Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
American Revolution
Badly disguised as Indians, a rowdy group of patriotic vandals kicked a revolution into motion.
At a curious stone tower in Somerville, Massachusetts, panic in 1774 could have sparked a war seven months before Lexington and Concord entered the history books.
We can’t let the home of one of the great heroes of the American Revolution be demolished.
“One of the great truths of history is that no past event was preordained,” wrote David McCullough in American Heritage. “Every battle, election, and revolution could have turned out differently at any point al
The farmhouse of General John Glover, one of the great heroes of the American Revolution, is scheduled to be demolished after July 1, 2024.
Editor’s Note: Nancy L. Schultz is a retired professor and chair of the Swampscott Historical Commission, which is working with other local partners to save the General John Glover Farmhouse.
John Glover and the men of Marblehead saved the Continental Army several times, and then helped it cross the Delaware to victory at Trenton and Princeton.
Editor’s Note: The author of 13 books, Patrick K. O’Donnell is one of our leading military historians.
Our nation is free because, 250 years ago, brave men and women fought a war to establish the independence of the United States and created a system of government to protect the freedom of its citizens.
In “the cradle of the American Revolution,” loyalists to the Crown faced a harsh choice: live with terrible abuse where they were, or flee to friendlier, but alien regions.
The dumping of tons of tea in protest set the stage for the American Revolution and was a window on the culture and attitudes of the time.
Enlisting an army of alter egos, Adams used the Boston press to make the case for American independence and to orchestrate a burgeoning rebellion.
An estimated 1500 privateering ships played a crucial role in winning the American Revolution, but their contributions are often forgotten.
Editor’s Note: One of today’s finest writers about ships and the sea, Eric Jay Dolin previously contributed “Did Hurricanes Save America?” to American Heritage, which focused on the im
The World Trade Center attack wasn’t the first time New York was brutally assaulted — 225 years before, George Washington watched the city burn from his headquarters in northern Manhattan after painful military defeats.
Editor's note: Karin Abarbanel is the author of several nonfiction books. She grew up in Washington Heights just a few blocks from the Morris-Jumel Mansion.
No figure in the Revolutionary era inspired as much affection and reverence as Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette
Editor’s Note: We were disappointed when individuals protesting racial injustice last May spray-painted monuments in Lafayette Park, as we wrote at the time, since the vandalized statues of Lafayette, K
A menu for a 1779 New England Thanksgiving included dishes from turkey and venison to pumpkin pie.
Research by American Heritage reveals that the Royal Navy had 24 warships sunk or heavily damaged in October 1780, which must have affected Britain's ability to fight in the months before the surrender at Yorktown.
The outcome of the American Revolution may have been affected by catastrophic storms in the deadliest hurricane season in recorded history.
American Heritage is launching a major effort to research and promote historic taverns from the Founding era.
A comprehensive website about historic taverns is much needed — there’s no info in one place on the Internet.
A team from American Heritage helped document some of the most important maps of the Revolution — still stored in the medieval English castle where scenes from Harry Potter were later filmed.
The American War for Independence was part of an international trend -- a new focus on the individual that inspired people to new insights, new proclamations, and new assertions of rights.
Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Revolution Song: A
Largely overlooked in histories of the Revolution, the Battle of the Chesapeake is in fact one of the most important naval engagements in history, leading to the American victory at Yorktown.
Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown
It is one of the most notorious incidents in American history, and also one of the least understood.
A little after 9:00 p.m. on March 5, 1770, a detachment of British soldiers fired into a crowd of townspeople on King Street in Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The result—the “Boston Massacre”—has echoed through the pages of newspapers, pamphlets, and history books ever since.
Thomas Paine's Common Sense helped Americans "decide upon the propriety of separation,” as George Washington said.
In May 1775, the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, rowing across the Potomac, met George Washington rowing in the other direction on his way to the Continental Congress. The two conversed briefly on the fate of the colonies, and Boucher asked Washington if he supported independence.
To explore the American Revolution through the eyes of John Singleton Copley is to see it with fresh eyes, to understand that it was a civil war with many shades of allegiance.
It's often portrayed as an orderly conflict between patriots, Tories, and British, but the American Revolution caused much suffering, dislocation, and economic decline, and had major effects on Native Americans and Spanish, French, Dutch, and other colonists worldwide.
Alan Taylor, in his recent American Revolutions: A Continental History, provides an important international context for the War for Independence, a perspective that is too often lacking in general discussions about the conflict.
The battle of Monmouth was pivotal in the struggle for independence, enabling George Washington to change the narrative of the war and eventually solidify his own role in our nation's history.
Unlike Saratoga or Yorktown, the battle of Monmouth was not a clear-cut American victory.
The battle of Monmouth was pivotal in the struggle for independence, enabling George Washington to change the narrative of the war and eventually solidify his own role in our nation's history.
Unlike Saratoga or Yorktown, the battle of Monmouth was not a clear-cut American victory.
It became convenient to portray Benedict Arnold as a conniving traitor, but the truth is more complex. The brilliant general often failed to get credit for his military wins, suffered painful wounds, lost his fortune while others profiteered, and finally gave up on the disorganized and often ineffective efforts to win the American Revolution.
A new look at a famous Revolutionary figure questions whether history’s long-standing judgment is accurate.
AT 9 O’CLOCK ON THE morning of September 25, 1775, a French Canadian habitant banged on the main gate of Montreal. The Americans were coming, he blurted breathlessly to a British officer.
America’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.
On April 22, 1775, three days after a British column marched out of Boston and clashed with militiamen at Lexington and Concord, the news—and the cry of Revolution!—reached Danbury, Connecticut, where 18-year-old Stephen Maples Jarvis was working on the family farm.
How Baron von Steuben used a tough winter to make a solid army out of a collection of untrained volunteers
On the first day of December, 1777, a group of four foreign gentlemen landed from the French ship Le Flamand at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
How tough Henry Knox hauled a train of cannon over wintry trails to help drive the British away from Boston
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