fei’s historical days

“Good God! are Americans all asleep and tamely giving up their glorious liberties…” —Benedict Arnold

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Battle of Saint Kitts, 25-26 January 1782

Welcome to Fei’s historical days!

In honor of America 250, I will be writing little blurbs of events, birthdays, and deathdays relating to the American Revolution to be posted on their anniversaries in partnership with @icarus-gazette. Feel free to submit requests of an event or person you would like covered, and hopefully these short snippets will pique your interest and inspire you to learn more.

A reminder that this labor of love, however intense said interest in history may be, is imperfect. I am but a wee lad fallible to business and bias, so do your own research! Reading and comparing and drawing your own conclusions is the very essence of free will.

With that, may your quest for knowledge be full of whimsy and thirst.

Yr. Obt. Svt.

lafeiette

For all dates, I will use N.S. (New Style) unless otherwise specified. This refers to the shift from the Julian to Gregorian calendars. England was one of the later countries to do so, with its shift happening in 1752, which affects the birth dates of many people.

**on hiatus because finals and AP tests galore**

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Today is the 249th anniversary of the start of the British Raid on Danbury! [Part 1]

25 April 1777

On Friday 25 April 1777 at half past noon, a British fleet of over 1,800 men under Generals Tryon, Agnew, and Erskine landed in Compo, Connecticut. Notably, this force consisted of handpicked men from six regiments, 250 each, alongside cavalry, six field pieces, and 300 loyalist volunteers. General Tryon’s objective was to raid a rebel supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut, and raise Loyalist support in the countryside.

Brigadier General Gold Selleck Silliman noticed this fleet’s docking but delayed five hours before notifying his superiors. In the meantime, the British set off, marching over the next day through rain and exhaustion. This is the start of the Danbury Raid, leading to the Battle of Ridgefield, the only American Revolution battle to take place inland in Connecticut. Despite its relative lack of attention, this raid draws out figures that will mold the nation’s future—Sybil Ludington, a sixteen-year-old whose midnight ride allowed for a patriot stand; Stephen Rowe Bradley, who later brings Vermont into statehood; Jeremiah Keeler, a Yorktown hero praised by Lafayette; David Wooster, a fallen general from a fading generation; and Benedict Arnold, stirred from the verge of resignation into action.

For the next few days, I will make ‘live’ updates on the raid. Because this is Christmas to a nerd like myself. Stay in tune for lovely one-liners (“not yet, daddy”), Benedict Arnold’s plot armor, and the misfortunes of his horses.

Reference:

Farmers Against the Crown, by Keith Marshall Jones III

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Today is the 251st anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord!

19 April 1775

This weekend, forty thousand people will be gathering in the towns of Lexington and Concord for the America 250 celebrations (even though the semiquincentennial for this battle was last year). Forty thousand. For reference, the Continental Army never had more than forty-eight thousand enlisted men at one time.

So, what led to the famous ‘shot heard around the world’? The British in Boston send a force of 700 men with the goal of destroying patriot militia stores in Concord. However, Dr. Joseph Warren gets his hands on this intelligence and warns his friends, Paul Revere and William Dawes. Alongside Samuel Prescott, they warn colonial towns that of the British movements, including Lexington.

As a result, the Lexington militia is gathered on the town green when the British regulars arrive at 5 am. The British advance to disperse them and in the chaos, a shot rings out, starting a skirmish that leaves eight patriot militia dead.

The British march on to Concord, arriving at 8 am, but by then with enraged patriot militia gathering, their mission of finding and burning stores is futile. At North Bridge, the militia and regulars engage again, at which point the famous shot heard around the world “starts” the American Revolution. Patriot militia continues attacking the British force as they retreat back to Boston on a path now known as Battle Road.

Luckily, I was able to visit Lexington and Concord last weekend before a crowd larger than the 1770 population of Delaware showed up and collected several images of the quaint and peaceful little towns. I take pictures like everything is a bigfoot sighting. Apologies. The “focus” function is about as mystical as the wave function to me.

References

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/american-revolution-faqs#howmanysoldiersservedinthewar

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/lexington-and-concord

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Today is the 250th anniversary of the end of the Siege of Boston!

17 March 1776

American victory

The Siege of Boston started in April of 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord. British general Thomas Gage occupied Boston, which was at the time a peninsula connected to Massachusetts by only a narrow isthmus, but within artillery range of the land in a C shape around it. However, Washington did not have that artillery to force him out.

On May 10 of 1775, Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British, which had over 100 pieces of artillery, and during the winter of 1775–1776, Henry Knox transported 59 of those 300 miles to Boston. By March of 1776, Washington was able to fortify Dorchester Heights with artillery and cause the British to evacuate Boston.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/maps/siege-boston

References:

https://fortticonderoga.org/experience/events/henry-knoxs-noble-train-of-artillery-ticonderoga-to-the-siege-of-boston/

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/boston

https://www.masshist.org/features/siege-of-boston

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Today is the 245th anniversary of the Battle of Cape Henry!

16 March 1781

British tactical victory

The Battle of Cape Henry was an indecisive naval battle between 8 ships under British Vice-Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot and 7 ships under French Admiral Destouches. In order to aid the Marquis de Lafayette in capturing Benedict Arnold, Destouches sailed from Newport, Rhode Island to the Chesapeake Bay. Arbuthnot set sail from Long Island and arrived first to intercept Destouches at Cape Henry.

The battle lasted for several hours until Destouches drew away and Arbuthnot chose not to follow. He managed to prevent Destouches from landing in the Chesapeake Bay and stayed there until 2,000 men came to reinforce Benedict Arnold. When Destouches returned to Newport, Washington criticized him for withdrawing so soon in a private letter that ended up published in an English newspaper. This led to some friction when French commanders Rochambeau and Barras speaking up in defense of Destouches.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Henry#

https://revolutionary-war.org/campaigns/yorktown-campaign/battle-of-cape-henry

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Today is the 245th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse!

15 March 1781

British victory

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse took place in the Southern theater, shortly after the British defeat at the Battle of Cowpens. General Cornwallis’s objective was to destroy the army of Nathanael Greene, but he faced shortages of men and supplies. In chasing Greene north towards the Dan River, Cornwallis had strayed 390 kilometers away from his supply base in Camden, South Carolina, and due to France’s involvement with war and a tense relationship with Lord Germaine in England, Cornwallis could no longer get reinforcements to replace the men he lost. Nathanael Greene knew that his army was too small to directly engage Cornwallis, but he also knew Cornwallis could afford to lose any men.

Nathanael Greene arranged his 4,400 troops in a formation that Daniel Morgan had used to defeat the British at Cowpens. Throughout the war, the skittish militia had been a recurring issue, especially for the Continental Army. Greene formed three lines, with the North Carolina militia first, the Virginia militia second, and the trained Continental troops last. The militia lines were to fire “one or two good rounds” before retreating into the woods, wearing the British forces out before the Continentals stepped in to do the brunt of the fighting. This strategy worked even better than expected when one Virginia militia regiment held on rather than retreating, forcing part of the British line to stay behind and breaking their advance.

When the first British unit did reach the Continentals, William Washington’s light dragoons attacked them. Cornwallis said that the Americans “fought like demons”, with officers even engaging in combat with their sabers. Greene ordered retreat once the second British unit disentangled from the Virginia militia. Cornwallis claimed this as a British victory, but he had lost one fourth of his troops, men which he could not replace. After the battle, rain poured for forty hours, forcing him to remain on the bloodied field with American and British dead alike, severely lowering British morale. Despite the heavy losses, Cornwallis refused to retreat to Charleston and resolved to instead push forward into Virginia, a decision which would lead to the major defeat at Yorktown.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guilford_Court_House

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/guilford-court-house

https://www.americanrevolution.org/battle-of-guilford-courthouse/

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Happy pi day!! I’m on the tau team but…pi is fine I suppose 🙄

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Today is the 244th anniversary of the Gnadenhutten Massacre

8 March 1782

Content warning for violence.

Under the guise of ending raids on American farms, western militiamen under commander David Williamson rounded up and slaughtered an estimated 96 Native Americans, who were pacifist Morovian Christians.

Their neutrality in the war led to suspicion from both the British and Americans. The natives massacred were a foraging party from a larger group that the British had relocated to a village, Captive Town, on the Sandusky River. While harvesting crops, they met Williamson and his militiamen.

Initially, the Americans played friendly and convinced the natives to all gather to be taken to safety in Fort Pitt. They were instead imprisoned in the village of Gnadenhutten, where the Americans practiced “democracy” by voting to slaughter the natives. Only 18 of the 160 refused.

The Morovians stuck to their pacifism, requesting only a night to pray before death. The following morning, the Americans killed them as they sang psalms, refusing to fight back. One American, Nathan Rollins, took a lead by killing nineteen people “& after it was over he sat down & cried, & said it was no satisfaction for the loss of his father & uncle after all”. Many of the frontiersmen had recent losses to Natives but did not distinguish between tribes, committing indiscriminate acts of violence.

There are only two confirmed survivors of the massacre. One was a teenager named Thomas who managed to escape after being scalped and presumed dead. Another was a small boy named Jacob. In the cabin where women and children were imprisoned, a floorboard managed to be pried up and two children where hidden in the root cellar “while the massacre took place above, the blood of the victims running down on to them.” Jacob managed to crawl through a hole in the wall and escape, but the other boy couldn’t and died when the Americans burned the village.

In the 20th century, evidence was found of more surviving children. One boy, seven years old at the time, was hidden in a bush and raised in the family of a frontiersman, Obidiah Holmes Jr.. He mentions “other children had survived (the massacre) who are still with white people today.”

The massacre caused outrage across the colonies, solidifying Native alliances with the British and convincing once neutral tribes to join the British as well. White colonists were horrified as well, and this massacre demonstrated the lack of control the eastern authorities had over the western frontiersmen. Anger from this massacre would lead to further violence in the 1782 Crawford Expedition. The Gnadenhutten Massacre is called “the greatest atrocity of that war.”

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnadenhutten_massacre#

file:///C:/Users/strip/Downloads/admin,[phone]-CE.pdf

https://www.britannica.com/event/Gnadenhutten-Massacre

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/gnadenhutten

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Today is the 256th anniversary of the Boston Massacre!

5 March 1770

The tensions that led up to the Boston Massacre have been building for several years beforehand with the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts leading to riots in Boston. As a result, the British 14th and 29th regiments were stationed in the city in 1768, leading to conflict with the civilians when they could not find places to quarter and became competition for the jobs of laborers.

The death of an 11-year-old boy, Christopher Sneider, just several days before the massacre worsened tensions. On 22 February 1777, a mob formed outside the house of a merchant who refused to join in the rebels’ boycotts, arguing he had the freedom to do as he chose. His neighbor tried to shoo away the crowd, only to be threatened himself. Fearing for his life, he shot into the mob.

At 8 p.m. on 5 March, angry crowds in the streets attacked the barracks of British soldiers with snowballs. The sentry stationed outside a customs house became the main target of the attack and struggled to fend off the growing mob alone. Hearing of this, Captain Thomas Preston gathered seven soldiers with him to aide the sentry, but became surrounded by the mob at all. Between the accidental misfiring of one soldier’s musket and the confusion, the nine British began to shoot into the crowd, killing five and wounding six.

The aftermath of the massacre was a fight to control the narrative. British Colonel Dalrymple wrote “A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston in New England”, while patriots James Bowdoin, Samuel Pemberton, and Joseph Warren described the event as a ‘horrid massacre in Boston’. Henry Pelham (not Paul Revere) created the image that depicts British soldiers shooting in an organized line onto the crowd, which was not the truth, but managed to spark fear in civilians.

The trials of the British soldiers were postponed until the autumn when tempers had cooled and a fair jury could be found, so as to not further antagonize the British and the loyalists. The defense of the soldiers included John Adams, which demonstrated his belief of equal justice to all. Seven men, including Captain Preston, were acquitted, and two others were sentenced to branding of the thumb rather than death. Adams argued they fired in self defense at a crowd made mostly of "molattoes, Irish teagues, and Jack Tars”.

References

https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Massacre/Aftermath-and-agitprop

https://www.worldhistory.org/Boston_Massacre/

https://www.americanrevolution.org/boston-massacre/

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Calendar for March events:

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Today is the 272th anniversary of Benjamin Tallmadge’s birthday!

February 25, 1754

American military officer, politician, and spymaster

The AMC series, Turn: Washington’s Spies, has popularized Benjamin Tallmadge but tied him to the picture of actor Seth Numrich. Here are some anecdotes on the historical Tallmadge that were not focused on in the show.

Prior to the Revolution, Tallmadge had planned to study law. He graduated from Yale in 1773 and worked as a school teacher until 1776, when he officially took a commission as a lieutenant.

During the 1776 battles for New York City, Tallmadge proved to be a natural commander and would drill his men morning and evening. One soldier describes him as a “large, strong, and powerful man” and notes that “He was a brave officer, and there was no flinch in him. He was a man of few words, but decided and energetic, and what he said was to the purpose.”

In the autumn of 1780, Tallmadge led a raid on Fort St. George and burned the British hay in Coram, New York. These were the actions in which Elijah Churchill, the recipient of the first Purple Heart Award, distinguished himself.

Following the Revolution, he became one of the original members of the Society of Cincinnati and served as its president from 1796-1801. He opened a store, B. Tallmadge and Company, in Litchfield, Connecticut and served as the town’s postmaster.

From 1801 to 1817, Tallmadge represented Connecticut as a Federalist in the House of Representatives. He remained involved with politics afterwards when he defended Uriah Tracy, who had proposed that New England secede from the United States, from John Quincy Adams.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tallmadge#

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/benjamin-tallmadge

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Tallmadge

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Today is the 304th anniversary of John Burgoyne’s birthday!

February 24, 1722

British military officer, politician, and playwright

John Burgoyne’s military career began at the age of 15, when he purchased a commission with the Horse Guards. Stationed in London with little work, he became involved with the high society and earned the nickname ‘Gentleman Johnny’ for his fashion. Gambling debts forced him to sell his commission, but he served again in the War of Austrian Succession, having gained the rank of cornet without a purchase.

In 1751, Burgoyne eloped with Lady Charlotte Stanley, the daughter of a prominent politician, Lord Derby. He lived in France for several years before a friend of his, Lord Strange, convinced Lord Derby to accept them back into the family, where Burgoyne managed to gain his favor.

Before his service in the American Revolution, Burgoyne assisted with raids on the French coast and the establishment of the British light cavalry, represented Midhurst in parliament, and prevented Spain from invading Portugal in the Seven Years War.

Following Lexington and Concord in 1775, Burgoyne was among the three generals sent to aide Thomas Gage. He returned to England, though, irritated that he had not been given an opportunity to see action at the Battle of Bunker Hill alongside William Howe and Henry Clinton, and likely believing his command would have resulted in a better outcome.

By 1776, Burgoyne was back in America, this time given command of reinforcements for the besieged Quebec. He faced similar frustrations once again when British General Guy Carleton failed to capture Fort Ticonderoga despite a victory at Valcour Island, believing that had he led the fleet, he would have pushed forward regardless of the approaching winter.

When Burgoyne returned to England a second time, though, he did so with some satisfaction. Lord Germaine had called him back for consultation on the next year’s campaigns rather than Carleton, a sign of British infighting that Burgoyne fueled in order to gain power for himself. These fractured communications, however, would become his undoing.

Between Lord Germaine’s dislike for Carleton and Burgoyne’s persuasion of the Parliament, he returned to America in 1777 with the command to lead forces down Lake Champlain into the Hudson River Valley. If he could take the Hudson River, New England would be strangled from the rest of the colonies, and rebellion could be quelled.

Burgoyne was hubristic in his numbers, meeting little opposition in the sparsely populated wilderness and believing that both Howe and Clinton would reinforce him from the direction of the coast. However, Germaine’s orders had not been clear to the other two generals. Rather than reinforcing Burgoyne’s mission to capture the Hudson, Howe went ahead on his own to take Philadelphia. By the time Clinton offered to send Burgoyne a force of two thousand men, it was too late.

His overconfidence contributed to his insistence to bring 30 carriages of champagne and clothing, which slowed down his march and allowed Continental forces under Horatio Gates to trap him at Saratoga. Between Benedict Arnold’s victory at Breymann’s Redoubt and the death of his aide-de-camp, Sir Francis Clerke, Burgoyne was forced to surrender his entire army of around six thousand men on 17 October 1777. Upon return to England, Burgoyne was stripped of command.

While Burgoyne is most known for his military career, he was also a politician and playwright. He sat in the House of Commons as a Whig and became involved in the impeachment of Warren Hastings and insisting that the East India Company be investigated for corruption. Some of his most popular plays include The Heiress and The Maiden of the Oaks, and during his early service in America, he wrote a satire entitled The Blockade of Boston.

Though well-liked and respected, the surrender at Saratoga ruined Burgoyne’s reputation. More recently, historians have directed the blame to Germaine’s poor communication; however, Burgoyne’s decadence and role in aggravating the rift between Germaine and Carleton undoubtedly played a role.

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/john-burgoyne

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burgoyne#

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Burgoyne

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/john-burgoyne

https://www.americanrevolution.org/john-burgoyne-biography/

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Today is the 250th anniversary of John Andre’s arrival in Lancaster, Pennsylvania!

February 23, 1776

Back in November of 1775, British Fort St. Jean fell to American commander Richard Montgomery. Among the captured was Lieutenant John Andre of the 7th Regiment of Foot. Following the fall of the fort, Andre went to Montreal on parole to collect the soldiers’ baggage and met several influential figures during the journey such as Henry Knox and Philip Schuyler (as well as Joshua Hett Smith, with whom he would cross paths again in 1780). After spending part of the winter in Albany, he set off to Lancaster where some other officers from Fort St. Jean had been assigned. Andre would remain a prisoner of war in Pennsylvania until late November of 1776.

Fun fact: Andre collected so much baggage in Montreal that American soldiers threatened mutiny. Montgomery wrote “There was no driving it into [the American soldiers’] noodles that the clothing was really the property of the [British] soldier.”

References

Flexner, James T. 1991. The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André. N.p.: Syracuse University Press.

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Today is the 223rd anniversary of Edward Despard’s execution

February 21, 1803

Executed for high treason

Edward Despard was a British officer and administrator known for his radicalism and progressive views on race. He was born in 1751 to the landowning class and of Huguenot descent. At the age of fifteen, he enlisted in the military alongside his elder brothers and served in the Caribbean and Central American theaters of the American Revolution. This likely influenced his views on race when following the war, he became the Superintendent of the Bay of Honduras.

In Honduras, Despard distributed land without "any distinction of age, sex, character, respectability, property or colour", antagonizing the established white landowners who protested against being made equal with the natives and African Americans. Despard argued that British law made no distinction for race, and though charges against him were dismissed, he lost his position in the government.

In 1790, married the daughter of a black woman from Jamaica, Catherine, and his public mixed race marriage added further to his controversy upon his return to England. Later on, Catherine and their son, James, would be erased from the Despard family tree.

At this point, with the War of the First Coalition and the French Revolution, Despard found himself influenced by Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and took a revolutionary stance against the British Prime Minister, William Pitt. He would become entangled with British republicanism and spend two years in prison from 1798-1800, likely for being involved with the Irish Rebellion.

On November 16, 1802, Despard was arrested on accusations of high treason. He had been named as the ringleader of a conspiracy to capture the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate King George III. To his death, Despard would deny the charges, and it is uncertain if he was only a figurehead used by conspirators or if he had been truly involved.

His wife, Catherine, pleaded with the Prime Minister and King, but only managed to change his sentence from disembowelment to hanging. On February 21, 1803, Despard was executed, using his last words to attest to his innocence and inspire onlookers to revolution. The government, however, had anticipated this, and prevented crowds from gathering and kept the military on hand.

Much information on Edward Despard is blurry and warped as a result of the enemies he made or simply misinterpretations. Signs in Carlisle, Pennsylvania name him as a prisoner of war in 1776 alongside Major John Andre, hanged for a separate treason conspiracy, though in actuality, it was his elder brother John Despard who was involved.

References

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Marcus-Despard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Despard#

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=30321

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Happy birthday to Jeffrey Rosen!

February 13, 1964

The guy in the Khan Academy U.S. Constitution course

Jeffrey Rosen is the CEO emeritus at the National Constitution Center and a professor of law at George Washington University. He also writes songs for his podcast, Pursuit. He has recently stepped down from his position in the National Constitution Center, having joined it over twelve years ago to create a non-partisan space to engage in civil discussion about the Constitution. That is something especially needed now, in a time of skyrocketing polarization. As the semiquincentennial anniversary of our Declaration of Independence approaches, perhaps we should remember: governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed.

References

https://whyy.org/articles/national-constitution-center-ceo-steps-down/

https://constitutioncenter.org/about/leadership-staff/jeffrey-rosen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Rosen_(legal_academic)

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Today is the 289th anniversary of Thomas Paine’s birthday!

February 9, 1737

Political philosopher, inventor, and writer

“Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense’, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

Today, Thomas Paine is viewed as a hero of the revolution, but that was not always the case. From his death to 1937, he was remembered as a man who “lived long, did some good and much harm.” Though his bold optimism and sharp rhetoric gained him fame and fueled the American Revolution, more often than not, his radicalism created enemies and controversy as well—he was a man who said what he meant, regardless the consequences.

Born in England, Paine’s decision to move to America involved an inability to hold a job. He worked as an excise officer but was dismissed in 1772 after publishing a strongly worded article arguing that in order to stop corruption amongst officers, their pay must be raised. In 1774, his second wife divorced him when his outspoken politics left him jobless, so with nothing keeping him in England, he sailed to the colonies at Benjamin Franklin’s prompting.

Much of his success was during the American Revolution, in which he published Common Sense, a pamphlet that sold over 500,000 copies in just the first few months. For reference, that is roughly equal to the population of all of New England. From 1776 to 1783, he published a series of pamphlets known as The American Crisis, which is accredited with saving the American cause and morale during the winter of Valley Forge.

However, even with the widespread distribution of his pamphlets, Paine was still impoverished. He had no money from his family or past work in England, but refused to take profits so that his writing may be affordable to be read by all, a sign that despite his criticisms and controversy, he did truly believe in his cause. His financial situation did not improve with his appointment as the clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania in 1779. Seeing the state of the soldiers, Paine used his own salary to give them aide. Following the war, Paine petitioned to Congress for financial assistance, but the numerous enemies he’d made throughout the years turned down the plea. Pennsylvania at last gave him £500 and New York gave him a farm, on which he spent some time as an inventor.

By 1787, Paine returned to England to gain support for his inventions, but politics drew him in once again. He anonymously criticized British Prime Minister William Pitt on England’s involvement with war with France over the Dutch Republic, saying that war brought nothing but taxes (something that might have hit a nerve with Pitt, as he was the son of the elder William Pitt, who was heavily involved with the British victory and debt in the French and Indian War).

At this point in life, Paine becomes involved in a series of publications and quarrels that leave him liked by no one. He writes the Rights of Man as a response to conservative politician William Burke, leading to the censorship of his works and his banishment from England. France offered him an honorary citizenship and seat on the French Constitutional Committee, where he publishes the “Age of Reason” on his deist beliefs and “Agrarian Justice” on his almost socialist beliefs. He believed republicanism could lead to a sort of utopia in which all natural rights were protected, class was abolished, and the poor were taken care of.

Banished from England but too moderate for the French Reign of Terror, Paine was nearly executed. Upon his release and return to America, he found his contributions during the Revolution forgotten. His deism had created enemies amongst the religious and his criticism of George Washington and John Adams left him hated by the Federalists. After his death, he continued to be remembered as someone too outspoken and did much damage with his political publications until 1937, where the London Times referred to him as the “English Voltaire” and his popularity surged. The truth is, all politics requires acting. Paine spoke his true mind and that left him without a “side” to back him.

References

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/thomas-paine

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Paine/In-Europe-Rights-of-Man

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/thomas-paine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine#Early_life_and_education

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Today is the 243rd anniversary of the end of the Great Siege of Gibraltar

June 24, 1779 - February 7, 1783

British victory

The Great Siege of Gibraltar deserves its name, as the longest siege in British history and the battle in the American Revolution with the largest number of combatants. On the 16th of June, 1779, Spain officially joined the American side of the war, planning to take the British colony of Gibraltar before invading the mainland. The 40,000 Spanish forces surrounded the 7,000 British defenders, who lasted for a total of three years, seven months, and twelve days.

In January of 1780 and April of 1781, British admirals Rodney and Darby managed to resupply the garrison at Gibraltar and in November of 1781, British General Elliot launched an attack that destroyed 28 pieces of Spanish artillery while only losing 4 men.

The French arrived in February of 1782 and took some control, leading to Colonel D’Arcon planning the Grand Assault. During the assault, he used 10 floating batteries, which were heavily armed ships, but the strategy and schemes ultimately ended up in a major defeat for the French and Spanish.

The Grand Assault was the last major action, and by February of 1783, a truce had been signed, allowing Britain to keep Gibraltar but handing Minorca and parts of the West Indies and Florida to the French and Spanish.

The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar

References

https://www.gibmuseum.gi/our-history/military-history/great-siege-of-gibraltar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Gibraltar#Final_actions