The origins of Freemasonry are obscure. The creation of the Craft (as it is also called) occurred over time between the first recorded gentleman joining an Edinburgh stonemasons’ lodge in 1599 and the 1721 publication in London of The Constitutions of the Free-Masons by Scots Presbyterian minister James Anderson.1
The Boston Port Act was the first of the Coercive Acts. Parliament passed the bill on March 31, 1774, and King George III gave it royal assent on May 20th. The act authorized the Royal Navy to blockade Boston Harbor because “the commerce of his Majesty’s subjects cannot be safely carried on there."
The Culper Spy Ring was an American spy network operating during the War of American Independence that provided George Washington with information on British troop movements.
Americans don’t know it and children aren’t taught it, but George Washington is responsible for our Thanksgiving holiday. It was our first president, not the Pilgrims and not Abraham Lincoln, who led the charge to make this day of thanks a truly national event.
Historian Kevin M. Levin’s recently published book Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth deftly examines the complicated history of the role of enslaved African Americans both on the battlefield during the conflict, and in the fight over the memory of the war and it’s causes and consequences.
The striking visual has pervaded our national imagination: The first rays of a new day reveal the symbol of a nation — young but strong — standing defiant in the face of our foes. But just what did that flag, that for and those defenders endure?
In May of 1765, the news of the impending Stamp Act reached Boston. Starting November 1, 1765, all printed documents would be required by law to carry a stamp. Over the course of the summer of 1765, colonists grew increasingly agitated with the idea of the Stamp Act. On August 14, tensions finally reached a boiling point.
In a campaign that rivals any current presidential election for insults and rancor, John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson in the 1796 election, a race that changed American politics forever.
One of the earliest and most jaw-droppingly ambitious plans to secure the city for the British came from the mind of Dr. John Connolly. [1] Word of his “plot” spread widely across the colonies in 1775 and came to symbolize the lengths to which Loyalists were willing to go to foil the American Revolution.
Though this battlefield has been lost to time, with effort, lingering traces of the ultimate Confederate cavalier's last battle can still be found hidden in the Richmond suburbs.
The origins and founding of the Sons of Liberty is unclear, but history records the earliest known references to the organization to 1765 in the thriving colonial port cities of Boston and New York.
The Civil War was the culmination of a series of confrontations concerning the institution of slavery. The following is a timeline of the events that led to the Civil War.
