American Revolution

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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."

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• SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman
  9/28/2021
  

  You Likely Don't Know of the Tejano Patriots of the American Revolution

  The Daughters of the American Revolution has extended recognition to Spanish Texans who fought the British and aided the American rebels in the imperial conflicts that accompanied the war for independence. 

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• 9/12/2021
  

  Teaching "All Men are Created Equal" (Part I)

  by Jeff Schneider

  A longtime teacher of American history maintains that a close reading of the Declaration of Independence makes it possible to discuss revolution and racism in a thoughtful way without intimidating either white students or students of color.

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• 9/8/2021
  

  The Specter of Emancipation and the Road to Revolution: A Rejoinder to Richard Brown et. al.

  by Woody Holton

  Woody Holton responds to a recent open letter of criticism by six Revolutionary-era historians of his interpretation of the significance of slavery as a motivation for colonial independence. 

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• SOURCE: Medium
  9/7/2021
  

  Group of Historians Challenges Woody Holton's Interpretation of the Significance of Dunmore's Proclamation

  by Richard D. Brown et. al.

  A group of scholars argues that the famous 1775 decree by Lord Dunmore that enslaved Virginians who joined the British forces would be emancipated was a desperate act that followed, not precipitated, the drive of white Virginians toward independence. 

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• 9/5/2021
  

  Lafayette as "The Nation’s Guest" (1824-1825)

  by Mike Duncan

  When Lafayette returned to America in 1824, he found the new nation already torn between his beloved ideal of liberty and the entrenched institution of slavery. HNN presents an excerpt from Mike Duncan's new book "Hero of Two Worlds." 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/16/2021
  

  Why Don't the French Celebrate Lafayette?

  Two new books examine the life and legacy of the Marquis de Lafayette, whose reputation in the United States far exceeds his esteem in his native France. 

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• 4/18/2021
  

  Who Won the American Revolution?

  by Guy Chet

  Almost since the smoke cleared after the Battle of Lexington, Americans have debated the relative merits of the militias and the Continental Army in fighting the British. The relative esteem of each group has followed changes in the politics of the nation. 

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• 1/31/2021
  

  Democracy, Violence, and the Legacy of the American Revolution

  by David W. Houpt

  Although many of the Capitol rioters claimed to defend the Constitution, their actions reflect ideas derived from the Revolutionary period that the people have the right to resist tyranny by force. The Constitution sought to check that impulse by establishing a representative republic and a cultural bargain to live by the results of elections, but the two ideas have never been resolved.

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• SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
  8/18/2020
  

  How Not to Read Bernard Bailyn

  by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

  Conservatives lionizing Bernard Bailyn for supporting libertarian interpretations of the nation's founding and valorizing the founders "aligns perfectly with the reactionary effort to cancel critically engaged understandings of the American past, but poorly with Bailyn’s own far more nuanced vision of historical practice."