On This Day In The Revolution

On this day 250 years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, Superintendent of Indian Affairs John Stuart wrote Lord Dartmouth about the torture and murder of Lieutenant Daniel Grant of the Georgia militia by Creek Indians in January. This incident and associated raids conducted by the Creeks and Cherokees against white settlers in the Carolina backcountry would…

On this day 250 years ago in London, Lord Dartmouth wrote to his friend John Thornton about the resistance of the Patriots in Boston: How fatally and effectually they have now shut the door against all possibility of present relief for any of the things they complain of, and how utterly vain it must be…

On this day 250 years ago in Boston, the young African-American poet Phillis Wheatley wrote to the Reverend Samuel Occum to commend him for an open letter he had written criticizing Christian ministers who enslaved Africans. Wheatley wrote: I have this day received your obliging kind Epistle, and am greatly satisfied with your Reasons respecting the Negroes,…

On this day 250 years ago in London, Lord Dartmouth, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Attorney General Thurlow and Solicitor General Wedderburn to demand that they provide a formal legal opinion in response to the questions he had previously submitted regarding Patriot resistance to the Tea Act in Boston including the…

On this day 250 years ago the Massachusetts House of Representatives named one of its members, 68-year old Seth Pomeroy, as “general officer” for militias. Pomeroy would subsequently fight as a volunteer without command at Bunker Hill, serve as the Major General in command of the Massachusetts Militia and serve in the Continental Army as a…

On this day 250 years ago, the New Jersey Assembly created a Committee of Correspondence making New Jersey the twelfth colony to do so. Source: https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/deep-dives/committees-of-correspondence/

On this day 250 years ago the Boston Evening Post published Resolutions from the Town of Concord that resolved that anyone who continued to buy, sell, or use East India Company’s tea would be “for the future deemed unfriendly and enemical to the happy constitution of this country” and that anyone attempting to import the tea…

On this day 250 years ago Isaiah Thomas published the first issue of The Royal American Magazine in Boston. Notwithstanding the name of his new publication, Thomas was not a Loyalist, and the magazine supported the Patriot cause. He also published the Massachusetts Spy which was the preferred publication for letters and editorials by Patriots in…

On this day 250 years ago the Boston Gazette and Country Journal published a letter from a Patriot from the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts complaining about “Resolves of the town of Marshfield” that opposed “the destruction of teas, &c.” and supported the British authorities rather than the Sons of Liberty. The letter writer asserted the…

On this day 250 years ago, Dr. Benjamin Rush delivered an oration “before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia: containing, an enquiry into the natural history of medicine among the Indians in North-America, and a comparitive view of their diseases and remedies, with those of civilized nations ; together with an appendix, containing, proofs…