Boston 1775

The Rev. Dr. Mather Byles (shown here) was one of those historic figures who becomes a magnet for witty quotations. In America our primar...

When academic historians talk about “the public” and its collective interest in history, they’re usually talking about the crowd of people...

When I wrote about “American Revolution buffs” yesterday , I was primarily drawing a distinction between them (us) and academic historians...

I’ve been discussing the reactions to the “American Revolution Reborn” conference in Philadelphia this spring that Peter Feinman describe...

In the ongoing debate over the “American Revolution Reborn” conference , one of the positions that baffles me most is Peter Feinman’s lame...

I wasn’t at the “American Revolution Reborn” conference when, as described yesterday , J. F. Gearhart “asked one group of commentators if ...

Discussion of this spring’s “American Revolution Reborn” conference in Philadelphia continues, albeit focused on one particular moment. P...

Eleven years after the Declaration of 1763 , the British government enacted another measure to organize the territory it won from the Fren...

On Saturday, 21 September, the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University will host a public symposium on “War, Peace, and Empire: t...

The Wikipedia entry on the Administration of Justice in Massachusetts Act and several recent books state that George Washington called i...

Yesterday I quoted the meat of Parliament ’s Administration of Justice in Massachusetts Act , passed in the spring of 1774. The law prov...

Among Parliament ’s Coercive Acts of spring 1774 was the “act for the impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons question...

At Boston 1775 headquarters we’ve been reading Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home , ab...

Eleven different historical institutions are collaborating to explore the traditions and business of furniture-making in Massachusetts. Th...

On Wednesday, 4 September, the the American Revolution Round Table of the District of Columbia will host an illustrated lecture by Wade ...

Yesterday I quoted a 1707 Massachusetts law written to plug a supposed hole in the province’s militia law. Here’s part of that 1693 militi...

At a meeting at Minute Man National Historical Park yesterday, I mentioned a colonial Massachusetts law requiring free blacks to work on ro...

Also in the new Common-place is Edward M. Griffin’s dramatically written article about the experiences of the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles (sho...

Common-place has a couple of new articles on Loyalists in the American Revolution. The first is from Prof. Kacy Tillman at the Universit...

Noah Wiswall of Newton was born in 1699, but age didn’t stop him from turning out during the militia alarm on 19 Apr 1775. In his Life of ...