About Christian McBurney

From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution, by Robert Geake (Westholme, 2016)

Author Robert A. Geake, an established author of early Rhode Island history …
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(This articles appears as chapter 1 in a book by five smallstate authors titled World War II Rhode Island (History Press, 2017)).

Rhode Island already had a sizeable military and …
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Peter Gerry, a former U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, is back in the news. This is surprising because he is now almost forgotten in Rhode Island’s history, despite his being …
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With the ideology of equality and natural rights permeating American culture after the Revolutionary War, the system of slavery that had been quietly introduced in the American colonies in colonial …
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In the last three weeks, I gave you my list of the top fifteen greatest Rhode Islanders of all time. The following famous Rhode Islanders fill out my top five …
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Here is my list of the greatest Rhode Islanders of all time, numbers ten to six. In my last two articles, I counted down from numbers twenty to eleven, and …
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Last week, I gave you my list of the top twenty greatest Rhode Islanders of all time, numbers twenty through sixteen (as well as my honorable mentions and five current …
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This is the first article of four counting down my list of the top twenty greatest Rhode Islanders of all time. In this article, I present the greatest Rhode Islanders, …
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The earliest written descriptions of Indians in North America were by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian mariner commissioned by the King of France in 1523 to discover whether Asia could …
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On July 10, 1780, a French fleet of seven ships of the line and four frigates under Admiral Chevalier de Ternay, along with thirty-six transport vessels carrying about 6,000 French …
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