Tag: Revolutionary War

We’ve all heard of Paul Revere; we’ve all heard the poem. But I had never heard about the rest of his military career. Turns out, he was already working with the Committee of Correspondence before his famous horse ride. But there was even more after that, that I had not learned before. The subtitle of Read More

The subtitle of this book is, “The Adams, the Quincys, and the Battle for Loyalty in the American Revolution”. Most of us spend our time looking for ancestors who served in the Continental Army, or their state militia, or who at least performed some service on behalf of the revolution. This book is about the Read More

This is called a Sourcebook, because it consists of various documents that were written around the time of the American Revolution. There is not a great deal of analysis of these documents, but there is an introduction for each chapter, and a brief description of each item. The documents are divided somewhat by topic, or Read More

The subtitle of this book is “An American Warrior Reconsidered”. Martin tries to look at all of Benedict Arnold’s life, not just his service in, and eventual betrayal of, the Continental Army. Some previous biographies started with the fact of his being a traitor to the Revolution, and basically decided that he must have been Read More

The subtitle of this book is “The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation”. Calloway starts with a detailed description of the French and Indian War. And not really discussing just the battles, but going into detail about the combatants. He also discusses how and why George Washington ended up as Read More

The subtitle of this book is “America’s Battle for Freedom, Britain’s Quagmire; 1775-1783”. Each chapter takes a small slice of the time period, and describes mainly what is happening in England, and how the events in the colonies are impacting decisions there. One challenge was the length of time it took information to go back Read More

The subtitle of this book is “The Birth of American Independence”. Ellis writes about the summer of 1776, in detail. There were two main aspects of the fight for American independence going on at the same time. First, the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia, where they were about to officially declare our separation from Read More

The brides in question are Peggy Shippen, who married Benedict Arnold, and Lucy Flucker, who married Henry Knox. The subtitle of the book is “The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married”. Of course, Knox and Arnold started out on the same side of the Revolution. And while there is Read More

The subtitle of this book is “The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government”. To be honest, the last part of that subtitle was hidden under the library barcode, and I didn’t register the fact that this book on history was written by a Senator, not an historian. But I was curious about the individuals mentioned Read More

The subtitle of this book is “The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82”. Fenn describes how smallpox impacted the American Revolution. Since smallpox has been eradicated since 1980, and there has not been an outbreak in the US since 1947, we forget how much of an impact an epidemic can have on a population. At least, Read More