American Revolution and Revolutionary War

Bostonian merchants, sailors and dockworkers hated the Stamp Act enacted by Parliament in early 1765.  What right did Parliament have to tax Americans when they were not represented in Parliament?

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With the Naval War College on Aquidneck Island, we island residents have a familiarity with the idea of “wargaming” or rehearsing the decisions leaders would make during warfare involving joint …
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“The moment I heard of America, I lov’d her.” The Marquis de Lafayette wrote this in a letter from his camp near Warren, Rhode Island, on September 23, 1778. It …
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It’s a great puzzle of the Revolutionary era.  Before 1767, Rhode Island was one of the most gung-ho colonies in resisting British intervention.  Newporters had fired on imperial customs enforcers, …
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This captivating book tells a new American story. It is the first book to detail the life, challenges, fears and hopes of a Black soldier in the Continental Army during …
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Last week, this website ran an article providing strong contemporaneous evidence that many of the men who broke open the tea chests and destroyed the tea inside them on board …
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In the evening of December 16, 1773, a band of Boston Whigs (commonly known today as Patriots) charged onto three merchant ships at a wharf in Boston Harbor and dumped …
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The Idea for Rebuilding

In 1966, a young Harvard graduate in Rhode Island with a passion for naval history noted that the American Bicentennial was approaching. No one else seemed …
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Throughout the churning tides of 1776 and 1777, John Brown, a prominent merchant from Providence, amassed a fortune by investing in privateers. Through reviewing a comprehensive list of his privateers …
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We Rhode Islanders pat ourselves on the back a lot, including when it comes to the Revolution. But did the colony (and later state) really matter much in bringing about …
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