Mercer’s Grenadier Militia

On July 29, 2015 By Phill GreenwaltIn Armies, Battlefields & Historic Places, Battles, Campaigns, Common Soldier, Emerging Civil War, Memory, Personalities, Revolutionary War2 Comments

Emerging Revolutionary War and Revolutionary War Wednesday is pleased to welcome back guest historian Drew Gruber.

Part 1

When we think about American militia during the Revolutionary War, the image of an untrained rifle-toting citizen turned soldier comes to mind. This stereotype of the American soldier, popularized by movies like The Patriot is not completely false but such generalizations should give us pause and inspire us to investigate the roll of American militia, independent companies, and ‘irregular’ troops a bit closer. For example, how was it that on October 3, 1781 a group of Virginia militiamen defeated an elite British force? The story of Lieutenant Colonel John Mercer’s Grenadier Militia during the battle at Seawell’s Ordinary has been told and retold since 1781, however the formation of this illustrious group is often ignored and deserves a closer look. Continue reading “Mercer’s Grenadier Militia” →

Mr. Jefferson’s library: “a necessity of life”

On July 1, 2015 By Phill GreenwaltIn Revolutionary War2 Comments

Part three in a four-part series

“I cannot live without books,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams in June of 1815. The former president had just packed his personal library—some 6,700 volumes—into a wagon train and shipped it north to the nation’s capital. He’d sold the collection to Congress for $23,950 to replace the collection burned by the British during the War of 1812.

His collection was, Jefferson rightly believed, “the choicest collection of books in the United States.”

And now he was left virtually bookless. Continue reading “Mr. Jefferson’s library: “a necessity of life”” →

Jefferson: The Man Who Moved Mountains

On June 10, 2015 By Phill GreenwaltIn Revolutionary War1 Comment

The second in a four-part series

He leveled the top of the mountain with gunpowder.

He began the project in 1768, when he was twenty-five. He had his slaves literally sheer off the tip of the mountaintop, peeling away soil rich in iron and clay, revealing bedrock of a local variety known as Catoctin greenstone.

On the flattened plane, he built his dream home. Over the next fifty-eight years, Thomas Jefferson would significantly remodel the house twice more as his personal tastes evolved. The house has a splash of Cavalier Virginia to it, but it also has touches of the classical and the continental.

Jefferson called it “my essay in architecture.” He named his “essay” Monticello. Continue reading “Jefferson: The Man Who Moved Mountains” →

James Monroe at War

On June 3, 2015 By Phill GreenwaltIn Emerging Civil War, Revolutionary War2 Comments

Part Two

With an excess of officers in the Continental Army and little prospect of getting a field command, James Monroe resigned his commission in 1779. He became a Lieutenant-Colonel of Virginia forces, but was unable to recruit enough men to form a new regiment. In 1780 he went to North Carolina as a military observer for Governor Thomas Jefferson, with whom he had begun the study of law. Continue reading “James Monroe at War” →

Jefferson: America’s Great Contradiction

On May 6, 2015 By Phill GreenwaltIn Revolutionary War7 Comments

The first in a four-part series

I sit on a small wooden bench, little more than a plank with legs, really, beneath a tulip poplar whose wide branches umbrella me. The grass around the bench has been worn away by weary travelers come to the bench to rest, revealing the reddish iron-rich soil of Virginia beneath.

A few yards away from me, Thomas Jefferson rests in peace.

A slow stream of visitors comes down the brick walkway from Jefferson’s house to stand outside the black, wrought-iron fence that surrounds his family’s small graveyard, still in use today by descendents. Many visitors have thrown coins onto the president’s grave—not just the Jefferson-faced nickels you’d expect, either, but pennies, dimes, and quarters, too. Considering the rift between Washington and Jefferson in Washington’s last years, I wonder what Jefferson would think about that. Continue reading “Jefferson: America’s Great Contradiction” →

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