On July 31, 1777, a 19-year-old French aristocrat, Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, received a commission, without pay, from the Continental Congress making him a major-general in the Continental Army. Lafayette had developed a great interest in the colonial…
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On a warm summer day in 1775, as the tension between the American colonies and Great Britain simmered, the Second Continental Congress convened in the Pennsylvania State House. Inside, the air was thick with the weight of recent battles at Lexington and Concord, and…
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On July 5, 1775—less than three months after the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord—the Second Continental Congress adopted what would become its final formal gesture of conciliation with King George III: the Olive Branch Petition. Drafted by…
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On July 3, 1775, George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The appointment came as tensions and hostilities began to rise between Massachusetts and England following the Battles of Lexington and Concord in that April. After vocal appeals from the…
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In the minds of many Americans, July 4th is the nation’s birthday—the date celebrated with fireworks, patriotic speeches, and parades across the country. Yet it was on July 2, 1776, that the Continental Congress formally broke ties with Great Britain by adopting the Lee…
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In a dramatic address that shook the walls of the Massachusetts General Court and reverberated across the Atlantic, James Otis Jr. on Tuesday, June 21, 1768, launched a sweeping denunciation of British authority—accusing Parliament of violating the Constitution and likening taxation without representation to…
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In the sweltering heat of June 1776, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and decided to change the course of human events. The delegates, representing the thirteen colonies, faced the monumental task of justifying a rebellion that had already sparked skirmishes and ignited…
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The passage of the Tea Act by the British Parliament on May 9, 1773, served as a pivotal moment in American history, providing a catalyst for the American Revolution. The Tea Act was essentially designed to bail out the struggling British East India Company by granting it a monopoly…
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“Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.” So begins Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, immortalizing one of…
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On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed a law that helped launch the American Revolution. Known as “Stamp Act,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History writes that it was enacted “to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years’…
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