The rag-tag and green Continental Army would need heaven’s help. In April 1776, they arrived in New York, a city with a large population of Loyalists and surrounded by water that was conducive to a British naval attack. By June the British fleet arrived in the harbor with some four hundred ships. It was at this time, the largest force ever sent forth by one nation ...
On the night of Wednesday, the first of May 1776, three men gathered at the house of a young law professor, Adam Weishaupt, in the Bavarian town of Ingolstadt and established a secret society called the Order of the Illuminati. Weishaupt was the Professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, part of Germany. It was secret order to undermine the social system, at ...
Gen. Washington's bold plan to take back Boston, would have trapped him on Dorchester Heights early in the war without an escape route in which had saved the patriots several times when they found they were outmatched by the well-trained British troops. But, a sudden, unexpected storm had saved Washington and his young army and had given him time to develop military strategies that would make ...
It was January 1776. In a bold plan hatched in London to end this rebellion, General Sir Henry Clinton was to sail from New York with 2,000 British regulars to the Cape Fear coastline of North Carolina. Meeting him in Brunswick, North Carolina with more troops would be naval commander Commodore Sir Peter Parker and Major General Lord Charles Cornwallis both sailing from Cork, Ireland. Altogether ...
It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense was signed "Written by an Englishman", and the pamphlet became an immediate success. In relation to the population of the Colonies at that time, it had the largest sale and circulation of any book in American history. Common Sense presented the American colonists with a powerful argument for independence from British ...
Quote from Thomas Paine's Common Sense: “But where, says some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.” ...
The following letter from "An American Guesser" was published in the Pennsylvania Journal on December 27, 1775. Its author has been identified as Benjamin Franklin. Written after fighting had begun between the Colonists and the British, but before the Declaration of Independence, it gives us a glimpse into Franklin's observant mind. ‘Tis curious and amazing to observe how distinct and independent of each other the rattles ...
American Prohibitory Act “It throws thirteen colonies out of the royal protection, levels all distinctions, and makes us independent in spite of our supplications and entreaties... It may be fortunate that the act of independency should come from the British Parliament rather than the American Congress.” —John Adams on the American Prohibitory Act “That as to the king, we had been bound to him by allegiance, ...
On Dec. 4, 1775, Washington informed Congress that the British were sending civilians infected with smallpox out of the city: “By recent information … General Howe is going to send out a number of the inhabitants. … A sailor says that a number of these coming out have been inoculated with the design of spreading the smallpox through this … camp.” British officer Robert Donkin suggested, ...
The Olive Branch Petition was issued (shipped by boat) from the American colonies to King George III in England. It proposed a final peace deal with England and promised loyalty to the British government if it repealed the Coercive Acts and ended its taxation without representation policies. The King completely disregarded the petition. The Olive Branch Petition, drafted on July 5, 1775, was a letter to King George III, ...
