Boston 1775

Earlier this month, Prof. Noah Shusterman, author of Armed Citizens: From Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment , shared an essay through ...

“A New-York Freeholder” didn’t continue his newspaper debate with Israel Putnam , quoted over the last two days . Hugh Gaine had publis...

As a prominent gentleman in Connecticut , Israel Putnam couldn’t ignore what “A New-York Freeholder” wrote about him in the New-York Gaze...

One of the key nodes in the spread of the “Powder Alarm” was Israel Putnam . On 3 Sept 1774 he summoned the militia in eastern Connecticut...

I’ll start off the Sestercentennial year with a talk in the America 250 Winter Lecture Series of the historical society in Essex, Connecti...

On 25 December 1775, 250 years ago today , the Boston merchant John Rowe began a new volume of his daily diary. The Massachusetts Histor...

Watching the recent American Revolution documentary series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, my ear snagged on a detail abou...

Next month sees the Sestercentennial of Thomas Paine ’s Common Sense , printed by Robert Bell in Philadelphia on 9 January (to judge by th...

American Ancestors has just reissued James Henry Stark’s The Loyalists of Masssachusetts with a new foreword by me. I came across a copy ...

In the year after the Boston Massacre , Benjamin Burdick became the proprietor of the Freemason’s Arms tavern—better known as the Green Dra...

As recounted yesterday, immediately after the Boston Massacre , town watchman Benjamin Burdick went up to the soldiers and examined their...

For a new project I’ve been taking a deep dive into Benjamin Burdick ’s accounts of the Boston Massacre . Back in 2008 I pointed out that,...

Along with the other reports on life inside besieged Boston that I discussed yesterday , on 17 Dec 1775 Capt. Richard Dodge reported this ...

Capt. Richard Dodge was a Continental Army officer stationed in Chelsea during the second half of 1775. Like his regimental commander, Lt....