• American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia

OnLine Meeting – 7:00pm

The speaker for this meeting is author Donald F Johnson and he will be talking about his book Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of the Revolution

In Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of the Revolution, Donald F Johnson chronicles the everyday experience of ordinary people living under military occupation during the American Revolution. Focusing on day-to-day life in port cities held by the British Army, Johnson recounts how men and women from a variety of backgrounds navigated harsh conditions, mitigated threats to their families and livelihoods, took advantage of new opportunities, and balanced precariously between revolutionary and royal attempts to secure their allegiance.

Between 1775 and 1783, every large port city along the Eastern seaboard fell under British rule at one time or another. As centers of population and commerce, these cities—Boston, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Savannah, Charleston—should have been bastions from which the empire could restore order and inspire loyalty. Military rule’s exceptional social atmosphere initially did provide opportunities for many people—especially women and the enslaved, but also free men both rich and poor—to reinvent their lives, and while these opportunities came with risks, the hope of social betterment inspired thousands to embrace military rule. Nevertheless, as Johnson demonstrates, occupation failed to bring about a restoration of imperial authority, as harsh material circumstances forced even the most loyal subjects to turn to illicit means to feed and shelter themselves, while many maintained ties to rebel camps for the same reasons. As occupations dragged on, most residents no longer viewed restored royal rule as a viable option.

As Johnson argues, the experiences of these citizens reveal that the process of political change during the Revolution occurred not in a single instant but gradually, over the course of years of hardship under military rule that forced Americans to grapple with their allegiance in intensely personal and highly contingent ways. Thus, according to Johnson, the quotidian experience of military occupation directly affected the outcome of the American Revolution.

BOOK PURCHASE: To purchase this book please click on this link. https://www.amazon.com/Occupied-America-Military-Experience-Revolution-ebook/dp/B088LS81DD

About Donald F. Johnson

Donald F. Johnson is a historian of popular politics in Revolutionary America. He resides with his wife Sara, four cats, and a St. Bernard in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he teaches early American and public history at North Dakota State University. Before coming to NDSU in 2015 he earned a PhD in American History at Northwestern University, an MA in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware, and a BA in History and Anthropology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland

OnLine Meeting – 7:00pm

The speaker for this meeting is author John Knight and he will be talking about his new book War at Saber Point: Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion.

The American Loyalist Regiment Led by the Most Charismatic British Commander of the War

The British Legion was one of the most remarkable regiments, not only of the American Revolution, but of any war. A corps made up of American Loyalists, it saw its first action in New York and then engaged in almost every battle in the Southern colonies. Led by a twenty-four-year-old libertine who purchased his commission to escape enormous gambling debts, the Legion gained notoriety for its ruthless tactics. Excelling in “special operations,” they frequently overwhelmed the Continental forces they fought, becoming the most feared British regiment of the war.

Banastre Tarleton and the Americans he led have always been characterized as brutal, immoral villains—most recently in the movie, The Patriot. But this study subverts our pre-conceived notions of patriotism. The men who filled the Legions ranks were not weak-willed collaborators or treacherous renegades, but free men as motivated by conscience as the Patriots they battled. Few were wealthy. None had a vested stake in the British Government. Each believed that in defending the Crown; they were upholding the rule of law and preserving individual liberty.

These men followed Banastre Tarleton clear across America for years, sacrificing not only their families and homes but, in many instances, their lives. Self-interest could not have persuaded them to do this. Patriotism and fidelity did. Relying on first-hand accounts—letters, diaries, and journals—and other primary sources, War at Saber Point: Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion is the enthralling story of those forgotten Americans and the young Englishman who led them.

BOOK PURCHASE: To purchase this book please click here:  https://www.amazon.com/War-Saber-Point-Banastre-Tarleton/dp/1594163529

JOHN KNIGHT earned a joint honors degree in American History and Politics from Warwick University. He was a fine-art appraiser for a number of London-based auction houses including Christie’s and Bonhams before taking up writing and lecturing full-time. A regular contributor to the Journal of the American Revolution, he splits his time between homes in Nottingham, England, and Dutchess County, New York.

OnLine Meeting:

The speaker will be Colin G. Calloway. Dr. Calloway is the John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. He’s written multiple books on Native Americans, and their interactions with colonists, European and Patriot armies, and Americans. He’ll be speaking about his 2018 book, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation, which won the ARRTOP 2018 Book of the Year award.

George Washington’s place in the foundations of the Republic remains unrivalled. His life story from his beginnings as a surveyor and farmer, to colonial soldier in the Virginia Regiment, leader of the Patriot cause, commander of the Continental Army, and finally first president of the United States reflects the narrative of the nation he guided into existence. There is, rightfully, no more chronicled figure.

2018 ARRTOP Book of the Year Award

Yet American history has largely forgotten what Washington himself knew clearly: that the new Republic’s fate depended less on grand rhetoric of independence and self governance and more on land Indian land. Colin G. Calloway’s biography of the greatest founding father reveals in full the relationship between Washington and the Native leaders he dealt with intimately across the decades: Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Guyasuta, Attakullakulla, Bloody Fellow, Joseph Brant, Cornplanter, Red Jacket, and Little Turtle, among many others. Using the prism of Washington’s life to bring focus to these figures and the tribes they represented the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware Calloway reveals how central their role truly was in Washington’s, and therefore the nation’s, foundational narrative.

Calloway gives the First Americans their due, revealing the full extent and complexity of the relationships between the man who rose to become the nation’s most powerful figure and those whose power and dominion declined in almost equal degree during his lifetime. His book invites us to look at America’s origins in a new light. The Indian World of George Washington is a brilliant portrait of both the most revered man in American history and those whose story during the tumultuous century in which the country was formed has, until now, been only partially told.

To purchase Mr. Calloway’s book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Indian-World-George-Washington-President/dp/019005669X

Everyone recognizes John Hancock’s signature at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence but Nina Sankovitch’s American Rebels explores for the first time the family and community connections that led to it. Sankovitch examines the intertwined lives of John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Jr, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock, and argues for the distinct roles each played in fomenting revolution. Their trajectory from loyal British subjects to American rebels was forged in childhood; and their deeply held convictions, founded in community, fueled their collaborations during the fraught and violent years leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776. Sankovitch presents in vivid detail, backed up by extensive and new research, the ties that bound these men and women together (including faith, love, ambition, and envy) and drove them to rebel against England, while also demonstrating how the desire for independence cut across class lines, and how families could be divided, rebels versus loyalists, in pursuing commonly-held goals of opportunity, liberty, and stability.

Nina Sankovitch has lived an interesting life. She graduated from Harvard Law School. Many years later, after the death of  her older sister due to cancer, she dealt with her grief by reading a book a day for a year, and reviewing the books on her blog. This experience led her to write her first book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. She followed that up with Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing, a subject for which she also gave a TED Talk. Her third book was her first full-scale foray into history, The Lowells of Massachusetts: An American Family. Her fourth book, which is the subject of her presentation, is American Rebels: How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution. Ms. Sankovitch’s latest book is also available on Amazon. A meeting invitation with link will be sent out to members a few days before the meeting.

You can purchase Ms. Sankovitch’s book using this link:  https://www.amazon.com/American-Rebels-Hancock-Families-Revolution/dp/1250163285

Online Meeting:

When Americans declared independence in 1776, they cited King George III “for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.” In Quarters, John Gilbert McCurdy explores the social and political history behind the charge, offering an authoritative account of the housing of British soldiers in America. Providing new interpretations and analysis of the Quartering Act of 1765, McCurdy sheds light on a misunderstood aspect of the American Revolution.

Quarters unearths the vivid debate in eighteenth-century America over the meaning of place. It asks why the previously uncontroversial act of accommodating soldiers in one’s house became an unconstitutional act. In so doing, Quarters reveals new dimensions of the origins of Americans’ right to privacy. It also traces the transformation of military geography in the lead up to independence, asking how barracks changed cities and how attempts to reorder the empire and the borderland led the colonists to imagine a new nation.

Quarters emphatically refutes the idea that the Quartering Act forced British soldiers in colonial houses, demonstrates the effectiveness of the Quartering Act at generating revenue, and examines aspects of the law long ignored, such as its application in the back country and its role in shaping Canadian provinces.

Above all, Quarters argues that the lessons of accommodating British troops outlasted the Revolutionary War, profoundly affecting American notions of place. McCurdy shows that the Quartering Act had significant ramifications, codified in the Third Amendment, for contemporary ideas of the home as a place of domestic privacy, the city as a place without troops, and a nation with a civilian-led military.