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Located on Lake Champlain in northeastern New York, Fort Ticonderoga served as a key point of access to both Canada and the Hudson River Valley during the French and Indian War. On May 10, 1775, Benedict Arnold joined Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont in a dawn attack on the fort, surprising and capturing the sleeping British garrison. Although it was a small-scale conflict, the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga was the first American victory of the Revolutionary War, and would give the Continental Army much-needed artillery to be used in future battles. In 1755, French settlers in...

New York City's Times Square installed a statue of a 12-foot-tall Black woman in casual clothing that its creator hopes will encourage people to reflect on "greater cultural diversity." New York-based Times Square Arts recently put up the new statue display, titled "Grounded in the Stars," by artist Thomas J Price, along with his "Man Series" animated billboards, both of which are temporary, but causing a stir online.

Greetings and salutations from a rookie Freeper. The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. --Thomas Jefferson Here, sir the People govern. --Alexander Hamilton Conscience is the most sacred of all property. --James Madison Independence Forever. --John Adams The Constitution is the guide which I will never abandon. --George Washington The one who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little safety, deserve neither liberty or safety. --Benjamin Franklin

 David McCullough was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was educated there and at Yale University. Author of 1776, John Adams, Truman, Brave Companions, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, The Great Bridge and The Johnstown Flood, he has twice received the Pulitzer Prize and twice the National Book Award, as well as the Francis Parkman Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The following is adapted from a public lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 31, 2006, during Mr. McCullough's one-week residency at the College to teach a class on “Leadership and the History...

Many volumes have been published telling of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War, as well as the fighting on the first day, April 19, 1775—some more fictitious than true. However, using primary accounts, extant arms, archaeological finds and by studying the battle damage left behind, today we have a much better understanding of what happened, along with the types of firearms that were being used by the men who fought on that pivotal day. On the night of April 18, 1775, about 750 British regulars began a march from Boston, Mass., to Concord, a town about 18 miles...

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. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,— One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up...

Today, we celebrate the 250th Anniversary of Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” Speech, which he delivered in the Virginia House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775. A speech had vision, courage, and foresight and should be ringing from the lips of statesmen and patriots today. Patrick Henry was a man of deep faith, so his remarks appeal to spiritual courage and trust in God as the foundation for fighting against tyranny. Here are a few segments that are as applicable today as they were when spoken 250 years ago, particularly as we engage in what can...

The White House on X: "250 years ago, Patrick Henry spoke the words that still remain etched in every American heart: “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!” We honor his legacy, we invoke his courage, and we summon the spirit of 1776 to bring about a new era of Restoration, Renewal, Confidence & Pride.

The Sons of Liberty flag is very meaningful to us, as it’s the flag that inspired the backdrop of our logo. Its origins go back to 1765, when a secretive group of patriots known as “the Loyal Nine” was formed – the group behind the original Boston Tea Party. The flag was then known as “the Rebellious Stripes” and it was banned by the British king, the highest endorsement the Crown could give.

I'm having a promotion for a book I wrote and published (under pen name Lyle Wesley) on Amazon. The title is A Night that Saved Virginia. It is historical fiction based on a true event; a British attempt to capture Thomas Jefferson at Monticello when he was Governor of Virginia. The E-Book version is free on Amazon until March 18th. The Amazon link is https://a.co/d/4mDuwJF. Best Regards and Happy Sunday!

"Let us look back at Samuel Whittemore. Samuel was an old man -- seventy-eight years old, to be exact -- on April 19, 1775. After many years of service bearing arms for the British Crown, surely he was too old to fight, and his wife even told him so. On that fateful morning, though, he gathered up his musket, two pistols, and a cavalry saber that he acquired from a French officer who "died suddenly" and took his place to meet the British Regulars in Menotomy."

As darkness began to set in, colonials began to attack the front of the column. There were a few cavalry units made up of older, experienced men who rode to within shot of the front of the column, dismounted and fired with great accuracy, then mounting and riding away only to reappear elsewhere. Now and then, the Regulars would fire cannon scattering the Militia who would quickly materialize again as the British column approached Menotomy. At Jason Russel’s house, British soldiers invaded the house killing eleven Americans, including Russel who was later found bayoneted at the foot of the stairs....

For the Journal of the American Revolution, Todd Andrlik compiled a list of the ages of the key participants in the Revolutionary War as of July 4, 1776. Many of them were surprisingly young: Marquis de Lafayette, 18 James Monroe, 18 Gilbert Stuart, 20 Aaron Burr, 20 Alexander Hamilton, 21 Betsy Ross, 24 James Madison, 25 This is kind of blowing my mind...because of the compression of history, I'd always assumed all these people were around the same age. But in thinking about it, all startups need young people...Hamilton, Lafayette, and Burr were perhaps the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg of...

Why the right Self-Defense Tools and Tactics are Vital at any age On April 19, 1775, a man named Samuel Whittemore directly engaged the 47th Regiment of Foot. Armed with a musket, dueling pistols and a saber, Whittemore caused them to deploy by killing three and forced them to execute actions on contact. He in turn was shot in the face, bayoneted, beaten and then left for dead. These actions slowed the advance of the Regulars and assisted colonial forces in the area along Battle Road. Whittemore was 78 years old and lived despite his wounds. This article is about...

Graduation day at Navy Officer Candidate School was special. I felt more honored by that achievement than graduating from college, because then all Navy officer programs were meritocracies. The feeling was not diminished until I arrived at the Westchester County where I saw men with two or more stripes and two of more rows of ribbons, including the Silver Star and Bronze Star. That is when I knew I was in for a serious commitment.Fifty years later, after reading a library of eighteenth history books, I realized the gravity of commitment implied by the oath I said on that graduation...

A letter written by George Washington, providing rare understanding of his confidence in regular Americans to fight and win the revolutionary war, has been put up for sale on Presidents Day. The first US president penned the document as leader of the Continental Army in 1777, shortly after British forces ransacked a vital military supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut – a devastating action that fellow general Samuel Parsons wrote him was “an event very alarming to the country”. The handwritten reply, hidden from public view for decades in a private collection in New England, shows that Washington refused to consider...

Seventeen seventy-two, 1773, 1774, 1775 all came and went, and they had no idea they were living in capital-R Revolutionary times...until they did. They didn’t know we would come to revere them, these farmers, these doctors, these lawyers and tradesmen, as R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-A-R-I-E-S. No man knows that until it’s over. And even then, there’s no guarantee. History has to write that page, and only the fullness of time can confer such titles. I’ve long thought about how our forebears knew there was increasing trouble afoot (as we do now) but really didn’t know how big, how consequential those troubles were (as...

Concerning President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring new federal buildings to show a preference for "classical architectural style" which includes Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco, referencing the architectural traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity. . . Behold (above) the federal building and courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama by HBRA Architects. And, no, it was not conceived when Andy Jackson was fighting the Battle of Emuckfaw against the “Red Stick” Creek Indians in 1814. Rather, it went up in 2012, a rare example of neoclassical design executed in our time. For the most part, though, the decades-long trend...

American Lawyer, political activist, colonial legislator, and early supporter of patriotic causes in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Coined the phrase "No taxation without representation".

What an important release this one is. Today, Benson Lossing's "Biographical Sketches of the Signers of the Declaration of American Independence" is ready for a listen. This book has some really important sections in it which are not biographies at all, but a 1-by-1 explanation of what each grievance in the Declaration is in reference to. That makes this audio book surely one of a kind in that regard. As for the biographies, most as audio are inbetween 5 to 10 minutes, giving a brief overview of all of these wonderful people. Some Founding Fathers never received a major biographical...