250 and Counting

Category: American Revolution

  • Mister Knox Goes to Ticonderoga–November 16, 1775

    Cover art for November 16, 1775: Portrait of Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart, 1806

    It’s a little bit unfair using this portrait to represent Henry Knox, because it was painted many years after his involvement in the Revolution, which began when Knox was 25 years old. As it turns out, this painting is from 1806, the year Knox died.

    Henry Knox ran a bookstore in Boston as a young man, and he was on-hand for the carnage of the Boston Massacre in 1770. So by the time the war officially broke out, Knox was fully radicalized and ready for action. Because of his actions at Ticonderoga, he rose quickly through the ranks and became the Chief Artillery Officer of the Continental Army, and later the Secretary of War under George Washington, though at that point he was mostly dealing with Indian affairs.

    Fort Knox in Kentucky is named after him, but we’re talking about the military installation, not the national depository which is practically next door.

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  • The Birth of the Black Loyalists–November 14, 1775

    Cover art for November 14, 1775: art depicting a member of Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. Original artist is unknown but this image is frequently used to represent those soldiers.

    Lord Dunmore issued his Proclamation just a week earlier, but the response was much stronger than anticipated, probably because—who knew!—people hate being slaves.

    While the Proclamation only applied to the Virginia colony, because Dunmore had no authority conferred upon him anywhere else, a huge number of slaves and otherwise indentured servants from throughout the thirteen colonies fled to the British side of the lines.

    (We have to say “throughout” because slavery was a thing in the north at this point; it just wasn’t nearly as common as in the south.)

    This led to thousands of “American” blacks living ex-patriate lives throughout the British Empire after the Revolution.

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  • Dis-Integrated–November 12, 1775

    Cover art for November 12, 1775: "Soldiers in the First Rhode Island Regiment /Varnum's Black Regiment," Frank Quagan, c. 1976.

    It should come as a surprise to nobody that America has a troubled relationship with its past when it comes to race relations.

    It may come as surprise to you that our Founding Fathers had a complex relationship with their present when it comes to race relations. Yes, many of them owned slaves, but a significant percentage of those men had committed to freeing them at some point.

    The problem was, that point was rather nebulous. And there was a lot of ambiguity when it came to the question of how to deal with both slaves and free Blacks at that time. As we noted a couple of days ago, Lord Dunmore had a pretty good idea to free any Blacks who chose to fight on the British side. Unfortunately it was rather poorly executed and soldiers were killed, died of smallpox, or returned to their masters. Very few of them remained free. It also never occurred to Dunmore that women and children might be interested in the deal, too.

    The idea crossed George Washington’s mind, too. Until it un-crossed it, then crossed it again.

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  • The Battle Of Hog Island–November 11, 1775

    Cover art for November 11, 1775: map dating to the mid-1700s depicting Fort Johnson and Hog Island in the Charleston Bay.

    The Battle of Hog Island was the first of two major events early in the Revolution that got South Carolina firmly on board with the Independence cause.

    Hog Island caused the South Carolina Committee of Safety to expand their navy; in this respect they were way ahead of the Continental Congress.

    But when King George III approved the American Prohibitory Act in December, that really irritated South Carolinians. The Act act declared that any vessels captured by the Royal Navy after January 1, 1776, would now be considered lawful prizes. When this news reached Charleston, it was taken as an act of war.

    And sure enough, it wouldn’t be long before another confrontation took place that would help to shape the overall look of the war.

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  • Happy Birthday To The US Marines!–November 10, 1775

    Cover art for November 10, 1775: the US Marine Corps' 2008 Birthday celebration at Camp LeJeune. Courtesy of the US Marines. (USMC photo, ID 674; VRIN #081107-M-3189M-001.jpg)

    The United States Marine Corps celebrates its birthday every year on this day, usually with a ball (the dancing kind) and a cake-cutting ceremony. The cover art today is from their 233rd birthday celebration.

    Until 1921, the Marines marked the occasion on July 11, which was the date of the re-establishment of the Corps, since they were disbanded after the Revolution. But John Adams (again) came to the rescue and signed an act to re-organize the Corps. However, July 11 didn’t get a lot of attention. But when Commandant John Lejeune (the guy after whom the camp was named) was asked to draft an order to celebrate the Corps, he wrote Marine Corps Order 47, establishing the original November 10 date as the Marines’ birthday.

    Also, for what it’s worth, the “halls of Montezuma” refers to Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City (left). So yes, it really is a thing, and it’s still standing.

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  • Arnold’s March to Canada Ends–November 9, 1775

    Cover art for November 9, 1775: "Quebec from the Pointe Lévis Side" by James Pattison Cockburn, Watercolor and pencils, 1827

    We gotta give Benedict Arnold this: he set a goal and he stuck to it.

    Given the opportunity to take men and help invade Quebec through a kind of pincer move with General Montgomery, Benedict Arnold took 1100 men through the wilds of Maine to the St. Lawrence River, a trip that he thought would take 20 days over 180 miles.

    But they ran into problems almost immediately involving weather, leaky boats, bad maps, bad terrain, illness and almost half the men turning back.

    But make it he did, still with 600 men in tow, and with the help of the locals he got the sick ones healthy, the hungry ones fed, and established a base of operations for the next step, which we’ll talk about in just a few days.

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  • Dunmore Has A Tempting Offer–November 7, 1775

    Cover art for November 7, 1775: detail of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation as it appeared in the Philadelphia Journal and Weekly Advertiser, 12/6/1775. Via the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

    Lord Dunmore was driven from the Governor’s Mansion back in June, but he never went far. That same day he took refuge on a British ship near Williamsburg and continued playing the role of Governor, even though the House of Burgesses was already doing quite nicely, thank you.

    Slave revolts were a constant concern in the slave states, and Dunmore was almost certainly inspired by an incident just a couple of days earlier during the Battle of Kemps Landing. An enslaved man, serving alongside the British regulars, came face to face with his former enslaver, Joseph Hutchings, a local militia commander. Hutchings fired at him point blank and missed. In retaliation, the black soldier wounded him with a sword.

    Dunmore and his British compatriots, who were clearly already aware of the power of a general revolt, saw this event as an opportunity.

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  • Congress Has A Busy Day–November 6, 1775

    Cover art for November 6, 1775: portrait of John Langdon by Hattie Elizabeth Burdette, 1916.

    There are going to be days when no truly big events happen, but that wasn’t going to stop the Second Continental Congress from getting stuff done.

    Today we have a bit of an image of that group as a bunch of men who are hard-drinking philosophers, ready—and maybe eager—to burst into fisticuffs, or perhaps the occasional song, depending on where you got your impressions.

    So for that reason, we do like to remind you that the Continental Congress, for all their weird little squabbles, was a serious group of men. They took their jobs seriously, and put a lot of thought into everything they did. They often put in long hours, working until after darkness fell many days, and they typically worked six days a week.

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  • Washington Chides His Men–November 5, 1775

    Cover art for November 5, 1775: Detail from an engraving of some of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, with Guy Fawkes in the center.

    Guy Fawkes Day is one of those holidays, we think, that many people in America know ABOUT, but don’t necessarily know when it takes place, nor do they have any idea who Guy Fawkes was. Fortunately we’re here to give you some of the scoop.

    Guy Fawkes was one of eleven conspirators involved in a plot to blow up the House of Lords with King James I inside, killing him and setting up an opportunity to install a Catholic king instead. The plot was discovered, and Fawkes eventually confessed.

    Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. “Hanged” in this sense meant being raised by the rope, rather than dropping and getting one’s neck broken. The person would be hanged almost to the point of death, then emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. The remains were then put on display in a prominent place, to remind people what happens to traitors. (Those were the days!)

    In Fawkes’ case, however, he accidentally died during the hanging when his neck was broken. Many think he orchestrated his “premature” death.

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  • Reinforcements Arrive Too Late–November 4, 1775

    Cover art for November 4, 1775: A 1790 watercolor showing Fort Saint-Jean in the background, and HMS Royal Savage in the foreground. Watercolor, pen & ink by James Peachey.

    As we told you yesterday, Major Preston was hoping that reinforcements were coming in time to rescue him and his men from Fort St. Jean, so he tried to stall for time with General Montgomery. General Montgomery wasn’t biting, though, and the siege finally ended when Preston’s men surrendered.

    Today, only a day later, a few hundred men arrive in Quebec from Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, but it’s too late for the fort. On the other hand, when the Americans try to take out Quebec City, they’ll have a much tougher time than they thought (and they lost anyway).

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