Free Republic

Welcome to Independence Day weekend, New Jersey. It's a time to cast aside all the aspersions brought on by the Turnpike's industrial corridor and celebrate our proud Revolutionary War history. Simply put, New Jersey, more than any other state, was the place where the battle was fought, nearly lost, and ultimately won. With a four-day holiday weekend, it's a chance to make a historic scavenger hunt to put New Jersey's legacy in perspective. That is, if the state lawmakers can play nice on the budget impasse and get the parks they're supposed to run reopen. Here are some stops along...

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. - George Washington and his troops have made their annual Christmas Day trip across the Delaware River. The re-enactors crossed the river between Pennsylvania and New Jersey on a 65-degree day Friday, considerably warmer than the actual crossing which took place on an ice-choked river during a snowstorm. The annual Christmas tradition drew families and fans of history to both sides of the Delaware River for the 63rd annual re-enactment. Boats ferried 2,400 soldiers, 200 horses and 18 cannons across the river during the original crossing.Washington's troops marched 8 miles downriver before battling Hessian mercenaries in the...

Park Ridge – The Pascack Historical Society will recognize the 238th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution (1776-1783) on Sunday, Sept. 28 when historian Todd W. Braisted speaks about "Bergen's Wars," in the Ellen Berdais Hall at the Society, 19 Ridge Ave. Admission is free and children are welcome when accompanied by an adult. The American Revolution was fought extensively in Bergen County. Throughout the war, conflicts raged from Ramapo to Paulus Hook (Jersey City) and all points in between. Major massacres of colonists happened in Old Tappan (Baylor Massacre) and Closter. British troops pillaged and plundered local...

CHRIS PEDOTA/Staff photographer Larry Stephan of Oakland, center, on the porch of the Ringwood manor reading the Declaration of Independence to visitors who braved the rain Friday. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to celebrate the Fourth of July in the pouring rain, they huddle under trees at the Ringwood Manor, pop up umbrellas and make the best of a soggy situation with a spirited reading of the Declaration of Independence.  On a Fourth of July that offered more soak than sizzle, hundreds gathered for the traditional reading of our nation’s founding creed,...

In the gloom of this holy Christmas night, a cold sleet fell. It was not a night for man nor beast but yet here they were. Huddled upon the banks of this frigid river, 2000 men contemplated their bleak fate. The past few months had gone very, very badly. Their hopes had been crushed time and again. The noble experiment in Liberty which had begun with such promise, had by this time deteriorated to the point where every day was a battle just to survive. Defeat after defeat, at places like Long Island, Harlem Heights, Fort Washington and White Plains...

RIVER VALE — At the 234th commemoration on Monday of the Baylor Massacre, it was easy to see how New Jersey earned the nickname Crossroads of the Revolution. River Vale Historian Ed Moderacki wears a British infantry uniform as he helps Lincoln Schefter of Hackensack hold a musket at the site of the Baylor Massacre. The site, along the banks of the Hackensack River near Red Oak Drive, played host to a skirmish that took place in the middle of the night on Sept. 28, 1778, in which 54 soldiers from the rag-tag Continental Army were killed, captured or wounded,...

British General John Burgoyne must have been bitterly disappointed one day in July 1777 in the upper Hudson Valley — the day his army, hot in pursuit of the Americans they had just driven from Fort Ticonderoga, ran into a lake that wasn’t supposed to exist.  This part of upstate New York had already been thoroughly explored and mapped, yet the Redcoats, confident of speedily overtaking and finishing off the American force, suddenly found themselves blocked by a brand-new body of water where dry forest and field was supposed to provide swift passage. The British must have soon ascertained, as...

Rick Pressl burst into the board of trustees meeting, a boyish exuberance overcoming his normally reserved temperament. The retired fire chief pulled aside Tanya Sulikowski, the executive director of the Schiff Natural Lands Trust, to show off a rusty, barely recognizable object. It was a Revolutionary War era stirrup, Pressl said, his first major find while excavating the nature preserve. He would soon have much more to show the board. This summer, he and a few students from Ridge High School, unearthed spoons, tongs, nails, horseshoes and several other historic artifacts. The group also discovered a set of four brass...

The way Jerry Hurwitz sees it, it doesn't take an Einstein to understand the significance of the hal lowed ground on which a pivotal Revolutionary War Battle of Princeton was fought 230 years ago. Part of the battle on Jan. 3, 1777, was waged on 22 acres of gently sloping farmland now owned by the Institute for Advanced Study. The institute -- an independent, private research institution that counted physicist Albert Ein stein among its faculty -- is adja cent to the 85-acre Princeton Battlefield State Park. But that section of the battlefield was never incorporated into the state park,...

 Andrew Wnukowski of Hillside checks his redcoat costume in the glint of a car window. About 5,000 British troops came ashore at Closter Dock in Alpine on Nov. 20, 1776, setting the stage for the redcoats to capture Fort Lee from the upstart American revolutionaries later in the day.   On Saturday, four "soldiers" with red coats, muskets and goatskin backpacks -- along with a dozen or so intrepid "civilians" -- re-created the climb up the Palisades toward the site named after Gen. Charles Lee, who would be court-martialed two years later for disobeying Gen. George Washington's orders during the...

ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY:On Dec. 3, 1756, Aaron Ogden was born in Elizabethtown, the son of a legislator who would rise to a public service career of his own.Ogden, who served in the military during the American Revolution and the undeclared war against France, grew into a skilled orator and debater. He served in Congress from 1801 to 1803 and was elected governor of New Jersey in 1812. Ogden, who also had business interests in steamboat machinery, later became embroiled in a Supreme Court case concerning the monopoly of steamboat service in New York waters. Drained of his...

Legislation to protect Revolutionary War battlefield sites, including some in New Jersey, is moving through Congress. Sponsored by New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt, the bill would establish a $50 million grant program to help acquire and preserve battlefields, barracks and other sites related to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. New Jersey has nearly 300 sites with direct ties to events of the American Revolution. The bill would allow the National Park Service to collaborate with state and local governments and nonprofit organizations to preserve and protect sites threatened by housing sprawl and commercial development. It now awaits...

The general will see you now. And you, and you, and you. As a matter of fact, Gen. George Washington, first commander in chief of the Continental Army and first president of these United States, may end up seeing upwards of 200 people at his birthday ball Sunday at historic New Bridge Landing in River Edge. That’s a whole lot of hands that Hawthorne’s Rodger Yaden will be clasping in his white cotton gloves. But he’s game. “I’ll shake as many hands as are offered,” says Yaden, who has been doing a full-dress impersonation of the Father of Our Country,...

The Times That Try Men's Souls232nd Anniversary of the Retreat at Fort Lee, NJclick for video

<p>History buffs will get a treat this spring when what is being billed as a "Revolutionary Weekend" will be held at a host of historic sites throughout the greater Morristown area in late April, the National Park Service announced.</p>

John Mills and Jerry Hurwitz are historians with a scholar's knowledge of the Jan. 3, 1777, Battle of Princeton. Mills, the historian for Princeton Battlefield State Park, and Hurwitz, president of the Princeton Battlefield Society, recently stood on high ground overlooking the 75 sweeping acres that remain of the battlefield. Before them, patches of ice splotched the yellow grass just as they did on that "bright, serene, and extremely cold morning," as an American lieutenant described it nearly 232 years ago, when Gen. George Washington and his cold and battle-weary volunteers defeated British regulars in a turning point of the...