254 Fun Facts About American Revolution

Who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the draft in June 1776; Congress then cut about a quarter of it, including his attack on the slave trade.

Instead of 'The British are coming', what did Paul Revere reportedly warn on his ride?

The Regulars are coming out is what a sentry heard him say; most colonists still thought of themselves as British, so the famous cry would have meant little, and his mission depended on stealth.

Which treaty formally ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783?

The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783; on the same day Britain made peace with France and Spain in separate treaties signed at Versailles.

Which British act imposed a direct tax on printed materials in the American colonies?

The Stamp Act of 1765 required that newspapers, legal documents and even playing cards be produced on stamped paper from London, fuelling 'no taxation without representation'.

When Congress made George Washington commander-in-chief in 1775, what did he refuse to accept?

A salary: Washington turned down the $500 a month Congress had voted, saying he wanted no profit from the post, and asked only that his expenses be repaid from the account he kept.

Where did the Continental Army endure a harsh winter encampment from December 1777 to June 1778?

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania lay a short march from British-held Philadelphia; the winter was not unusually cold, but disease, fed by hunger and supply failures, killed nearly 2,000 of the 12,000 men.

Which document did the Second Continental Congress send to the king in July 1775, pledging loyalty while the fighting went on?

The Olive Branch Petition, adopted on July 5, 1775, begged the king to step in; George III would not even see the envoy who carried it and instead proclaimed the colonies in rebellion.

After Cornwallis's surrender the Marquis de Lafayette was hailed as 'The Hero of Two' what?

The Hero of Two Worlds, the Old and the New: back in France he became a leading voice of the revolution that broke out in 1789.

What were the German troops hired by Britain to fight in the American Revolution commonly called?

Hessians got the name because more than half of them came from Hesse-Kassel; they were not freelance mercenaries but whole regiments hired out by their princes to raise income.

Which Mohawk leader allied with the British and raided the New York frontier in the Revolution?

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) sailed to England in 1775 and was presented at court; after the war he led his followers to a British land grant on the Grand River in Ontario.

Burgoyne's 1777 campaign was meant to cut which region off from the other colonies?

New England, the hotbed of the rebellion, was to be severed from the colonies to its south by a drive on Albany; instead Burgoyne's army was surrounded and forced to surrender that October.

Despite its name, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought mainly on which nearby hill?

Breed's Hill, the lower rise closer to Boston, is where Prescott's men dug in overnight on June 16, 1775; the British took it the next day only on their third assault.

Common Sense called it absurd for a continent to be perpetually governed by what?

An island, Paine wrote, cannot rule a continent forever: 'In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet.' The pamphlet appeared anonymously in January 1776.

Benedict Arnold's treason was exposed in 1780 when militiamen found his papers hidden where on John André?

In his stocking: three militiamen who stopped André near Tarrytown searched his boots and found the plans of the fort Arnold meant to betray; André was hanged as a spy, while Arnold escaped.

In 1777, Congress commissioned the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette at which rank?

Major general was the rank Congress gave Lafayette, 19 and untested in battle; at first he had no troops to command and served on Washington's staff.

Which American general routed Banastre Tarleton's force at Cowpens in January 1781?

Daniel Morgan used his militia as bait at Cowpens, ordering two volleys and a withdrawal before his regulars and cavalry closed the trap; the battle became a textbook double envelopment.

Asked to surrender in 1779, John Paul Jones is said to have replied 'I have not yet begun to' what?

'I have not yet begun to fight' is how his lieutenant later recalled it; Jones lashed Bonhomme Richard to HMS Serapis, took her surrender, and sailed away in his prize after his own ship sank.

Which European volunteer drilled the Continental Army in 1778 and wrote its drill manual?

Baron von Steuben reached Washington's camp in February 1778 and, speaking little English, drilled a model company that then taught the rest; his 'Blue Book' became the army's manual.

Which southern city fell to the British in May 1780, costing the Patriots an entire army of some 5,000 men?

Charleston's defenders surrendered on May 12, 1780, after a six-week siege; the loss opened the Carolinas to Cornwallis.

Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga, was routed in August 1780 at which South Carolina battle?

Camden was a rout: Gates fled on horseback and rode north for three days, leaving his army behind; it wrecked his reputation, and Nathanael Greene replaced him in the South.

At which Virginia town did Cornwallis surrender on October 19, 1781?

Yorktown's surrender came without Cornwallis, who pleaded illness and sent his deputy, Charles O'Hara, to hand over the sword in his place.

Which 1774 laws answered the Boston Tea Party by closing Boston's port?

Intolerable Acts were known in Britain as the Coercive Acts; meant to isolate Boston, they instead rallied the other colonies, which called the First Continental Congress.

At which 1778 battle is 'Molly Pitcher' said to have taken her fallen husband's place at a cannon?

Monmouth was fought in fierce June heat; legend says Mary Hays carried water to the gun crews, hence 'Molly Pitcher', and took over when her husband collapsed.

Henry Knox hauled 60 tons of cannon to Boston in the winter of 1775-76 from which captured fort?

Fort Ticonderoga's guns went some 300 miles by sled over frozen rivers and mountains; once mounted on Dorchester Heights in March 1776 they forced the British to evacuate Boston.

In August 1776 William Howe outflanked Washington's army and drove it to the East River in the Battle of what?

Long Island was a clear British win, but Howe paused instead of storming the last American lines, and all 9,000 men slipped across to Manhattan by night without a single loss.

Where was the October 1780 Patriot victory that crippled Loyalist militia in the South?

At Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, frontier 'Overmountain Men' surrounded Patrick Ferguson's Loyalists on the wooded ridge and killed Ferguson himself; almost every man on the British side was American-born.

Which future president defended the British soldiers charged with murder after the Boston Massacre?

John Adams argued the soldiers had fired in self-defense and won acquittals for six of them; he later called the case one of the best pieces of service he ever rendered his country.

Roughly how many chests of tea did the Sons of Liberty dump into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773?

About 340 chests (342 by the usual count) were hacked open with axes and tipped overboard; Governor Thomas Hutchinson called it high treason.

What was Paul Revere's trade at the time of his famous midnight ride?

Silversmith Paul Revere was also an engraver: his famous print of the Boston Massacre was based on a drawing by Henry Pelham.

Washington's 1776 Christmas-night crossing of the Delaware set up an attack on which New Jersey town?

Trenton was a gamble Washington had to take: his shrunken army's enlistments were about to expire, and the dawn attack on December 26 captured most of the garrison at little cost.

Which South Carolina militia leader's guerrilla raids earned him the nickname the Swamp Fox?

Francis Marion is said to have earned the name in November 1780, when Tarleton chased him for 26 miles through the swamps and gave up, swearing the Devil himself could not catch that old fox.

The phrase 'shot heard round the world' comes from the Concord Hymn, written by which poet?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote it for the 1837 dedication of Concord's battle monument; his grandfather's house, the Old Manse, overlooks the North Bridge where the fight took place.

Which Polish 'Father of American Cavalry' was mortally wounded at Savannah in 1779?

Casimir Pulaski fled Poland after a failed uprising against Russian domination and joined Washington in 1777; he was mortally wounded leading a cavalry charge at Savannah.

Which Boston poet sent Washington a poem in 1775 and was invited to Cambridge?

Phillis Wheatley, brought to Boston enslaved as a child, sent him 'To His Excellency General Washington'; he praised her 'poetical Talents', and Thomas Paine reprinted the poem in April 1776.

Which colony was the only one of the thirteen absent from the First Continental Congress?

Georgia sent no one in 1774: the exposed frontier colony still counted on British help against Native attack; it joined the Second Continental Congress in 1775.

Which 1767 laws taxed glass, lead, paint, paper and tea imported into the colonies?

The Townshend Acts of 1767 put duties on glass, lead, paint, paper and tea; colonial boycotts forced repeal of every duty except the one on tea in 1770, setting the stage for the Boston Tea Party.

The Tea Act of 1773 was designed to rescue which struggling trading firm?

The Tea Act let the financially troubled British East India Company ship its surplus tea straight to America and undercut its rivals, above all the smuggled Dutch tea colonists had been buying.

Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts served in the Continental Army by doing what?

Disguising herself as a man, Sampson enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment in 1782 and served over a year until a fever led a Philadelphia doctor to her secret; she later won a military pension.

Which French admiral beat the Royal Navy off the Chesapeake in 1781, trapping Cornwallis?

Comte de Grasse sailed up from the West Indies; after the fight off the Virginia Capes the British fleet withdrew to New York, leaving Cornwallis blockaded with no hope of rescue by sea.

What was the Boston Tea Party originally called before its famous name caught on?

The Destruction of the Tea was the name contemporaries used; 'Boston Tea Party' did not catch on until the 1820s and 1830s, half a century after the event.

Which tea ship was the first to reach Boston in November 1773?

The Dartmouth reached Boston on November 28, 1773, the first of the three tea ships; the 20-day deadline to land its tea drove the December 16 meeting that ended with the Sons of Liberty boarding all three.

The lead from a gilded royal statue pulled down by a Manhattan crowd in July 1776 was recast as what?

Musket balls: the gilded lead statue of George III on Bowling Green was broken up, carted to a foundry at Litchfield and melted into bullets for the Continental Army.

Whom does the Declaration of Independence's list of grievances blame?

King George III is the 'He' of all 27 grievances, from dissolving legislatures to sending 'large Armies of foreign Mercenaries'; Parliament appears there only as the 'others' he combined with.

The Declaration of Independence names life, liberty and what else as 'unalienable Rights'?

The pursuit of happiness completes the trio; the text adds that governments exist to secure these rights and draw 'their just powers from the consent of the governed'.

Which of these men was NOT on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration?

Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Livingston and Sherman made up the committee.

June 14, 1775, is celebrated as the birthday of which American institution?

On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to raise ten companies of riflemen and adopt the forces besieging Boston, the date the Army counts as its birthday.

To which Virginia plantation on the Potomac did Washington go home after resigning his commission in 1783?

Mount Vernon had seen little of him in eight years of war; he reached home for Christmas 1783 meaning to stay a farmer, yet was called back in 1789 as the first president.

Which river did Burgoyne's army follow south toward Albany after leaving Lake Champlain?

The Hudson River was Burgoyne's road to Albany, but reaching it took weeks: retreating Americans felled trees across his path and wrecked bridges, slowing his army to a crawl.

Washington's Culper spy ring hid its reports from British eyes by writing them in what?

Invisible ink, known as 'sympathetic stain', let the Culper agents write between the lines of ordinary letters; they also swapped names for code numbers, with 711 for Washington.

Britain's new colonial taxes of the 1760s were meant to help pay the costs of which earlier war?

The French and Indian War, America's name for the Seven Years' War, was won at huge expense; London then kept an army in the colonies and expected the colonists to help pay for it.

Who was Britain's commander-in-chief in North America when fighting began at Lexington in 1775?

Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief in North America and military governor of Massachusetts, sent the Concord expedition on April 18, 1775; he was recalled after Bunker Hill and replaced by William Howe in October 1775.

Which Patriot leader and physician was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill?

Joseph Warren, head of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, had just been made a general but is said to have fought in the ranks; among the last to leave the redoubt, he was shot dead.

What did the Second Continental Congress call the colonies as a body before July 1776?

United Colonies of North America is the name on the July 1775 declaration on taking up arms; a year later the Declaration of Independence spoke for the 'united States of America' instead.

How many colonies were represented when the Second Continental Congress opened on May 10, 1775?

Only 12 colonies sent delegates when Congress opened on May 10, 1775; Georgia's delegation did not arrive until later that year, so all 13 were present by the Lee Resolution of June 1776.

After the Revolution, John Paul Jones became a rear admiral in the navy of which empire?

The Russian Empire's Catherine the Great made him a rear admiral; he served about two years, then went back to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life.

In which building did the First Continental Congress meet in 1774?

Carpenters' Hall, the new hall of Philadelphia's carpenters' guild, hosted the delegates from September 5 to October 26, 1774; before leaving they agreed a colonies-wide boycott of British goods.

John André, hanged as a spy in 1780, was reburied in 1821 in which great English church?

Westminster Abbey already held a monument to André, raised on George III's orders; in 1821 his remains were brought over from his grave at Tappan and buried beside it.

Which state, the last to ratify, kept the Articles of Confederation from taking effect until 1781?

Maryland refused to sign until states such as Virginia gave up their western land claims; its ratification in early 1781 finally put the Articles in force on March 1.

Why was Benjamin West's painting of the 1782 peace commissioners left unfinished?

The British envoy never sat: Richard Oswald, said to be self-conscious about his looks, was never painted, so West's canvas shows the five Americans beside an empty right-hand side.

The 1783 peace with Britain fixed the western border of the United States along which river?

Mississippi River: the treaty ran the border down the middle of the river, handing the new nation all the land east of it between Canada and Florida, far beyond the settled thirteen states.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence closed by pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred what?

Honor ends the text: 'we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor', a real risk, since the king had already proclaimed them rebels.

Which British captain led the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre?

Captain Thomas Preston commanded the eight soldiers of the 29th Regiment on King Street; his men were pelted with clubs, stones and snowballs before firing, and Preston was acquitted at his trial in October 1770.

What punishment did the two soldiers convicted of manslaughter after the Boston Massacre receive?

Branding on the thumb was the sentence after Privates Montgomery and Kilroy pleaded benefit of clergy, an old rule sparing first offenders the gallows; the other six soldiers were acquitted.

Legend says the defenders of Bunker Hill were told not to fire until they saw what?

The whites of their eyes: the order is credited to William Prescott among others and may be apocryphal, but the point was real, since the defenders were short of powder and could not waste a shot.

How many militiamen were killed at Lexington at sunrise on April 19, 1775?

Eight militiamen died and ten were wounded as Captain John Parker's company was already dispersing; nobody knows who fired first, and only one British soldier was hit.

Which king of France allied his country with the American rebels in 1778?

Louis XVI had forbidden French officers such as Lafayette to sail for America, an order Lafayette ignored; after the American victory at Saratoga, the king's ministers signed the alliance in February 1778.

Which pamphlet series opens 'These are the times that try men's souls'?

Thomas Paine's The American Crisis began with this essay in December 1776, written to rally a beaten army in retreat across New Jersey; it appeared days before the Christmas-night crossing of the Delaware.

Where did Washington resign his commission in December 1783 before riding home to Virginia in time for Christmas?

Annapolis was then the seat of Congress; told that Washington meant to give up power, George III reportedly said it would make him 'the greatest man in the world'.

In 1770s slang, what was the 'macaroni' that Yankee Doodle called his feathered cap?

A fashionable dandy: 'macaroni' was London slang for an overdressed young man, so the British verse mocks a bumpkin who thinks one feather makes him stylish; Americans adopted the song anyway.

Long before leading the Continental Army, George Washington earned his living as a teenager in which profession?

Surveyor was his first career: after his father's death he took a surveyor's licence and measured land on the Virginia frontier, then turned to farming and buying up acreage of his own.

The 1783 peace guaranteed American fishermen the right to keep working which waters?

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland were among the hardest points in the talks; Article 3 kept American boats on the cod grounds they had fished as British subjects.

What kept two of Washington's three columns from crossing the Delaware on Christmas night 1776?

River ice turned back the columns under Ewing and Cadwalader, so only Washington's own force of about 2,400 men got across, hours behind schedule, to make the attack alone.

Which future president was badly wounded in the surprise attack that followed Washington's crossing of the Delaware in 1776?

James Monroe, an 18-year-old lieutenant, was hit in the shoulder by a musket ball that cut an artery; a doctor tied it off on the spot, and Washington promoted him to captain for his bravery.

Which American general was bayoneted and mortally wounded while rallying his men at Princeton in 1777?

Hugh Mercer was cut down by British bayonets as his outnumbered brigade gave way; left for dead on the field, he was carried to a nearby house and died nine days later.

Which future vice president was at the American commander's side when he was killed assaulting Quebec in 1775?

Aaron Burr, 19, had marched through the northern wilderness with Arnold's column and been made the general's aide; his attempt to carry his fallen chief's body off through the snow made him a hero.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense appeared anonymously, its title page crediting the work to whom?

An Englishman was all the title page admitted; Paine had landed from England only about a year before, and the pamphlet became an immediate sensation with no author named.

Which frontiersman, captured by the Shawnee in 1778, escaped in time to warn his Kentucky fort of a coming attack?

Daniel Boone spent months among the Shawnee, by most accounts as the adopted son of their chief Blackfish, before slipping away; Boonesborough then held out through a siege that September.

Thomas Paine sailed for America in 1774 after being dismissed from which government job?

Tax collector Paine was dismissed from the excise service after he campaigned for higher pay; within two years he was urging Americans, in Common Sense, to break with the Crown altogether.

Which English port town did John Paul Jones raid during his 1778 campaign?

Jones landed at Whitehaven on April 23, 1778, spiked the fort's guns and tried to burn the shipping; he had begun his sailing career there at 13 as an apprentice.

In which Boston building did thousands gather on December 16, 1773, hours before the tea went into the harbor?

Old South Meeting House took the crowds Faneuil Hall could not hold: as many as 5,000 people packed it to demand that the tea ships leave, and when talks with the governor failed the harbor raid followed.

In which country was John Paul Jones born?

He was born John Paul in 1747 at Arbigland, near Kirkbean in southwest Scotland, and added 'Jones' after fleeing a killing in Tobago.

Which unit did Benedict Arnold command as a British brigadier general after defecting?

The American Legion, formed in late 1780, followed its turncoat commander on a raid into Virginia that took Richmond, and in September 1781 on the attack that burned the port of New London.

A monument on the Saratoga battlefield honours which part of Benedict Arnold without ever naming him?

His left leg was badly wounded as he led an attack there in 1777, so the memorial shows a boot and no figure of the man; its inscription honours the 'most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army' and never gives his name.

Nathanael Greene was born into a prosperous family of what religious faith?

Quaker by upbringing, Greene was put out of his meeting in 1773 and helped found the Kentish Guards militia a year later; a limp held him back there, yet by 1775 he was a general.

What Continental Army post did Nathanael Greene take up in 1778?

Quartermaster general was a desk job Greene accepted only on condition he could still lead troops in battle; he reorganised the army's supply before being sent to command in the South in 1780.

Near which modern North Carolina city was Guilford Court House fought in 1781?

Guilford Court House, fought March 15, 1781, lies within modern Greensboro; about 2,100 British defeated 4,500 Americans but lost a quarter of their force, a victory Charles James Fox called ruinous.

Henry Knox, the Continental Army's chief of artillery, ran what kind of business in Boston before the Revolution?

A bookshop: Knox left school to clerk in a Boston bookstore, later opened his own, and used its shelves to teach himself military science, artillery above all.

Which Continental general was captured in a New Jersey tavern at Basking Ridge in December 1776?

Charles Lee, Washington's second-in-command and a sharp critic of him, was seized at White's Tavern by a British cavalry patrol that included Banastre Tarleton; he was not exchanged until 1778.

Which Continental officer organized the Culper spy ring with Washington in 1778?

Benjamin Tallmadge, a young dragoon officer from Setauket, recruited the ring largely from friends in his home village and signed his own reports 'John Bolton'.

Roughly how many German auxiliaries did Britain hire to fight in America during the war?

About 30,000 is the usual round figure, and one count runs to 34,000; they came as whole regiments, hired out by the princes of several small German states to raise income.

Sybil Ludington's disputed 1777 ride was said to rally militia after the British burned which town?

Danbury, Connecticut, held army stores that William Tryon's troops destroyed in April 1777; Ludington, then 16, is said to have ridden 40 miles through the night to call out her father's militia, a story her family handed down.

Betsy Ross, credited by family legend with sewing the first American flag, earned her living in which trade?

Upholsterer Betsy Ross did make flags for Pennsylvania's navy, since her trade covered all kinds of sewing, but the first-flag story surfaced only in 1870, in a paper her grandson read to a historical society.

Ethan Allen was captured in September 1775 during a failed attempt on which city?

Montreal was the prize in Allen's rash attempt, which ended in his capture at Longue-Pointe on September 25, 1775; he spent the next two and a half years as a British prisoner, until an exchange in May 1778.

The Green Mountain Boys were formed in a disputed territory known at the time as what?

The New Hampshire Grants were lands west of the Connecticut River granted by New Hampshire but claimed by New York; the Green Mountain Boys resisted New York's authority there, and the region declared itself Vermont in 1777.

Washington's defeat at which creek on September 11, 1777, opened Howe's road to Philadelphia?

Howe's main column crossed the Brandywine upstream at unguarded fords and rolled up Washington's right on September 11, 1777; the British entered Philadelphia fifteen days later.

At Germantown, about 120 British soldiers held off Washington's assaults by barricading themselves inside what?

A stone mansion: Cliveden, home of Pennsylvania's chief justice, withstood cannon fire and every assault, and the firing in their rear unsettled the Americans who had pushed on past it.

What weather condition confused the American columns at Germantown in October 1777?

Heavy fog and battle smoke on October 4, 1777, left Washington's four converging columns unable to see each other, and Stephen's and Wayne's troops even fired on one another.

Which American general was mortally wounded leading the relief column at Oriskany?

Nicholas Herkimer, his leg shattered in the ambush at Oriskany, is said to have sat against a tree and kept directing his militia; the leg was amputated and he died ten days later.

Which Haudenosaunee nation's warriors fought alongside the Patriots at Oriskany?

Oneida warriors fought beside the Patriot militia at Oriskany while Mohawks and other nations fought for the Crown, opening a civil war inside the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

The Battle of Bennington was actually fought in which state?

New York: the fighting was at Walloomsac, about ten miles short of the Vermont town of Bennington, whose stores of horses and supplies were the raiders' target.

Which Continental general became Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law in 1780?

Philip Schuyler of Albany prepared the defence against the 1777 invasion from Canada, only to be superseded that August, before the victory; three years later his daughter Elizabeth married Hamilton.

Roughly how many soldiers did Burgoyne surrender at Saratoga in October 1777?

About 6,000 men marched out under a 'convention' promising them passage home; Congress repudiated it, and the so-called Convention Army stayed captive in America until the war ended.

The Newburgh Conspiracy of 1783 was defused when Washington addressed his officers about what?

Unpaid wages and pensions had officers talking mutiny until Washington, reaching for his spectacles, said he had grown gray and almost blind in his country's service; some wept, and the plot collapsed.

Which general proposed the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783?

Henry Knox drew up the founding document himself: a hereditary society of Continental officers named for Cincinnatus, the Roman general who went back to his plough after saving the state.

Where did the British imprison Henry Laurens, a former president of Congress captured at sea in 1780?

The Tower of London held Laurens for over a year on a charge of high treason; he was released at the end of 1781 and exchanged for Lord Cornwallis, freshly defeated in Virginia.

Which future president was slashed by a British officer's sword in 1781 for refusing to clean his boots?

Andrew Jackson, a 14-year-old militia courier taken prisoner in the Carolinas, carried the scars on his head and hand for life; both his brothers died in the war, and he never forgave the British.

Which Boston Massacre victim may have escaped slavery?

Crispus Attucks is thought to be the 'Crispas' of a 1750 runaway notice from Framingham; by tradition the first to fall when the soldiers fired, he lay in state at Faneuil Hall and was buried with the other victims.

Fishermen from which Massachusetts port rowed Washington's army from Brooklyn to Manhattan in 1776 and later across the Delaware?

Marblehead's John Glover led a regiment of fishermen and sailors, among them Black and Native American men, whose skill with boats saved the army in its night escape and again on the way to its Christmas attack.

Which state promised freedom in 1778 to enslaved men who enlisted, forming the Continental Army's 'Black Regiment'?

Rhode Island, short of recruits, voted in February 1778 that any enslaved man who enlisted would be 'absolutely free', with his owner paid his value; slaveholders had the law repealed within months.

Which riverside stronghold north of Manhattan did Anthony Wayne's men storm at night in 1779 with unloaded muskets and bayonets?

Stony Point's attackers were to make no noise: Washington had the muskets unloaded so that no stray shot could give the columns away, and each man pinned white paper to his hat to tell friend from foe in the dark.

Which 1777 night attack, remembered as a massacre, drove Anthony Wayne to demand a court-martial to clear his name?

At Paoli, Charles Grey had his men take the flints from their muskets so that no shot would betray the bayonet attack, earning him the name 'No-flint Grey'; the court-martial cleared Wayne with honour.

Against which disease did Washington order the mass inoculation of the Continental Army in 1777?

Smallpox, Washington wrote in 1777, was potentially a greater threat than 'the Sword of the Enemy'; inoculation meant giving each recruit a mild case on purpose, a real risk before vaccines existed.

How many ships of the line did de Grasse bring against Graves's 19 at the Chesapeake?

The two-hour fight followed hours of maneuvering.

Which French general landed an army at Newport in 1780 and marched it south with Washington?

Comte de Rochambeau's army of more than 5,000 sat idle at Newport for almost a year, then marched hundreds of miles with Washington's to the siege that decided the war.

Axel von Fersen, a Swedish count in French service in America, later became which queen's confidant?

Marie Antoinette's Swedish friend served through the siege that decided the war; ten years later he arranged the French royal family's failed flight to Varennes and drove their coach out of the capital himself.

Who took over her dead husband's cannon at Fort Washington in 1776 and became the first woman granted a military pension?

Margaret Corbin kept the gun firing until she was badly wounded herself; in 1779 Congress's Board of War granted her half a soldier's pay for life, and she was enrolled in the Corps of Invalids.

Which American general, Washington's second-in-command in 1781, was given the honour of receiving Cornwallis's sword?

Benjamin Lincoln had been forced to give up an army of his own the year before; when Cornwallis pleaded illness and sent his deputy with the sword, Washington waved the man on to Lincoln.

Banastre Tarleton was born in which English city?

Tarleton was born in Liverpool in 1754 to a merchant family, studied law before buying a cavalry commission in 1775, and went home after the war to sit in Parliament from 1790.

William Howe made his name in 1759 by leading troops up the cliffs to which Quebec battlefield?

Plains of Abraham: Howe's light infantry scaled the cliff at Anse-au-Foulon and cleared the guard post at the top, letting Wolfe draw up his army on the plateau; Wolfe was killed in the victory that followed.

By tradition, which tune did British bands play as Cornwallis's army gave up its arms in 1781?

The World Turned Upside Down fits the moment almost too well: no account from the day names the tune, and the story first turned up decades later in a book of anecdotes.

Besides soldiering, John Burgoyne was known for what other career?

Playwright is how 'Gentleman Johnny' finished his career: after the war he withdrew from public life to write for the stage, and his comedy The Heiress became his best-known play.

After his surrender in Virginia, Cornwallis rebuilt his career as governor-general of which British possession?

India gave Cornwallis a second career: defeat in America did him so little harm that he was sent out as governor-general, later served as lord lieutenant of Ireland, and died on a second Indian posting in 1805.

Thomas Gage and George Washington both survived which 1755 rout of General Braddock's army?

At the Battle of the Monongahela, Gage led the vanguard that first collided with the enemy while Washington rode as Braddock's aide; Braddock himself was mortally wounded.

In April 1775, Virginia's royal governor Lord Dunmore set off an uprising by having marines secretly remove what from Williamsburg?

The colony's gunpowder left the public magazine by night on April 21, 1775, two days after the first shots in Massachusetts; the uproar unravelled Dunmore's authority, and by June he had fled the capital.

Dunmore's 1775 proclamation promised freedom to enslaved people who did what?

Joined the British Army: those who did were formed into Dunmore's 'Ethiopian Regiment', reported to wear the words 'Liberty to Slaves' on their uniforms; the offer covered only people held by rebels.

Which British commander-in-chief issued the 1779 Philipsburg Proclamation, promising freedom to enslaved people who fled rebel owners?

Henry Clinton issued it from his headquarters at Philipse Manor, north of Manhattan; the same order warned that any Black soldier captured in rebel service would be sold for the benefit of his captors.

The 1776 Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge is notable as the last recorded example of what?

A Highland charge, swords in hand, took the Loyalist Scots across the bridge at dawn and straight into Patriot muskets and cannon; their leaders fell and the rest scattered.

Which colonel commanded the palmetto-log fort on Sullivan's Island in June 1776?

William Moultrie's garrison held the unfinished fort of palmetto logs and sand through a day-long bombardment on June 28, 1776; the British ships withdrew, and the fort was renamed for him.

Which American general was killed by cannon fire attacking Quebec on December 31, 1775?

Richard Montgomery attacked on the last night of 1775 because many of his men's enlistments ran out the next day; a burst of grapeshot killed him as he led the advance.

Who was the British governor defending Quebec City in December 1775?

Guy Carleton, the province's governor, got out of Montreal just before it fell to the Americans, then held Quebec City through the winter until a relief flotilla arrived on 6 May 1776.

Which Lee of the Revolution, a celebrated cavalry commander, was the father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee?

Henry Lee III, known as 'Light-Horse Harry', also wrote the eulogy that called Washington 'first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen'.

Which women's groups held public spinning bees in the 1760s to replace boycotted British cloth?

Daughters of Liberty mattered because women did the household buying: their refusal of British goods gave the boycotts teeth, and plain homespun dress became the movement's badge.

George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia in 1778 and which post in 1779?

Clark took Vincennes and its Fort Sackville on February 25, 1779, after an 18-day midwinter march through flooded country, at times shoulder-deep in icy water; Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton surrendered.

Which Kentucky city is George Rogers Clark credited with founding in 1778?

Louisville began in May 1778 as a camp on Corn Island, where Clark left the settlers who had travelled with his troops while he went on to seize the British posts to the northwest.

Which British customs schooner did colonists burn in 1772 after it ran aground in Narragansett Bay?

HMS Gaspee had been enforcing the trade laws around the bay; a party led by the Providence merchant John Brown rowed out, wounded her commander and set her alight, and no one was ever brought to trial.

Which Boston Patriot is credited as the brainchild behind the committees of correspondence?

About 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on the committees.

Which 1764 act halved the duty on foreign molasses but, unlike the old law, was strictly enforced?

The Sugar Act took the molasses duty from six pence a gallon to three, a tax merchants had dodged for thirty years; this time Grenville meant to collect it, and offenders faced juryless admiralty courts.

Which prime minister replaced George Grenville and oversaw the Stamp Act's repeal?

The Marquess of Rockingham, prime minister from July 1765, pushed the Stamp Act's repeal through Parliament in March 1766, paired with the Declaratory Act asserting Parliament's power to legislate for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever'.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 barred settlement west of which mountain range?

Appalachians: London drew the line as Pontiac's War raged, hoping to calm the frontier, but it angered colonists and land speculators who already had their eyes on the country beyond the mountains.

In Paul Revere's lantern signal of April 1775, what did two lights mean?

Troops crossing by water: the famous 'sea' was only the Charles River, which the soldiers crossed in boats to Cambridge rather than march out over Boston Neck.

Which young doctor, riding with Paul Revere, alone carried the alarm to Concord?

Samuel Prescott fell in with Revere outside Lexington; when a patrol stopped them in Lincoln he jumped his horse over a stone wall and got through, while Revere was held and lost his mount.

Which poet's 1861 work shaped the popular memory of Paul Revere's ride?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, writing on the eve of the Civil War, turned Revere into a lone rider who reaches Concord; in fact a patrol stopped him on the road and he never got there.

Which Boston church's steeple showed Paul Revere's signal lanterns?

Old North Church, opened in 1723, is the oldest church building in Boston; Robert Newman and John Pulling are each credited with hanging the lanterns, a backup in case Revere could not get out of town.

Right after taking Ticonderoga in May 1775, the Green Mountain Boys seized which lightly held fort nearby?

Fort Crown Point's handful of British soldiers gave up to Seth Warner's detachment without a fight, handing over its cannon; Arnold then sailed north to raid Fort Saint-Jean in Quebec.

When the British evacuated Boston in March 1776, where did they sail?

Howe's army and the Loyalists who chose to leave sailed from Boston to Halifax on March 17, 1776, ending an eleven-month siege; Howe came back south that summer to attack New York.

What stopped Howe's planned attack on the American guns at Dorchester Heights?

A snowstorm and high winds on the night of March 5, 1776, kept the boats carrying Howe's assault force from crossing; two days later he decided to evacuate Boston instead.

A dawn scouting clash by which Continental unit touched off the Battle of Harlem Heights in September 1776?

Knowlton's Rangers, a scouting unit under Thomas Knowlton, ran into British light infantry on the morning of September 16, 1776, in today's Morningside Heights; Knowlton was killed in the fighting that followed.

In which Pennsylvania town did Congress sit from September 1777 to June 1778?

Congress sat in York's courthouse from September 30, 1777, to June 27, 1778, after a single day at Lancaster, and adopted the Articles of Confederation there in November 1777.

The Conway Cabal aimed to replace Washington with which general?

Horatio Gates was the choice of Washington's critics in Congress and the army over the winter of 1777–78; once Conway's letter to him belittling Washington came to light, the scheme collapsed and Gates apologized.

Which September 1781 battle was the last major engagement in the Carolinas?

Eutaw Springs, fought September 8, 1781, was the last major battle in the Carolinas; Greene's men overran the British camp, where some stopped to plunder, Stewart rallied, and both sides ended up claiming the victory.

Which Patriot officer's men were cut down at Waxhaws by Tarleton's cavalry in May 1780?

Colonel Abraham Buford's Virginia Continentals were overrun at the Waxhaws on May 29, 1780; Patriots claimed Tarleton's men cut down soldiers trying to surrender, and 'Tarleton's quarter' became a byword for no mercy.

Which British officer captured Savannah in December 1778?

Archibald Campbell landed about 3,000 men and took Savannah on December 29, 1778, turning the American line by a swamp path that, the story goes, an enslaved local showed him; a Franco-American siege failed to retake it in 1779.

Light Horse Harry Lee's 1779 Paulus Hook raid struck a fort in what is now downtown where?

Paulus Hook stood on the Hudson shore of what is now downtown Jersey City; Lee's surprise attack on August 19, 1779, took over 150 prisoners, and Congress voted him a gold medal, the only one it gave an officer below general during the war.

On which body of water was the Battle of Valcour Island fought in October 1776?

Valcour Island lies in Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh; Arnold's makeshift fleet was destroyed on October 11-13, 1776, but the delay it forced pushed Carleton's advance back to 1777.

Which Philadelphia society belle married Benedict Arnold in 1779 and was later paid by the Crown for her part in his plot?

Peggy Shippen married Arnold on April 8, 1779, and he began dealing with the British soon after; in London, George III gave her £350 'for her services', and one biography calls her the war's highest-paid spy.

What role did John André hold in the British Army when he met Benedict Arnold?

Major John André was Clinton's adjutant general and head of intelligence operations, running the secret correspondence with Arnold; he was hanged as a spy at Tappan on October 2, 1780.

Which painter of the Capitol's Declaration of Independence scene was jailed in London in reprisal for Major André's hanging?

John Trumbull, studying under Benjamin West in London, was arrested in November 1780 as a former rebel officer in reprisal for André's hanging and spent seven months in prison before he was freed and went home.

Which Continental general did the enslaved James Armistead serve as courier and spy?

Armistead spied for the Marquis de Lafayette in 1781, posing as a runaway inside Arnold's and then Cornwallis's camps and feeding the British false reports; he later took the name James Armistead Lafayette.

Which Polish-born financier's $20,000 loan in 1781 helped fund the Yorktown campaign?

Haym Salomon, born in Leszno, Poland, brokered bills of exchange for Robert Morris and reportedly raised $20,000 in 1781 when Morris needed it for the Yorktown campaign; he died in debt in Philadelphia in 1785.

Which post did Congress create for Robert Morris in 1781 to rescue the Revolution's collapsing credit?

Congress made Morris Superintendent of Finance in 1781 and he served until 1784, founding the Bank of North America and backing the Yorktown campaign partly on his own credit.

Which Massachusetts writer skewered royal officials in satirical plays and in 1805 published a three-volume history of the Revolution?

Mercy Otis Warren mocked Governor Thomas Hutchinson as 'Rapatio' in plays such as The Adulateur (1772), then became one of the first to publish a history of the Revolution, and did it under her own name.

Mary Katherine Goddard's 1777 broadside of the Declaration was the first to include what?

Goddard's Baltimore broadside of January 1777 was the first printing of the Declaration to carry the names of the signers; earlier ones bore only the president's and secretary's names, and Congress had hers sent to every state.

Bernardo de Gálvez's siege of Pensacola in 1781 completed Spain's conquest of what?

Pensacola was the capital of British West Florida; when it fell to Gálvez's Spanish, French and colonial force in May 1781 after a two-month siege, Spain held the whole province, and the 1783 peace confirmed it.

Which 1782 naval action saw Rodney defeat the French fleet and save Jamaica?

At the Battle of the Saintes on April 12, 1782, Rodney's fleet broke through the French line and took the French admiral prisoner aboard his flagship Ville de Paris, ending the planned invasion of Jamaica.

Which British possession did Spain besiege for more than three years of the war without ever taking it?

Gibraltar's garrison held out from June 1779 to February 1783 and beat off the allies' floating batteries in the Grand Assault of September 1782; at the peace Spain regained Minorca but not the Rock.

Which New Jersey town sheltered Washington's army through the 'Hard Winter' of 1779–80, the worst of the war?

Morristown's Jockey Hollow held the main army that winter: the troops felled hundreds of acres of timber to build more than a thousand log huts, twelve men to each, and sat out the harshest weather of the war.

Which was the second European country to diplomatically recognize the United States, in April 1782?

The Dutch Republic recognized American independence on April 19, 1782, when the States General received John Adams as minister; he then negotiated a loan of five million guilders from Amsterdam bankers.

The Battle of Flamborough Head in 1779 was fought off the coast of which English county?

Flamborough Head juts from the Yorkshire coast into the North Sea; John Paul Jones attacked a merchant convoy's two escorts there on September 23, 1779, and won, though his own flagship sank after the fight.

The 1778 Treaty of Alliance barred either ally from doing what without the other's consent?

Making peace with Britain alone was ruled out: the treaty, signed on February 6, 1778, bound both nations not to lay down their arms until American independence was assured.

Silas Deane reached Paris first, but which envoy who followed later in 1776 became the American mission's celebrity?

Benjamin Franklin became a sensation: his face appeared on medallions, rings and snuffboxes, and fashionable women copied his fur cap in their hair; Deane, the first envoy, was recalled by Congress in December 1777.

Which French author of the Figaro plays ran covert arms shipments to the Americans?

Beaumarchais set up the front company Roderigue Hortalez & Cie in 1776, with French and Spanish crown money behind it, to ship arms, powder and clothing to the Americans, who then balked at paying for them.

What did the 1778 Carlisle Peace Commission offer the Continental Congress?

Self-rule within the Empire was the offer, with seats in Parliament thrown in, after London had already repealed the Tea Act; Congress refused to talk without independence or a British withdrawal.

John Adams expected Americans to celebrate July 2, 1776, forever, because Congress did what that day?

Voted for independence: Congress passed Richard Henry Lee's resolution on July 2 with twelve colonies in favour, and Adams predicted 'Pomp and Parade' on that date; the Declaration's wording was approved two days later.

Who alone signed the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution?

Roger Sherman of Connecticut signed the Continental Association (1774), the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution; he also proposed the Connecticut Compromise in 1787.

British customs officials seized which vessel belonging to John Hancock in 1768?

Customs officers seized the sloop Liberty, Hancock's vessel, on June 10, 1768, for allegedly landing Madeira wine without paying duty; the seizure set off a riot, and the smuggling case against Hancock was later dropped.

Which Irish-born secretary served the Continental Congress for its entire existence?

Charles Thomson, born in County Londonderry, kept Congress's records from 1774 to 1789, helped design the Great Seal, and in April 1789 travelled to Virginia to tell Washington he had been elected president.

Which group first called the State House Bell the 'Liberty Bell'?

Abolitionists adopted the bell as a symbol, and an 1835 anti-slavery publication first called it the 'Liberty Bell'; its link to July 1776 was invented in George Lippard's 1847 story.

Which two local workmen recast the Liberty Bell, leaving their names on it?

Philadelphia founders John Pass and John Stow recast the cracked bell twice in 1753 and stamped 'PASS AND STOW' on it; the original had been cast in London by Lester and Pack at the Whitechapel Foundry.

Which yellow 1775 flag shows a coiled rattlesnake above the words 'Dont Tread on Me'?

The Gadsden flag is named for Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, who designed it and gave it to Commodore Esek Hopkins; it flew from the mainmast of his flagship Alfred in December 1775.

The Continental Colours of 1775 paired thirteen stripes with what in the canton?

The Continental Colours, or Grand Union Flag, set the British Union Flag over thirteen red and white stripes, a variant of the British Red Ensign often read as professing loyalty to the king while proclaiming colonial union.

Congress's 1777 Flag Resolution said the thirteen stars on a blue field represented what?

'A new constellation' is the resolution's own phrase, passed on June 14, 1777; it never said how the stars should be placed, so early flags set them in rows, circles and other patterns.

'Yankee Doodle' is the official state song of which state?

Connecticut claims 'Yankee Doodle' as its state song; British officers first sang it to mock ragged colonial troops, but American soldiers took it up, added verses of their own and made it a song of national pride.

Washington's Badge of Military Merit of 1782 was later reborn as which decoration?

The Purple Heart revived Washington's 1782 Badge of Military Merit, a purple cloth heart known to have gone to just three soldiers; General Douglas MacArthur brought it back in 1932 for the bicentennial of Washington's birth.

On what date in 1783 did the British finally evacuate Manhattan?

The last British troops left Manhattan on November 25, 1783, celebrated for over a century as Evacuation Day; Washington and Governor Clinton then rode down to the Battery as the flag went up.

At which New York establishment did Washington bid farewell to his officers in 1783?

Washington took leave of his officers in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern on December 4, 1783, nine days after the British left the city, embracing each in turn before setting off to resign his commission.

From 1779 to 1782 John Jay served as American minister to which country?

Jay spent 1779 to 1782 in Madrid as minister to Spain but was never formally received; Spain refused recognition and an alliance, giving only a small loan, before Jay moved on to the Paris peace talks.

Which act of late 1775 cut off all trade with the colonies and imposed a blockade?

The Prohibitory Act of late 1775 banned all trade with the colonies and treated their ships as those of open enemies; in effect a declaration of war, it was the last straw for John Adams.

Colonial anger over the Quartering Acts led directly to which part of the Bill of Rights?

The Third Amendment bars quartering soldiers in homes without the owner's consent in peacetime; the 1765 act had named barracks, inns and alehouses as billets, and when New York's assembly refused to comply, Parliament moved to suspend it.

When Boston's port was closed in June 1774, Massachusetts's seat of government moved to which town?

Salem took over as the seat of government in June 1774; that month, behind locked doors, the assembly there chose its delegates to a continental congress before the governor could dissolve it.

When did the label 'Intolerable Acts' for the 1774 laws first come into use?

Contemporaries in Britain and America called them the Coercive Acts.

Which British general was shot by Morgan's riflemen at Bemis Heights on October 7, 1777?

Simon Fraser was directing the British line at Bemis Heights when a rifleman of Morgan's corps, by tradition Timothy Murphy, shot him down; his fall helped turn the battle, and Burgoyne surrendered ten days later.

Which of Washington's aides-de-camp led the bayonet assault on Redoubt 10 during the war's last great siege?

Alexander Hamilton, Washington's aide for four years, finally won a field command in 1781 and took Redoubt 10 at night with bayonets alone, so that no stray shot would give the attack away.

Which general's 1809 toast gave New Hampshire its motto, 'Live Free or Die'?

John Stark, too ill at 80 to attend a reunion of Bennington veterans, sent them the toast 'Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils'; New Hampshire made it the state motto in 1945.

Von Steuben once served as aide-de-camp to which monarch?

Steuben became an aide-de-camp to Frederick II of Prussia but left the army a mere captain; the letter that introduced him to Congress styled him a lieutenant general, a rank he had never held.

Which fortifications did Thaddeus Kosciuszko design and oversee in New York?

West Point's forts and river defences occupied Kosciuszko from March 1778 to 1780; the Polish engineer's work was widely praised, and Washington then granted his request to join the Southern army.

Who is credited with telling the Virginia Convention in March 1775, 'Give me liberty, or give me death'?

Patrick Henry spoke at St. John's Church in Richmond on March 23, 1775, urging Virginia to arm; no transcript survives, and the famous words come from William Wirt's reconstruction, published in 1817.

Which South Carolina partisan was nicknamed the 'Fighting Gamecock'?

Thomas Sumter took up partisan war after Tarleton's raiders burned his home in 1780; his 'Gamecock' nickname lives on in the University of South Carolina's teams, and Fort Sumter was named for him.

Whose outsized signature on the Declaration of Independence made his name American slang for a signature?

John Hancock, presiding over Congress, signed first and in letters far larger than anyone else's; the story goes that he wanted the king to be able to read his name without spectacles.

Patrick Henry first rose to prominence by winning which court case?

Henry's fiery speech in the Parson's Cause at Hanover Courthouse in December 1763 persuaded the jury to award the plaintiff clergyman one penny in damages, making his name; he had become a lawyer through self-study.

The Book of Negroes listed about 3,000 Black Loyalists leaving New York in 1783, most of them bound for where?

The Book of Negroes, compiled in New York in 1783 as the British prepared to leave, listed some 3,000 Black Loyalists, most of them shipped to Nova Scotia; about 1,200 later sailed on to Sierra Leone in 1792.

Jane McCrea, whose 1777 killing fueled anti-British propaganda, was engaged to what kind of man?

A Loyalist officer, David Jones of Burgoyne's army, was her fiancé; she died near Fort Edward in July 1777 while in the hands of warriors allied to the British, in circumstances the accounts dispute, and Patriots made her a martyr.

What was Nathan Hale's occupation before he joined the Continental Army?

Schoolteacher Hale taught in East Haddam and New London after Yale; in 1776 he volunteered to gather intelligence behind British lines in New York, was caught and was hanged at 21.

Which Massachusetts militia volunteers took extra drill in 1775 to turn out first?

Minutemen were volunteers drawn from the town militia, mostly its younger men, pledged to be ready at a minute's warning; they were among the first to fight when war came in April 1775.

What kind of tree was Boston's famous Liberty Tree?

The Liberty Tree was a great elm near Boston Common where Patriots hung their first protest effigies in August 1765; Loyalists cut it down ten years later, during the siege of the town.

The effigy hung from Boston's Liberty Tree in August 1765 mocked the man newly named to which post?

Stamp distributor Andrew Oliver saw his effigy, tagged 'A. O.', swing from the tree on August 14, 1765; that night a crowd wrecked his property, and he gave up the commission without ever issuing a stamp.

Which Virginia planter wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, weeks before the national Declaration echoed it?

George Mason's draft, adopted by Virginia's convention on June 12, 1776, was widely copied by the other states and became the basis of the Bill of Rights.

The 1778 Battle of Wyoming was fought in a valley of which present-day state?

Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, around modern Wilkes-Barre, saw Loyalists and Iroquois rout the settlers on July 3, 1778; Thomas Campbell's poem 'Gertrude of Wyoming' made the name famous long before a western state borrowed it.

Legend has which 57-year-old farmer-general leaving his plough in the field to ride for Boston when war broke out?

Israel Putnam, 'Old Put' to his men, was a Connecticut veteran of Rogers' Rangers; the story has him leaving the plough where it stood and riding a hundred miles to reach Cambridge the next day.

Which settlement in Britain's Maritime colonies became a main home for Black Loyalists after 1783?

Birchtown, beside the Loyalist port of Shelburne, was founded in 1783 and became the largest settlement of Black Loyalists; its name honours Samuel Birch, the British general who signed their certificates of freedom.

In a famous March 1776 letter, Abigail Adams urged her husband John and Congress to 'remember' whom?

Abigail's March 31, 1776 letter asked John to 'remember the ladies' in the new code of laws, warning that 'all Men would be tyrants if they could' and that husbands should not hold unlimited power.

Which 1774 act guaranteed Catholic worship and pushed a province's borders south to the Ohio country?

The Quebec Act of 1774 guaranteed Catholic worship and French civil law in Quebec and extended the province to the Ohio River; colonists lumped it with the Coercive Acts, fearing a model for rule without elected assemblies.

Runaway inflation in the Revolution's currency gave rise to which dismissive phrase?

'Not worth a continental' mocked the paper dollars Congress printed without solid backing to pay for the war; they lost value fast, and a rise in counterfeit notes dragged them down further.

At the 1780 Battle of Springfield, chaplain James Caldwell is said to have given the gunners what for wadding?

Hymn books by Isaac Watts are what the story has Caldwell carrying out to the guns with the cry 'Give 'em Watts, boys!'; his wife Hannah had been shot dead at Connecticut Farms about two weeks earlier.

Peter Salem, a formerly enslaved militiaman, is traditionally credited with fatally shooting which British officer at Bunker Hill?

Salem is traditionally credited with the shot that mortally wounded Major John Pitcairn as the Marines stormed the redoubt on June 17, 1775; his owner Lawson Buckminster had freed him to enlist, and he served about five years.

Britain's national debt nearly doubled during which 1754–63 war, pushing Parliament to tax its American colonies?

After the French and Indian War, Britain kept about 10,000 regulars in America, and ministers wanted the colonists to help pay for them.

Besides newspapers and legal papers, Parliament's hated 1765 colonial tax applied to which pair of gaming items?

Playing cards and dice each had to carry the official tax mark: a pack of cards cost an extra shilling and dice ten shillings, payable in scarce British coin.

The tea thrown into the harbor at the Boston Tea Party in 1773 had been grown in which country?

China was where Europe's trading companies bought their tea, and the commonest kind, Bohea, sold legally in the colonies for about three shillings a pound.

The Tea Act of 1773, which provoked the Boston Tea Party, did what to the price of legal tea in the colonies?

The act lowered it below what smugglers charged, but colonists saw a trap: buying the bargain tea meant accepting Parliament's duty of three pence a pound.

Before the Boston Massacre shots of March 1770, the crowd pelted British soldiers with clubs, stones and what?

Snowballs and taunts of 'Fire!' flew at the soldiers before they shot; three colonists died on the spot and two more later from their wounds.

Which mob punishment did Boston customs official John Malcolm suffer twice within three months in 1773 and 1774?

Tarring and feathering left Malcolm stripped to the waist and coated in hot tar; the crowd then made him drink huge amounts of tea while toasting the king.

Which economic system behind Britain's colonial trade laws did Adam Smith attack in The Wealth of Nations in 1776?

Mercantilism barred the colonies from trading freely with other European powers, and its bans on smuggling were a major irritant on the way to revolution.

Which Odawa leader's 1763 siege of Fort Detroit began the uprising that pushed Britain to close the West to settlers?

Pontiac kept the fort surrounded from May to October, and the Proclamation of 1763 was rushed out as soon as news of the rising reached London.

Which philosopher's phrase 'a long train of abuses' reappears word for word in the Declaration of Independence?

John Locke used it in his Second Treatise, and most scholars also trace 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' to his theory of rights.

Which phrase, coined by Edmund Burke in 1775, describes Britain's long habit of barely enforcing colonial trade laws?

Salutary neglect ended after 1763, when Britain began enforcing stricter rules and even blocking laws passed by colonial legislatures.

Which general search warrants let customs officers enter any colonial building to hunt for smuggled goods?

Writs of assistance could even be handed from one holder to another, and the anger they caused later inspired the Fourth Amendment's ban on general searches.

On the day in 1766 it scrapped its hated colonial tax, Parliament passed which act claiming full power over America?

The Declaratory Act was copied almost word for word from a 1719 law that had bound Ireland to the Crown, a hint of the fate in store for the colonies.

Which lawyer posed as a humble farmer in twelve letters of 1767–68 attacking Parliament's new import duties?

John Dickinson became known as the 'Penman of the Revolution', yet he refused to sign the Declaration and left Congress to join the militia.

Which prime minister, in office from 1770 to 1782, is remembered in Britain as the man 'who lost America'?

Lord North took the news of Cornwallis's surrender 'as he would have taken a ball in his breast' and resigned in March 1782.

Colonial merchants accused of smuggling in the 1760s could be tried in vice-admiralty courts, which sat without what?

A jury was reserved for Britons: people in Britain charged under the same trade laws faced jurors, while the colonial accused had to prove their innocence.

Which Massachusetts lieutenant governor's Boston mansion was ransacked by a crowd protesting a new tax in August 1765?

Thomas Hutchinson and his family narrowly escaped; the crowd tore down even the cupola and scattered the manuscripts he had gathered for a history of the colony.

Which laws, begun under Oliver Cromwell, went largely unenforced in the colonies for decades under Robert Walpole?

The Navigation Acts required trade between Britain and its colonies to travel on English ships; Walpole reasoned that colonies left without restrictions would flourish.

The Massachusetts Government Act of 1774 banned which New England gatherings unless the royal governor consented?

Town meetings were the key instrument of local rule, and Parliament complained that they had been 'misled' into passing 'dangerous and unwarrantable resolves'.

Which Boston lawyer, credited with coining 'taxation without representation is tyranny', died by lightning in 1783?

James Otis made his name in 1761, when he argued for nearly five hours in the State House against the open-ended warrants used by customs men.

The 1754 'Join, or Die' cartoon, revived in the 1765 tax protests, shows what creature chopped into labeled pieces?

A snake suited a superstition of the day: a serpent cut in pieces was said to come back to life if the parts were joined again before sunset.

A gilded statue of King George III, toppled in Manhattan in 1776, is said to have been melted down into what?

Bullets, 42,088 of them by tradition, were cast from the two-ton lead statue, pulled down on the day the new Declaration was read aloud to the troops.

After the 1773 tea protests, drinking tea came to seem unpatriotic and Americans shifted to which hot drink instead?

Coffee became the preferred hot drink; one traveller in 1774 was told by his landlady that she had renounced all tea but would make him coffee.

The Pennsylvania State House, where the Second Continental Congress first met in May 1775, is better known by what name?

Independence Hall later hosted the 1787 convention too, so the Declaration and the Constitution were both signed in its Assembly Room.

The molasses taxed under the 1764 Sugar Act was the raw ingredient of which spirit distilled across New England?

Rum makers had lived by dodging the older molasses duty: had it actually been collected, it would have destroyed much of their industry.

Loyalists, also called Royalists or King's Men, were often known by the name of which British political party?

Tories faced opponents who borrowed a party name too: after 1768 critics of British policy called themselves Whigs, after the British party that shared their views.

Which 1754 scheme to unite the colonies under a Crown-appointed President-General did the colonial assemblies reject?

The Albany Plan died because the assemblies distrusted any central taxing authority, yet it became a forerunner of the Articles of Confederation.

A November 1773 mass meeting about the tea ships outgrew which Boston venue and moved to Old South Meeting House?

Faneuil Hall, a market building a merchant offered to the town in 1740, hosted so many Patriot speeches that it was nicknamed the Cradle of Liberty.

In which Virginia city did Patrick Henry deliver his 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' speech in March 1775?

Richmond's St. John's Church hosted the convention, but no text survives: the famous words were reconstructed over 40 years later from old men's memories.

The 700 British regulars who left Boston on the night of April 18, 1775, had secret orders to destroy what at Concord?

Stored military supplies were the target, but the townspeople had been warned and hid most of them, so the troops turned back after a largely fruitless search.

The Boston Port Act of 1774 closed the harbor to all cargo until the town did what?

Until Boston paid for the dumped tea and repaid the Treasury its lost customs duty, nothing could be landed or shipped. Delegates from the colonies met in congress that September to answer the law.

Which rider left Boston by the land route over Boston Neck on the night of Paul Revere's famous April 1775 ride?

William Dawes slipped out just before the British sealed off the town, and a young local physician later joined him and Revere on the road.

The 1774 Administration of Justice Act let accused royal officials be tried in Britain, earning which colonial nickname?

The Murder Act got its name because colonists believed that officials sent to a friendlier court could get away with capital crimes.

Which boycott pact did colonial delegates adopt in October 1774, banning British imports from the following December 1?

The Continental Association opened with a pledge of loyalty to the king, even as it cut off trade with his merchants.

Which Delaware delegate rode overnight through a thunderstorm to break his colony's tie in the vote to leave Britain?

Caesar Rodney arrived 'in his boots and spurs' just as the voting began, settling a delegation split between one supporter and one opponent.

Which captain, hoarse from tuberculosis, lined up the Lexington militia on the town common at dawn on April 19, 1775?

John Parker's remembered order is carved in stone there: 'Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.'

Which delegate's plan to keep the colonies in the British Empire was shelved six votes to five by Congress in 1774?

Joseph Galloway drifted into Loyalism after the defeat and from 1778 lived in Britain, where he advised the government on the rebellion.

Four months before Lexington, Paul Revere rode to warn which port, where militia then stormed Fort William and Mary?

Portsmouth's raiders carried off about 100 barrels of gunpowder, hauled down the fort's British flag and stomped on it.

Which Boston physician, the Continental Army's first chief doctor, was convicted in 1775 of spying for the British?

Benjamin Church was caught when a cipher letter he sent into Boston through a former mistress was intercepted by another of her ex-lovers.

In the 'one if by land, two if by sea' signal of April 1775, 'sea' meant British troops crossing which river?

The Charles was Revere's own way out too: he was rowed across it, slipping past the Royal Navy warship HMS Somerset at anchor.

If barracks ran short, the 1765 Quartering Act told colonies to lodge British troops in which premises next?

Inns and alehouses came first, then empty houses and barns; the act's text never sent soldiers into occupied private homes, whatever later legend said.