By: Roswell In early December 1776, things were looking bleak. Two senior commanders were in positions to support Washington’s planned crossing and attack. General Horatio Gates and General Charles Lee. Washington ordered both men to join him, but Gates was delayed by heavy snowfall. Lee, who held a low opinion

By: Ah1Tom After the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years’ War) ended in 1763, the British Parliament passed several tax acts in an effort to pay off the debt from that war. The Sugar Act in 1764, the Stamp and Quartering Acts in 1765, and then

By AH1 Tom In 1733, Parliament passed the Molasses Act, which aimed at regulating trade within the British Empire. However, lax enforcement encouraged smuggling. Decades later, after the French and Indian War (known as the Seven Years War in Europe) ended in 1763, the Molasses Act was replaced with the

By AH1 Tom After the first shots of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775, local militias continued to gather in Massachusetts to hold the British forces in Boston. They are now about 20,000 strong. By the end of May 1775, British reinforcements arrived to break the siege. This plan

By: AH1Tom When the British gained control of Ninety-Six after the fall of Charlestown in May of 1780, they then surrounded the town with a stockade and rebuilt Fort Williamson. Beyond the town was another redoubt known as the Star Fort. It was two hundred feet in diameter and had

On December 3, 1774, as thirty-two-year-old Mordecai Gist gathered together a group of freemen, merchants, shipbuilders, and businessmen who were interested in forming the first independent military company in Maryland to protect their rights and potentially to break away from Britain. They were called the Baltimore Independent Cadets, or Independent