American Revolution Institute

10/14/2026

On the night of October 14, 1781, American and French troops launched coordinated assaults on two British redoubts at Yorktown. Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton led about 400 American light infantrymen against Redoubt 10, while French troops attacked neighboring Redoubt 9. Both positions were captured, allowing the allied armies to extend their siege lines and bring their artillery closer to the main British defenses.

The attacks marked a critical moment in the Siege of Yorktown. Five days later, Cornwallis’s army surrendered.

As we approach the 245th anniversary of the American victory at Yorktown, the American Revolution Institute is adding a group of objects associated with Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman to The Field, our online collections catalog.

Tilghman served as one of George Washington’s longtime aides-de-camp and worked within the headquarters system through which orders, intelligence, and operational information moved during the Yorktown campaign. After the British surrender, Washington entrusted Tilghman with carrying his official dispatch announcing the victory to the Continental Congress.

The newly available records include Tilghman’s Congressional presentation sword and scabbard, military dress accessories, and Society of the Cincinnati Eagle insignia. Together, these objects connect the battlefield at Yorktown with the service, recognition, and memory of the officers who secured American independence.

Explore the Tilghman objects and other primary sources from the Revolution in The Field:
https://bit.ly/4i2NWew

10/13/2026

Just in time for the U.S. Navy’s 251st birthday today, we teamed up with the National Museum of the United States Navy (NMUSN) to highlight how both institutions have commemorated America 250.

Through a discussion moderated by NMUSN's senior curator, Raj Solanki, the Institute’s deputy director and curator, Emily Parsons, and the NMUSN's museum curator, Abby Schreiber, highlight each institution's respective exhibitions, "Voices of Revolution" and "Nation and Navy: The American Revolution." Together, the two curators highlight the development behind each exhibition, various artifacts displayed in them, as well as their significance as the United States celebrates 250 years of independence.

Just in time for the Navy's 251st birthday, the American Revolution...

10/12/2026

We spent last Friday, October 9 at the Delaware Art Museum with a magnificent group of K-12 educators representing over a dozen public and private Delaware schools presenting “Voices of Revolution and the Revolution in Wilmington after Brandywine.”

In addition to learning about the ARI’s free online classroom resources, the gathered teachers heard scholarship on the impact of the war on Wilmington and the Brandywine Valley presented by author Bill Knightly and the ARI’s own Andrew Outten, then engaged with a model lesson created for the ARI by master teacher Rob Schulte featuring a series of letters from our library collection penned 250 years ago by a captain on the front lines during the New York campaign.

The group also enjoyed a private tour of the artwork at the museum created by renowned local artist Howard Pyle depicting scenes from the American Revolution. Thank you to the event’s generous sponsor, the Delaware State Society of the Cincinnati.

10/11/2026

250 years ago, the Battle of Valcour Island, in the middle of New York’s Lake Champlain, took place. American Brigadier General Benedict Arnold’s flotilla of 9 vessels surprised the larger 26-vessel British force under General Guy Carleton. Though outgunned, the Americans fought well and were able to extricate the personnel to safety after scuttling their ships.

While an American defeat, the battle for control of Lake Champlain delayed the British forces in their attempt to divide the New England states from their southern neighbors. With the onset of winter approaching, the British force headed back to Canada and their quarters. By the time the British ventured south again in 1777, the Americans had reorganized and were in stronger position to fight back. The resulting campaign would end near Saratoga, New York, and the surrender of a British army.

Image: "A survey of Lake Champlain: including Lake George, Crown Point, and St. John" (London, 1776). The Society of the Cincinnati.

10/09/2026

The allied Franco-American attack on Savannah, Georgia, had disastrous results in 1779.

After several weeks besieging British-held Savannah, the allies decided to attack the city on October 9. Continental Army general Benjamin Lincoln and French admiral Charles-Henri, comte d’Estaing, coordinated the operation. They focused the assault on the Spring Hill Redoubt, at the western end of the British lines. Heavy fog, delays, and confusion among the allied forces, along with an unexpectedly strong British defense, doomed the attack. The French and American forces lost almost 1,000 men in under an hour.

Among the Frenchmen at Savannah was Philippe-Jacques-François Aupépin de Lamothe, a lieutenant in the Auxerrois Regiment. Bringing more than ten years of experience in the French army, he primarily fought in the Caribbean during the Revolution. His only service on the mainland came in the Siege of Savannah. A pastel portrait of Aupépin de Lamothe from our collections is currently on display in our exhibition Voices of Revolution.

Learn more about the portrait and its recent conservation at
https://www.americanrevolutioninstitute.org/conservation/pastel-portraits-of-captain-and-madame-aupepin-de-lamothe/

Image: Portrait of Philippe-Jacques-François Aupépin de Lamothe by Charles Thévenin, 1786, pastel on paper.

One of the most popular artforms of the eighteenth century, pastels offer a lifelike and beautifully textured painting, but their inherent fragility has made it less common for them to survive than their ubiquitous oil counterparts. The Institute’s museum collections contain a dozen pastel portrai...

10/08/2026

What did the American Revolution look like from Madrid?

In 1778, Spanish cartographer Tomás López published this map of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and part of Virginia. Lopez brought together geographic knowledge from some of the leading British, American, and French mapmakers of the 18th century. Published as the war was becoming an international conflict, the map reminds us that the Revolution was being watched, mapped, and understood far beyond the thirteen states.

It is one of the many maps in the American Revolution Institute’s collections documenting how people understood the geography of the Revolution, from campaign maps and battle plans to charts of coasts, harbors, colonies, and empires.

Explore this map, and more of our growing map collection, in The Field, the Institute’s digital collections platform.

https://bit.ly/4yP1S2E

10/07/2026

On October 7, 1780, British major Patrick Ferguson—inventor of one of the earliest successful breech-loading military firearms—was killed at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

Unlike the muzzle-loading muskets of the era, the Ferguson r***e could be loaded from the rear while the shooter remained crouched or lying down. During demonstrations, Ferguson reportedly fired six rounds per minute—a remarkable rate for the 1770s. Only about 100 of his r***es were produced, and Ferguson’s experimental r***e corps, equipped with this new r***e, demonstrated their potential at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777.

We can’t be sure that Ferguson’s specialty r***es accompanied him to South Carolina, where he recruited and commanded the Loyalist forces who fought at Kings Mountain. Ferguson’s story is a reminder that the American Revolution was a period of extraordinary military experimentation. For more personal histories like this, be sure to visit our Voices of Revolution exhibition.

10/06/2026

The fourth letter in our collections written from the New York Campaign by Capt. Jonathan Birge is dated October 6, 1776, 250 years ago today. Jonathan wrote to his wife, Priscilla, in Connecticut again from the “Camps at Harlem hills 10 miles above Newyork.” Birge’s tone continues to turn more solemn and reflective, as he writes:

“Kind & Deutyful Wife: you must not think Distance & long Absence has weaned in the least degree my Affections from you & my famely… I am in good health at Present through Divine goodness which I esteem the greatest worldly Blessing & especially in our Camp for I never saw a wors place to be Sick in for we have not one doctor to our whole Brigade… we fare considerably lik hogs but I desire not to Complain for I am alive & why Should a liveing man Complain. It is not all the Commisions or pay Scearcely that Induces me ware it for the Cause of freedom & love to posterity that Could have me to under go the fatigue of Such a Campaine as this… I am afrade that as the weather groes Cold I shall be Exposed…we hear that the french fleet is near the mouth of Delaware River & we hope that they will play a tune for the Regulars to dance…with a desier of prayers for me & the army in General so I Conclude with subscribing my Selfe your true & loyal Husband--- Jonth Birge.”

Examine this letter from Captain Birge in our digital archives at: https://bit.ly/4cJJcIH, and read an excerpt from his fifth letter in our post on October 20.

Map image: Attaque de l'armée des provinciaux dans Long Island du 27. aoust 1776 : dessin de l'isle de New-York et des Etats ... (showing the seat of battle during the New York Campaign and the camp at Harlem Heights) by Georges-Louis Le Rouge, 1777.

10/02/2026

Join us on Wednesday, October 14 at 6:30 p.m. as we welcome award-winning historian Denver Brunsman, Ph.D., of The George Washington University to discuss his new book, George Washington and His World, that provides a compelling, fresh portrait of George Washington. Enslaver and revolutionary, destroyer of Native American communities and father of American liberty, Washington filled numerous roles in the Founding Era. Rather than shy from these contradictions, Brunsman embraces them in explaining Washington to a twenty-first-century audience. Combining the latest historical findings with original primary research, this talk provides new understanding of Washington’s rise and influence by emphasizing the people and society who made the first president’s accomplishments possible.

Learn more & register: https://bit.ly/4j1wdGw

09/30/2026

Did the American Founding Fathers have a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit? Find out at our upcoming author’s talk next Tuesday, October 6 at 6:30 p.m., when we welcome historian Sarah M.S. Pearsall to discuss her new book, Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution, that argues that they didn’t.

Drawing from the book, Dr. Pearsall plucks keywords from the Declaration of Independence—security, happiness, respect—and finds its spark in far-flung places. In an Edinburgh club where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to women and men of all sorts. She traces how novel forms of slavery provoked a new use of the word liberty in Connecticut petitions as well as in cries of “liberty or death.” On a Kolkata street where Indians protested relentless taxes, Dr. Pearsall finds a critique of oppressive imperial government that galvanized Americans in their protests and parties against the tea of the English East India Company. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to being civilized in a brutal war.

Through the telling of the extraordinary tales of friends of liberty protesting tyranny around the world, this talk restores these individuals and movements to their rightful place in the vital story of the American Revolution and the nation it created.

Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/3TxR3mf