Revolutionary-War.net

1774

First American colonial declaration of rights with sinking of the Peggy Stewart. 1774

First Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, declares colonial rights. Birthday of …

1734

Elizabeth Freeman was born a slave. She grew up a slave, married and had a child as a slave, working for the Ashley family of Massachusetts. Elizabeth was never given an education. Despite this, she was remarkably intelligent.

During the American Revolution, she heard the Declaration of Independence being read and discussed by her masters and their company. One passage in particular stood out to her.

“All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”

We often discuss the hypocrisy of Jefferson, who owned hundreds of people, writing this passage. Elizabeth noticed it too.

In 1780, Elizabeth’s mistress, Mrs Ashley, attempted to strike a slave with a shovel. Accounts differ as to whether the slave was Elizabeth’s sister, daughter or unrelated. But Elizabeth took the blow. Then she ran away and refused to come back. She had a plan, and she teamed up with a lawyer called Thomas Sedgewick to carry it out.

They went to Great Barrington Court (along with a fellow slave of Elizabeth’s, Brom) and argued that if all men were free and equal, then so was she.

They won. The court ordered compensation to be paid out to her. Elizabeth had to pick a surname. She chose the name Freeman.

Her old masters tried to convince her to come back and work for them, paid this time, but she refused. Instead Freeman went to work for the Sedgewicks, who had argued for her freedom.

It was the beginning of the end for slavery in Massachusetts. Elizabeth Freeman set a precedent which ended two years later with the Massachusetts Supreme Court banning slavery throughout the state. Freeman lived to be 87, dying in the house that she and her daughter had bought for themselves, a respected healer and midwife.

Statue of Alexander Hamilton - Great Falls, New Jersey

The Passaic river plunges 77 feet down at the Great Falls in Paterson, and has the second largest waterfalls in the northeast after Niagara Falls. Hamilton frequently visited these falls, observing their beauty and the sheer volume of water that flowed through them. He proposed them to be used as a power source, envisioning that the water’s energy could be harnessed for the purposes of industrial development. The falls were a crucial part of his vision for America as a powerhouse of industry and trade. 

1786

1777

1775

Maryland issues currency depicting George III trampling the Magna Carta. Birthday of …

1750

So apparently A. Hamilton and A. Burr actually ran into each other during a social function (anniversary dinner of the Cincinnati) about a week before they were scheduled to duel. Awkward :/

During the party Hamilton was apparently “more than usually affectionate” and enthusiastic whereas Burr was “silent, gloomy, [and] sour”. Burr was not happy to be there. At all.

And while Hamilton was socializing and entertaining, at one point someone asks him to sing (idk, I guess that was a thing people did). Not one to disappoint a crowd, Hamilton complied, choosing to sing his favorite song (allegedly this was the only song people ever knew him to sing). It was basically an old army song. He finished, people were satisfied, and no one thought twice about any of it for the rest of the night.

Except for Burr.

Something about that song freaked Burr out. 

Because Aaron Burr, who would have rather not been there or really mingled with Hamilton at all, stopped what he was doing to listen in mute, rapt attention. 

The problem: we don’t actually technically know what song Hamilton sang to trigger such a reaction. 

There have been several suggestions tossed around during the years, but it seems the most likely candidate is “How Stands the Glass Around?” (x)

Reading the lyrics its easy to see how this could be Hamilton’s favorite song- it’s basically all about the hardships of war leading up to either death or a bottle. 

It’s also easy to see why such a song would unnerve Burr with a duel looming in his near future.

I tried to find an ‘authentic’ version of the song on youtube, but I couldn’t find anything like what I wanted. So, I tracked down the earliest sheet music for it I could find (x) and played it on the piano. 

Here’s the lyrics:

How stands the glass around? For shame, ye took no care, my boys! How stands the glass around? Let mirth and wine a-bound. The trumpets sound, The colours they are flying, boys, To fight, kill, or wound: May we still be found Content with our hard fare, my boys, On the cold, cold ground.

Why, soldiers, why Should we be melancholy, boys? Why, soldiers, why? Whose business ‘tis to die! What! sighing? fie! Damn fear, drink on, be jolly boys! ‘Tis he, you, or I; Cold, hot, wet, or dry, We’re always bound to follow, boys, And scorn to fly.

‘Tis but in vain, (I mean not to upbraid you, boys), 'Tis but in vain For soldiers to complain: Should next campaign Send us to Him who made us, boys, We’re free from pain; But should we remain, A bottle and kind landlady Cures all again.

1775

 just a handful of ladies who did some remarkable things during their time when our nation wasn’t a nation and the years following its establishment. sources : 1 / 2

Phillis Wheatley

“Kidnapped from her home in West Africa, Wheatley was brought to Massachusetts by a slave ship in 1761 at the young age of seven. She was taught how to read and write by the Wheatley family and grew up to be the first published African American poet She was a strong supporter of American Independence and wrote poems in honor of General Washington. In 1776, after sending the future president one of her poems, she was invited to meet Washington in Cambridge.”

Betsy Ross

“We don’t know for sure that she made the first American flag, but she represented the story of many American women during the Revolution anyway. Her first husband was killed on militia duty in 1776 and her second husband was a sailor who was captured by the British in 1781 and died in prison. So, like many women in wartime, she took care of her child and herself by earning a living – in her case, as a seamstress and flag maker.”

Judith Sargent Murray

“In addition to her long-forgotten essay “On the Equality of the Sexes,” written in 1779 and published in 1780, Judith Sargent Murray—then still Judith Sargent Stevens—wrote about the politics of the new nation of America. They were collected and published as a book in 1798, the first book in America self-published by a woman.”

Hannah Adams

“During the American Revolution, she supported the American side and even wrote a pamphlet about the role of women in wartime.  Adams was the first American woman to make her living by writing; she never married and her books, on religion and on the history of New England, supported her.”

Abigail Adams

“Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Adams is one of the most famous women of the Revolutionary Era.  She was an advocate for education of both boys and girls in public schools, though she received no formal form of education herself. She was an advisor to her husband John Adams and their correspondence through letters are filled with debates on public issues and the formation of the new government.”

Deborah Sampson

“Sampson fought in the American Revolution under the alias Robert Shurtlieff. She spent her youth in indentured servitude and once of age became a teacher. In the spring of 1781 Sampson dressed herself as a young man and joined the army at West Point, New York. For over two years Sampson’s true identity went unnoticed as she fought bravely for the independence of her country. After she died at the age of 66 in 1827 her husband Benjamin was awarded military spousal pay.”

Dolley Madison

“Madison served as hostess in the White House for Widower Thomas Jefferson and later for her husband, James Madison. Her tenure as First Lady defined the role of the spouse of the President. She furnished the newly constructed White House and when it burnt down during the War of 1812 she saved the portrait of George Washington.”

Molly Pitcher

“Some women literally fought in the Revolution, even though almost all the soldiers were men. Mary Hays McCauly is known for taking her husband’s place loading a cannon at the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778.  Her story inspired others.”

Martha Washington

“The first FLOTUS, Washington was born in New Kent Country, Virginia. During the infamous bitter winter in Valley Forge during the war Washington worked tersely for the troops. She visited the starving, frozen soldiers and provided them with food and warm socks and nursed some of the sick and dying men.”

Esther Reed

“Born in London, Reed moved to Philadelphia where she hosted many political leaders in her home, including General Washington. Reed believed that the government should pay for soldiers’ food and supplies and organized The Ladies Association of Philadelphia to provide aid during the war.”

Sybil Ludington

“If the stories of her ride are true, she was the female Paul Revere, riding to warn of an imminent attack on Danbury, Connecticut, by British soldiers.”

Mercy Otis Warren

“Author and propagandist, Warren is one of the first American women to write for a public audience. She sympathized with the war and wrote political poems and dramas that satirized Massachusetts’s royal government. In 1805 Warren complied a three-volume history “A History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution”.”

Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton

“Hamilton’s husband confided in her during the war, writing letter after letter about his experience and political thinking. After the war, and the death of her husband, she helped found orphanages in both New York City and Washington DC. She also helped established the legacy of her husband by collecting his letters and writings from other founders.” 

warning: this gets kind of gross and contains what would today be considered truly appalling breaches of medical ethics but it’s super interesting, I promise!

Okay, so if you know anything about the smallpox vaccine, you know it was invented by Edward Jenner in 1796 after he noticed that dairy maids didn’t get smallpox. He realized that being infected with cowpox protected these women against smallpox, which was a cousin of smallpox. so he figured deliberately infecting people with the mild cowpox would protect them from the frankly terrifying smallpox. After doing highly unethical experiments on an 8-year-old boy, he realized his theory had potential. That’s where we get the word “vaccine”– from the Latin vacca, meaning cow.

But before vaccination, there was a much older technology called “inoculation.” this was where they would cut someone’s arm open and rub gunk from someone else’s smallpox pustule in it. The person would get a nasty pustule at that site and have a mild fever for a couple days, but they wouldn’t get the agonizing lesions all over their body + terrible fever + possible internal hemorrhaging/ organ failure/ blindness/ death that came with smallpox. Inoculation was widely practiced in China, India, the Ottoman empire, and large parts of Africa for large portions of history. Europe? Not so much.

Inoculation only started to sort of catch on in England thanks to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, a smallpox survivor who tagged along with her husband when he was ambassador to the Ottomans in Istanbul, saw inoculation in person, and realized how revolutionary it might be. Back in England she had her own children inoculated in front of court doctors and persuaded them to look into it further… which they did by experimenting on prisoners and orphans. Basically, they’d inoculate people and then expose them to conditions where they should have caught smallpox, and they didn’t. Amazing!

In 1721, Boston experienced a terrible outbreak of smallpox. Cotton Mather (yes, that Cotton Mather) started encouraging people to get inoculated, and persuaded one doctor to help out.  We know that there was an anti-inoculation editorial in the Courant, a Boston newspaper incidentally run by Ben Franklin’s big brother, on August 7, 1721.

But wait! The experiments on the prisoners in England didn’t happen until two days later: August 9, 1721. Inoculation wasn’t accepted as medical practice by anybody in England (except Lady Montague) at that time. So how did Cotton Mather know what inoculation was, when it was still just barely beginning its experimental phase in the mother country?

Because he learned about it from one of his slaves, Onesimus, who had been inoculated in Africa as a child.

Mather and the doctor also kept careful track of infection rates among people who were inoculated versus those who weren’t. This was probably the first quantitative epidemiological study in Western history, incidentally, and it provided very solid evidence that inoculation worked in actual practice during an actual epidemic. The data helped convince doctors back in England as well as all over the colonies that inoculation was (mostly) safe and (very) effective. This was a real scientific and public health breakthrough for the colonies and England. By the time of the Revolution, Washington was requiring that his troops be inoculated for smallpox.

I really like this story because it kind of explodes the notion of Europe as the most technologically advanced area of the world. At least during the beginning of the colonial period, there were still major lifesaving medical technologies that almost all the world except Europe had heard about and were widely practicing. One of the most significant public health breakthroughs in colonial America was because we heard about a technology Africans had been practicing for years from someone we kidnapped from Africa.

Sources for this whole post:

http://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(98)90096-0/pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

This guy is Tadeusz Kosciuszko and honestly he’s one of my favorite figures in the American Revolution, and in history in general. His story is very interesting and, in terms of his role in the American Revolution, he’s vastly underrated. Born in Poland, he happened to be in France when the American Revolution broke out and efforts were being made to recruit officers there. While the war appealed to many French nobles as an opportunity for military glory, Kosciuszko was drawn in because of his support for Enlightenment values, human rights, and national sovereignty, influenced by his experience of growing up in Poland during a time of civil war and encroaching foreign powers. As an engineer and colonel, his contributions to the revolution were invaluable. After the war he returned to Europe and led a failed but significant revolt in his own country. He became close friends with Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that Kosciuszko was “the purest son of liberty… that I have ever known”. In his will, he set aside the money he received for his contributions in the American Revolution so that Jefferson could free his slaves. Spoiler: Jefferson still didn’t free them and I’m quite angry about this. Sadly, Kosciuszko died exiled from his home country, unsuccessful in his efforts to prevent Russia’s conquest of the Polish-Lithuanian Conquest or emancipate his peasants (Tsar Alexander refused), but his work was not forgotten and inspired future generations. Like Lafayette, he was truly a hero of two worlds.