Doctor. Major General. President of the Provincial Congress. Author of political tracts. A true patriot. Forgotten.
All these words, plus many more, are titles that depict the life of Dr. Joseph Warren. However, the last term is most synonymous with the Massachusetts doctor who fell in the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. That last word, forgotten, is exactly what author and historian Christian Di Spigna is hoping to expunge with his new biography, Founding Martyr.
Di Spigna, an early American history expert and Colonial Williamsburg volunteer, focuses his account of Dr. Warren on not the events immediately surrounding his death at Bunker Hill and subsequent martyrdom but “to fill in the more obscure parts of Warren’s life” which will lead to understanding more of the “key period in the formation of his character, his special networks, and ultimately his medical and political careers” (pg. 7). Continue reading “Review: Founding Martyr, The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero by Christian Di Spigna”→
Continuing to our build-up to the September 28, 2019 symposium Before They Were Americans, today we are highlighting Stephanie Seal Walters. Walters is a PhD Candidate at George Mason University. Her dissertation, “As I Glory in the Name of Tory”: Loyalism, Community, and Memory in Revolutionary Virginia, 1760-1794, focuses on loyalism within the different cultural and geographical regions of the colony of Virginia. For the symposium, she will be speaking about the impact of smallpox on the American Revolution during her talk “Smallpox to Revolution.”
When you mention the name “Charles Lee” in many Revolutionary War circles, one immediately thinks of Maj. Gen. Charles Lee. Though there was another Charles Lee and it can be argued provided more contributions to the United States than the British born military general.
Charles Lee, Courtesy of Department of Justice
Charles Lee was born in 1758 on his father’s plantation Leesylvania in Prince William County, Virginia. The 2,000-acre farm that sat on the Potomac River and neighbored other Potomac River families such as the Fairfaxes, Washingtons and Masons. Charles’ father, Henry Lee II, a political colleague and friend of George Washington, Charles was one of eight siblings and five males that would solidify the Lee family’s role as leaders in politics and society. Continue reading “George Washington’s “Favorite” Charles Lee”→
Massachusetts Governor and U.S. Vice President Elbridge Gerry
Lately, the term “gerrymandering” is getting thrown around as some sort of new illness that afflicts the republic. The process essentially involves drawing electoral district boundaries in ways that benefit one political party or the other and dates back to 1812 Massachusetts, when Governor Elbridge Gerry, a member in good standing of the founding generation, signed legislation radically redrawing electoral districts in the state to favor the Democratic-Republican Party.
Born in 1744, Gerry was a Massachusetts merchant and vocal opponent of British policy in the colonies who served in the Second Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and attended the Constitutional Convention. Like a few of his contemporaries, notably George Mason and Patrick Henry of Virginia, he refused to sign the Constitution due to its lack of an explicit Bill of Rights. Nonetheless, he went on to serve as an envoy to France in the Adams administration, then was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, as Governor of Massachusetts, and then was Vice President under James Madison. Only a few men had a better claim on the term “founding father.”
In the build-up to the September 28, 2019 symposium Before They Were Americans, today we are highlighting Liz Williams, Director of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum. The tavern consists of two buildings: a (circa) 1785 tavern and the 1792 City Tavern. Named after its tavern keeper from 1796 to 1808, Gadsby’s Tavern was an important center of economic, political, and social life in Alexandria after the American Revolution. Continue reading “Symposium Update”→
A few random musings on the importance of this date in American Revolutionary history…
President’s chair, Independence Hall, Independence National Historical Park (author collection)
This day was the date that the assembled Second Continental Congress voted on the draft of a document that was Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia had put forth in a measure, in June, to be voted on declaring;
“That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
Thomas McKean by Charles Wilson Peale
On July 4, two days after this resolution passed, the final and formal version was approved by Congress. John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress affixed his signature boldly and largely at the bottom of the document. Eventually 55 other men would place their signature on the Declaration of Independence, with Thomas McKean, generally accepted, as the last to sign the document, possibly as late as January 1777.
Copies were made and four days later, on July 8, the first public reading occurred in Philadelphia. George Washington had the document read to the Continental Army in New York on the following day, July 9.
John Adams by Gilbert Stuart
For John Adams, future second president of the United States, the second day of July would and should be the day to remember American Independence, as he wrote;
“The most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival…It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
And that is how many Americans choose to celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, however, usually two days later on July 4th. Yet, it took another war; World War II, for July 4th to become a national paid holiday for workers of the Federal government when Congress approved it in 1941.
So, happy Independence Day!
*Feel free to add any interesting historical tidbits about the Second Continental Congress, the signers, or 1776 below!*
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, could have contributed to a forgotten shipwreck narrative, according to new research.
Benjamin Franklin
Based on studies of Franklin’s early life as a printer, Dr Hazel Wilkinson claims there are clues which provide information about Benjamin Franklin’s activities during his first visit to London as an 18-year-old printer.
Two-hundred and forty one years ago, today, one of the most famous, yet controversial, exchanges between two commanding generals on a battlefield occurred in a field west of Monmouth Court House (present-day Freehold), New Jersey.
George Washington had arrived in Englishtown roughly an hour and a half ahead of the Continental Army’s main body and sat down for breakfast sometime around ten in the morning, June 28, 1778. Six miles away, Major General Charles Lee’s vanguard of roughly 5000 men was just about to throw itself at the British rearguard north of Monmouth Court House.
Maj. Gen. Charles Lee. NYPL.
When those elements came into contact, what resulted was anything but a general engagement. Within an hour Lee’s men were retreating west with newly arrived British troops committed by Lieutenant General Henry Clinton right on their heels. Disaster loomed for the Americans as a result of miscommunication, misunderstanding, and poor generalship on the part of Lee’s subordinates. The American vanguard’s commander had specific orders from Washington to fall upon Clinton’s rear as it marched out of Monmouth, and now Lee was desperately attempting to stave off defeat. Continue reading ““Shaking Leaves” and a “Damned Poltroon”?: Charles Lee, George Washington, and the 241st Anniversary of the Battle of Monmouth Court House”→
While prepping for a few summer programs I was re-reading The Road to Guilford Courthouse, The American Revolution in the Carolinas by John Buchanan.
The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan
In his prologue, Buchanan states the following premise:
“But that tragedy [the American Civil War] is of far less interest than the American Revolution. The Revolution was the most important event in American history. The Civil War was unfinished business. The armies of the Revolutionary War were small but the stage global, the characters larger than life. The American Revolution was the first of the great modern revolutions, arguably the most important, and certainly the only one that did not end in tyranny or one-party rule.”
The Civil War is the most written about subject in American history, but is it the most important? Is it just the book-end of the American Revolution and was just wrapping up “unfinished business” as Buchanan writes.
Do you agree with the author? Disagree? Conversations and perspectives help shape our recollections and allows for fresh outlooks and critical observations into our shared past. So, feel free to comment below with your thoughts, opinions, and/or insights!
From our friends at American Battlefield Trust (ABT). To learn more about the ABT, click here.
At stake are 31 acres associated with two Southern Campaign Revolutionary War battlefields, Hanging Rock in South Carolina and Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.
At Hanging Rock, generous battlefield preservationists like you have already secured 141 acres. These 30 acres in the part of the battlefield where the initial Patriot attack began will add significantly to the land we have saved there already.
At Guilford Courthouse, the half-acre tract at stake may be small, but it’s part of a larger strategy to deal with the modern development crowding in on this battlefield from all points of the compass. Our plan is to buy up plots of battlefield land – including small ones and those with non-historic structures on them like this one – remove all non-historic structures and restore the battlefield. The Guilford Courthouse National Military Park has generously agreed to take responsibility for demolishing and removing the house on this plot, a considerable cost that we would typically need to cover. Continue reading “Rise and Fight Again for Southern Revolutionary History”→
All these words, plus many more, are titles that depict the life of Dr. Joseph Warren. However, the last term is most synonymous with the Massachusetts doctor who fell in the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. That last word, forgotten, is exactly what author and historian Christian Di Spigna is hoping to expunge with his new biography, Founding Martyr. 
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 