“Rev War Roundtable with ERW” War of 1812

On June 11, 2020June 8, 2020 By erwpostIn Battlefields & Historic Places, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, National Park Service, Personalities, War of 1812Leave a comment

The War of 1812 is considered by some historians as the end of the American Revolutionary Era. From the conflict, the United States will find a war hero and future president, Andrew Jackson and a poem by lawyer Francis Scott Key that turns into our national anthem.

But, the origins of the war, the military actions that spread around the United States, from Louisiana to the nation’s capital, to the invasion of Canada, and on the high seas are largely overlooked. There are numerous reasons for this.

That, in part, is why, this Sunday, at 7pm EST, on ERW’s Facebook page, the next historian happy hour “Rev War Revelry” will be focused on this important conflict. Join ERW historian Phillip S. Greenwalt along with the following guest historians for an hour-ish discussion of the three-year war.

Joining Phill will be;

Dan Davis, of the American Battlefield Trust, who has lectured on Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans. He is also a full-time historian with Emerging Civil War.

Also, formerly of Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, and now working for the National Park Service in the Washington D.C. area, guest historian Jim Bailey will be the second of three guest historians.

Leaving the best for last, okay pun intended, as all three guest historians are great. But in all seriousness, the third guest historian joining for this revelry will be George Best. He is a park ranger for the National Park Service at Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park and volunteers as the Communications Coordinator for the Friends of Maryland’s War of 1812.

We look forward to you joining with your thoughts, comments, and questions this Sunday on our Facebook page (there will be an event post for you to use as a reminder) as we discuss this three-year conflict that had reverberations for many years afterwards.

The British Perspective….Best Book?

On May 8, 2020May 5, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn British Leadership, Civilian, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, Revolutionary War9 Comments

I recently needed to look up a quote from a British politician in the House of Commons during the American Revolutionary War. I went to my personal library (like to call it a study but since I have not found a desk to “study” on in there, I’ll continue to call it my library).

I grabbed Don Cook’s book The Long Fuse, How England Lost the American Colonies. A great read about the opposing side in the American Revolution. I found what I needed, but, as many of you probably do, that took me down a reading tangent.

Disclaimer; those of us under stay-at-home orders have some additional free time to explore more of our personal libraries. Those who can relate know what I am talking about. You pick up a book looking for something specific, which leads you to finish that book, then find one in the same genre or another micro-study of the same topic, until you have consumed multiple tomes within a matter of days, weeks.

Cook’s book led me to The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire. I gained a different appreciation for King George III, Lord Frederick North, and other British leaders from their perspective, filling in the gaps of historical scholarship that more America-centric volumes do not have the word count or inclination to fill.

I then went deeper down the proverbial rabbit-hole. Delving into With Zeal and With Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775-1783, I went on a reading campaign with the British in the colonies.

Which now leads me to this blog post, what else would you recommend? What are your go-to books on the British perspective in the American Revolution?

Side note, I may delve into the loyalist viewpoint histories next, as I came across an interesting fact; the largest diaspora in the 18th century was American citizens that chose loyalty to the British crown who left or were forced to evacuate during and after the end of the American Revolution. So, as any history enthusiast will do, I will do more research….reading I mean.

Book Review: The Indian World of George Washington by Colin G. Calloway

On April 22, 2020April 21, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn Book Review, Emerging Revolutionary WarLeave a comment

Multiple tomes grace bookshelves in libraries, book stores, and personal residences that depict various aspects of George Washington’s life and legacy. Historian Colin G. Calloway’s “The Indian World of George Washington” deserves a space on that bookshelf.

Long overdue, this volume about Washington fills a void, as “nothing was more central than the relationship between the first president and the first Americans” (pg. 4). From his first appearances in the greater colonial world in the early 1750s to the last years of his presidency, “a thick Indian strand runs through the life of George Washington as surely as it runs through the history of early America” (pg. 4).

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ERW Book Review: Washington’s End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle by Jonathan Horn

On April 12, 2020April 14, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn Book Review, Civilian, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory1 Comment

George Washington retired from public life at the end of his second presidential term on March 4, 1797. Twenty months and ten days later he died on December 14, 1799. In between Washington was also the first in the United States to be a former president, first to deal with securing his legacy as both a military hero and political figure, and having to see the country he sacrificed so much to create, lurch forward without him having an active part in it.

Until now, these years have been either excluded, glossed over, or an anti-climatic ending to a Washington biography. Until now. Joseph Horn, a former presidential speechwriter and the author of The Man Who Would Not Be Washington lends his talent to a new biography of Washington, examining those last few years in-depth.

The author has a valid point when he argues that, “for too long, the story of Washington’s last years has been squeezed into the margins of manuscripts, if included at all” (pg. 14). Channeling the method of famed Washington biographer Douglas Southall Freeman, Horn writes this biography in the “fog of war” style that affords the reader the opportunity to read the history “through the eyes of those who made it rather than through the hindsight of historians” (pg. 14).

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The 245th Anniversary of "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"

On March 23, 2020March 22, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn Battlefields & Historic Places, Continental Leadership, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, Personalities, Politics, Revolutionary WarLeave a comment

On this date, in 1775, Virginian Patrick Henry, a delegate to the Second Virginia Convention from Hanover County, Virginia sat in on the ongoing debate at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia.

The 28-year old then stood to give his defense of his proposed amendments to the petition then being debated. Below is the last few lines of his now famous statement, with the last sentence being the one most remembered;

“If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

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ERW Weekender: Boston Massacre: 250 Years and 1-Day Later

On March 6, 2020March 5, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn African-American, Battlefields & Historic Places, Common Soldier, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, National Park Service, Northern Theater2 Comments

Crispus Attucks. Every American school child learned that name in a social studies or history class in grade school. On the night of March 5, 1770, Attucks, an African-American was one of the six Bostonians that was killed by British soldiers.

Known in American history as the “Boston Massacre” the tragic event was used as fodder by the Sons of Liberty and pro-revolutionary minded individuals to propel the colonies toward rupture with Great Britain.

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Interview with Tom Chaffin, author of Revolutionary Brothers, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations

On March 3, 2020February 23, 2020 By erwpostIn Book Review, Emerging Revolutionary WarLeave a comment

Last week, Emerging Revolutionary War‘s Phillip S. Greenwalt wrote a review of the above mentioned book. To find that review click here. Recently, through email, Emerging Revolutionary War had a chance to interview the author. The questions and his responses are below.

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George Washington’s Birthday Celebration

On February 22, 2020March 20, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn Battlefields & Historic Places, Civilian, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory1 Comment

During George Washington’s lifetime and maybe because he was such a great man, he had two birthdays beginning in the 1750’s. Born under the Julian calendar, George was born on February 11, 1731/32. When the English Parliament decreed in 1750 that two years hence England would switch calendars and adopt the Gregorian, used by the majority of countries/states in Europe, there was a discrepancy. So, 11-days was added (some believe that the old calendar was off by a year and a eleven days thus the slash in “1731/32” above).

Regardless, Washington’s birthday was moved to what we, in the United States, are taught now, that it fell on February 22, 1732. Just don’t tell his mother, who believed to her dying day that he was born on the aforementioned date. And who argues with mothers?

What we cannot argue with is that certain birthdays were celebrated at Gadsby’s Tavern, in Alexandria (a city a young George surveyed and helped lay out), Virginia. On October 6, 1796, John Gadsby leased the City Hotel from John Wise and quickly became the epicenter of social and political discourse in Alexandria.

Today the Gadsby Tavern and Museum is open to the public and run by Historic Alexandria a department within the City of Alexandria. For more information and to plan your visit, a bite to eat, or celebrate a birth night ball like George click here.

The balcony where musicians would sit and play at Gadsby’s Tavern (author’s collection)

The hall at Gadsby’s Tavern, which can still be rented out today for celebrations and ceremonies. (author’s collection)

McColloch’s Leap

On January 30, 2020March 20, 2020 By Phill GreenwaltIn Common Soldier, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, Militia (Patriot) Leadership, Monuments, Native American, Uncategorized, Western Frontier8 Comments

“By no means comparable with the feats of a similar character” and “performed an act of daring” and “nay, desperate horsemanship” and “seldom been equaled by man or beast.” All these describe the amazing escape of Major Samuel McColloch in September 1777 during the attack on Fort Henry around where present-day Wheeling, West Virginia.

I first encountered this amazing, daring, and crazy eluding of capture when I took my own, well not as risky, but still a leap, moving to Wheeling to attend university there. Parents were 3,000 miles away in England and I was attempting to juggle basketball, studies, getting re-acclimated to life in the United States, and unknowingly, a left knee that was about to explode. Being a history major, this was one of the first accounts learned in a freshman year seminar class about local history to inspire the incoming students to explore the area outside of campus.

Fort Henry, built in 1774, was originally named Fort Fincastle, one of the titles of Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia. When the colonies revolted, the fortification was renamed in honor of Patrick Henry.

Fort Henry
courtesy of West Virginia History OnView
https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/041457

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Using the King’s Highway to Trap a King’s Army

On October 20, 2019October 19, 2019 By Phill GreenwaltIn Common Soldier, Emerging Revolutionary War, Memory, Preservation, Revolutionary War1 Comment

A few weeks ago, heading to the airport after the first Emerging Revolutionary War symposium, fellow ERW historian Rob Orrison made a pit stop in a residential neighborhood in Prince William County, Virginia.

To the average traveler to the Ronald Reagan International Washington National Airport this slight detour would not be normal. Yet, for two historians of early American history, these detours are rarely common.

This particular detour took us to a portion of the King’s Highway that has been preserved by the Prince William County Historic Preservation Division. Along this stretch soldiers in the French Army under Comte de Rocambeau and Continentals under General George Washington traversed on their way to Yorktown to entrap the British under General Lord Charles Cornwallis.

Thus, one king’s soldiers, King Louis XVI took a route named for monarch to assist rebels in trapping the ground forces of another king, that of Great Britain by using a road named for the British monarch. Interesting to think about the naming of the road in those terms.

Portions of this route are still preserved today, other sections have been modernized and blacktopped to be Route 1.

Below are a few photos I snapped, including the size 14 Nike shoe belonging to yours truly, re-enacting marching down the thoroughfare like the patriots of 1781.