American Revolution ![](/web/20231203180836im_/https://hnn.us/images/icon/rss.png)
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SOURCE: TIME
7/3/2023
The Declaration of Independence Sealed a Shotgun Wedding
by Eli Merritt
If the founding is to inspire us today, it should be for the way that the journey from the Declaration to the Constitution reflected the ability to overcome bitter and pervasive division.
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SOURCE: New York Times
7/3/2023
Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
John Dichtl of the American Association for State and Local History says that Americans want "more help navigating these times, which are probably only going to get worse,” portending brutal battles over the upcoming commemoration.
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SOURCE: PBS News Hour
7/4/2023
The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman says that the founding can't be understood without understanding the founders' worldview and actions, which, as a matter of pure fact, incorporated an acceptance and embrace of slavery.
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SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
1/30/2023
George Washington in Barbados?
by Erica Johnson Edwards
The local monuments to George Washington's 1751 visit to Barbados demonstrate the interconnectedness of American and Caribbean histories as well as the influence of Caribbean practices of enslavement on the institution in the United States.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/17/2023
Edward Larson Speaks to the New History Wars
by Jon Meacham
"To me, Larson’s unemotional account of the Republic’s beginnings confirms a tragic truth: that influential white Americans knew — and understood — that slavery was wrong and liberty was precious, but chose not to act according to that knowledge and that understanding."
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12/18/2022
A Grisly but Significant Discovery at Red Bank Updates the History of the 1777 Philadelphia Campaign
by Robin Baker
Local volunteers excavating near the site of Fort Mercer in southern New Jersey discovered new evidence of the participation of Hessian mercenaries in a key battle in the British attempt to seize Philadelphia in 1777.
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12/11/2022
The Selective Appropriation of Christopher Gadsden's Famous Flag
by Jordan Baker
The Gadsden Flag originally symbolized the unity of the American colonies against oppression by the Crown and Parliament. It's an irony of history that the symbol has been adopted by some who reject centralized authority.
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SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
10/20/2022
Sam Adams: The Sock-Puppet Propagandist of Revolution
by Stacy Schiff`
The journalistic standards of the day meant that the patriotic agitator saw no ethical reason not to publish inflammatory essays under multiple aliases.
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10/23/2022
Isaac Sears and the Roots of America in New York
by Sam Roberts
The career of merchant and patriot Isaac Sears highlights the underappreciated role of New York City in the movement for American independence.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
9/19/2022
When the News of a Royal Death Arrived Slowly, it Changed American History
by Helena Yoo Roth
The void of power in the American colonies created by rumor of the death of King George II was critical to loosening the monarchy's claims to rule in North America.
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SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
4/11/2022
Woody Holton Still Fighting the American Revolution
"I knew history buffs would want a narrative, and I was happy to provide one, since one of my main points is that women’s, Indigenous, military, and all the other histories transpired on the same timeline, constantly influencing each other."
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SOURCE: TIME
2/21/2022
Were the Founders a Bunch of Wealthy Oligarchs?
by Willard Sterne Randall
Charles Beard's progressive-era analysis of the founding portrayed the Founders as men of wealth pursuing their own interests; we know the reality was more complicated.
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SOURCE: Salon
2/21/2022
How Ben Franklin Leveraged the French Addiction to Snuff to Get Aid for Independence
by Willard Sterne Randall
Without any tobacco-producing colonies, the French crown was eager to gain access to tobacco from Virginia, a fact deftly exploited by Franklin.
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2/20/2022
The Revolution Whisperer
by Greg Shaw
The author hoped to write a biography of William Small, the Scottish polymath whose mentorship linked the political revolution of Thomas Jefferson and the industrial one of James Watt. Learning that another researcher had beaten him to the punch didn't diminish the author's admiration for the story in the least.
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SOURCE: World Socialist Website
1/20/2022
Jack Rakove on Writing History, and the 1619 Project
The Stanford historian emeritus gives a wide-ranging interview about his career, the American revolution, writing history, and his disagreements with the 1619 Project.
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SOURCE: Governing
12/19/2021
H.W. Brands on America's First Civil War and the Memory of the Revolution
"Rebellion and revolution are a rejection of the status quo, and the people who reject the status quo are usually people for whom the status quo isn’t working. In the case of Washington and Franklin, however, they couldn’t have asked for more from the status quo, so what caused them to do this?"
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SOURCE: The New Republic
11/18/2021
The Storm over the American Revolution
by Eric Herschthal
By shoehorning his recent book on the Revolutionary War into the space of the debate about slavery and the founding, critics of Woody Holton are missing important points about the importance of indigenous land to the founding and the global context of colonial independence.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
11/9/2021
Enslaved Women as American Revolutionaries: Karen Cook-Bell
"Instead of viewing Black women as at the margins of the American Revolution and abolitionism, it is important to see them as visible participants and self-determined figures who put their lives on the line for freedom."
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SOURCE: National Archives Museum
10/18/2021
Lecture: H.W. Brands on The First Civil War – Loyalists and Patriots in the American Revolution (11/23)
H.W. Brands will discuss the tensions between Loyalists and Revolutionaries in the colonies and the way those tensions shaped the course of revolution.
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SOURCE: The Bulwark
10/18/2021
Piety, Patriotism, and Paranoia: What Today's Right Takes From the American Revolution
by Thomas Lecaque and J.L. Tomlin
"As much as we might like to think that these invocations of Revolutionary identity are a misappropriation, the truth is there is plenty of precedent in early American history for the disturbing ideas, intentions, and modes of thought seen on the far right today."