The United States Navy celebrates October 13, 1775 as its birthday because that is the date on which the Continental Congress officially authorized the funding of two ships to interdict British forces. Over the course of the Revolutionary War, more than 50 Continental vessels harassed the British, seized munitions, supplied the Continental Army, and engaged [...]
"Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836" By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the [...]
The American Revolution proceeded simultaneously on two levels: the state and the federal. While federal reform was essential, and while Virginians took the lead in achieving it, the state-level activity of those years struck contemporaries as more important. Virginia’s revolutionary May Convention adopted its three resolutions of May 15, 1776. In doing so, it decided [...]
As the crisis between the mother country and colonies worsened, the colonists began to see a conspiracy against liberty being carried out by a secret cabal of evil ministers in the British government. In the perceived encroachments of the English government, the American revolutionaries again detected the awful twin specters of “popery” and arbitrary government. [...]