reflections on the Siege and Capitulation of Yorktown and Gloucester
Lt. General Earl Cornwallis, the British general officer commanding in the south, occupied Yorktown and Gloucester on August 1 and 2, 1781, the evacuation of Portsmouth was completed on the 18th, and...
View ArticleFrench Adventurers, Patriots, and Pretentious Imposters in the Fight for...
France was defeated in the Seven Years War. The defeat resulted in France losing valuable colonies, and prestige and influence in Europe. Desperate to regain her past glory, France began to modernize...
View ArticleMorale Manipulation as the Central Strategic Imperative in the American...
Most people think of wartime propaganda as atrocity stories about the enemy. But commanders also disseminate false and true information in hopes of boosting their own soldiers’ morale and sapping the...
View ArticleThis Week on Dispatches: Jack Cambell on Lafayette’s Plan to Invade Ireland
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor and historical interpreter Jack Campbell on the Marquis de Lafayette’s fascinating attempt to garner support for an invasion of...
View ArticleTimothy Matlack, Scribe of the Declaration of Independence
The scribe of the Declaration of Independence—and perhaps the first man to read it in public—was born on March 28, 1736 in Haddonfield, New Jersey. His family moved to Philadelphia eight years later....
View ArticleJefferson and Burke on Marat, Danton, and Robespierre
Thomas Jefferson is well-known for his so-called “Frenchified” stance.[1] On the topic of the relationship between Jefferson and French Revolution, scholarly accounts often stop at depicting...
View ArticleDid George Washington Swear at Charles Lee During the Battle of Monmouth?
The scene is one of the most famous in the annals of the American Revolutionary War. The commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington, confronts his second-in-command, Charles...
View ArticleOn the Road Again: En Train De Marcher—Frenchmen Travel Through Delaware
If you ask an outsider about the State of Delaware, they are likely to respond, “Dela-where?” “Do you mean Delaware County???” A few may reply, “Yeah. I think I passed through there once on my way to...
View ArticleThe Battle of Gloucester, 1777
BOOK REVIEW: The Battle of Gloucester 1777 by Garry Wheeler Stone and Paul W. Schopp (Yardley, PA: Westhome Publishing, 2022) Garry Wheeler Stone’s and Paul W. Schopp’s The Battle of Gloucester 1777...
View ArticleThe Battle of Green Spring: A Footnote on the Road to Yorktown
Ensign Ebenezer Denny calculated that he went from a green officer to a combat veteran in all of four minutes. Yet in those harsh two hundred and forty seconds he felt like anything but a leader of men...
View ArticleCaptain Luke Day: A Forgotten Leader of “Shays’s Rebellion”
While Daniel Shays (1747-1825) has basked posthumously in the glory of leading the 1786-87 populist rebellion that bears his name, Luke Day (1743-1801) was a co-commander of the forces on the ground...
View Article“Earned By Veteran Intrepidity”: Spencer’s Ordinary, June 26, 1781
Captain Johann Ewald had much to thank the Almighty for.[1] A heroic stand on the picket line before Norfolk, Virginia, parried an American thrust and covered the captain and his men with glory, but it...
View ArticleThe Revolutionary Battle of Petersburg
When one mentions the Battle of Petersburg in Civil-War-centric Virginia, the immediate reaction is Ulysses S. Grant versus Robert E. Lee in 1864 and 1865. True. But the first Battle of Petersburg was...
View ArticleDid Charles Lee Disobey George Washington’s Attack Order at Monmouth?
The court martial of Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, who had been George Washington’s second in command during the Monmouth campaign, centered on three charges against him for his conduct during the Battle of...
View ArticleThe Marquis de Lafayette in Delaware
The last surviving major general of the American Revolution was French aristocrat Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, the marquis de Lafayette. Invited by President James Monroe to help...
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