“can tell a Tory by his looks,” Lewis Howell, a surgeon with the 2nd New Jersey Regiment, wrote his father in late June. The good doctor evidently had remarkable diagnostic powers, given the physical resemblance of loyalists and revolutionaries. Both breeds were drawn from all strata of their society, high, low, and middling. The war, […]

This is from Rick Atkinson’s Book The British Are Coming! “Irked at the dissent, the government had stepped up covert surveillance and intelligence gathering. Suspected rebel sympathizers in London were ordered “narrowly watched,” their neighbors discreetly questioned about irregular activity. The baggage of passengers arriving from North America was searched for rebel correspondence. In a […]

I’m reading “The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)” by Rick Atkinson and wanted to share this quote with you. “Discipline,” Washington had written in 1757, “is the soul of an army.” Certainly this army was still looking for its soul. American troops, one visitor […]