American Revolution

The McDonald Interviews

During the mid-nineteenth century, writes Stuart D. Goulding, Judge James McDonald, a Westchester attorney with a keen interest in the past, collected from a large number of elderly survivors their personal recollections of the American Revolutionary War as it had affected ordinary men and women.

John Wesley and America

John Wesley spent two years as a chaplain in Georgia in the 1730s; Stuart Andrews describes how forty years later he was much preoccupied with the War of Independence.

Ferguson and his Rifle

David Patten describes how the breech-loading rifle was newly used during the American War of Independence and how its founder Patrick Ferguson himself was slain in North Carolina, 1780.

The Relief of Fort Pitt, August 1763

Henry I. Kurtz describes how, in 1763, the Conspiracy of Pontiac led to an Indian rebellion aimed at ousting the British from their newly won North American territories.

The Abbey of Saint-Denis: A Royal Mausoleum

Established, by Louis IX at the burying-place of the French monarchy, in 1793 Saint-Denis was solemnly desecrated by order of the revolutionary Convention, determined to remove all “horrid memories” of the former royal line. By Peter Quennell.

When Canada Did Not Choose Freedom

Robert Cecil describes how, despite the blandishments of commissions from Philadelphia, and the exercise of force by the Continental Congress, Canada chose to remain separate in the 1770s.

All Men are Created Equal: the American Experiment

J.R. Pole describes how the idea of equality, when applied to the new multi-racial, multi-lingual, multireligious America of vast industry and teeming cities, was destined to conflict with some of the deepest existing preconceptions about the fundamental character of American society.