Boston 1775

A few days after Timothy Pickering delivered an Independence Day oration in Salem in 1823, casting doubt on Thomas Jefferson ’s importanc...

On Monday, 1 June, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion titled “Declaring Independence: Declaration to Constitu...

The finalists for the 2025 George Washington Book Prize , all history titles published last year, have been announced. In alphabetical ord...

As the U.S. House of Representatives discussed its first significant law , establishing import tariffs, the members took up two closely rela...

The U.S. Constitution , in Article I, Section 7, states: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but ...

Earlier this year, the Louisiana legislature passed a law requiring all public schools in the state to display a particular edited version...

Last month the Journal of the American Revolution published Ray Raphael’s article “A Kingly Government?: Benjamin Franklin ’s Great Fear.” ...

From the first “Publius” essay, written by Alexander Hamilton and published on 27 October 1787 in the Independent Journal of New York : It...

Document dealer Seth Kaller alerted me to an unusual artifact up for sale through Brunk Auctions on Saturday, 28 September. At the end of...

Yesterday I was struck by Pema Levy’s article at Mother Jones about a false document being cited to the U.S. Supreme Court . Levy based h...

In August, I passed on news about the sudden closing of a small post office near James Madison ’s Montpelier. The stated reason was an exh...

The Culpepper Star-Exponent is reporting on an odd wrinkle in the already public conflict over historical interpretation at Montpelier, Ja...

As I’ve been recounting , in the spring of 1790 Edmund Randolph felt torn between his family responsibilities and his duties to the new fed...

As I recounted yesterday , in March 1790 Edmund Randolph wrote from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Rep. James Madison (shown here) in New Yor...

In February 1790, Edmund Randolph (1753–1813) became the first attorney general of the U.S. of A. As a young lawyer , Randolph had been o...

Yesterday, sometime after my posting about the election of new board members at the Montpelier Foundation, there were more dramatic announc...

I’ve been passing on monthly news from Montpelier, the Virginia mansion that was once the center of James Madison ’s slave -labor plantation...

Late last month I passed on news that the Montpelier Foundation had changed its bylaws to reverse an earlier decision assigning the Montpel...

Back in June 2021 , I noted a news story that the Montpelier Foundation was changing its bylaws to ensure that descendants of people enslave...

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition to post a period poem for New Year’s. Usually I’ve chosen verses written and sung by young news carriers, but ...