American Revolutionary War

The American Revolution, which took place between 1765 and 1783, was an uprising by British colonists in North America against the rule of Great Britain. The colonists were fighting for rights they felt they deserved, not only as British citizens, but...

In every war, there are those battles that mark a turning point, after which everything is different. These are the battles that help determine how the war will proceed. The Battle of Bunker Hill was one of those battles in the American Revolutionary...

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American War of Independence, an introduction into years of combat that would pit the forces of the Thirteen Colonies against the world’s mightiest empire, Great Britain. The events of...

The Battles of Saratoga are often regarded as the turning point in the American War of Independence when the North American colonies began their march to triumph against Great Britain. Fought in September and October 1777, these two battles were...

Benedict Arnold: a name that has become synonymous with betrayal. However, this wasn’t always the case. At one time he was General (and future first President) George Washington’s trusted advisor in the struggle against the British. What caused this...

What makes a shooting a massacre? If a mob of hundreds is facing down eight soldiers and five citizens are killed, is that the Boston Massacre or the Incident on King Street? As was the case with so many of the tumultuous events in America’s colonial...

On a December night in 1773, in an iconic act of civil disobedience, American colonists dressed as Native Americans boarded a merchant ship laden with tea. They tossed the tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of taxation without representation. Their...

Messages written in secret codes or invisible ink, agents operating behind enemy lines and known only by code names, the provision of vital secret intelligence used to direct military operations—these are staple elements of modern spy fiction. Still,...

George Rogers Clark was an American general during the Revolutionary War—the epic conflict in which the newly formed United States of America broke free from British rule. A seasoned frontiersman, he became a leading figure in the expansion of the...

John Jay: Founding Father, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Governor of New York, key architect of two vital treaties, abolitionist, and the father of American counterintelligence. Despite his enormous contributions to the...

The Marquis de Lafayette may be a name that sounds vaguely familiar. If you've studied even a little American history, you'll recall Lafayette as George Washington's right-hand man during the American Revolution. This remarkable man was just a...