Trace God’s hand in America’s story—one day at a time.
We’re counting down to America’s 250th birthday with 250 days of faith-filled stories! Follow along from October 28, 2025, through July 4, 2026, as we remember how freedom was forged and give thanks for the liberty we still enjoy under God.
Explore real accounts of courage, freedom, and Providence that shaped our nation’s history. Each story takes about 90 seconds to read and points to God’s hand in the founding of America.
There were many memorable events in the years leading up to the American Revolution—the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, the “shots heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord, and the harsh Intolerable Acts imposed by a distant Parliament.
The winter of 1775 seemed almost calm by comparison. Boston lay under martial law, yet both armies stood at a tense standoff. It was a season of prayer, perseverance, and Providence, as a ragtag army of colonials prepared to face the most powerful empire on earth.
And within that quiet tension, stories of real men and women began to unfold—ordinary people shaped by hardship, guided by hope, and sustained by faith.
Instructions: Click the accordion folders below to view the day-by-day calendar. Then click any Q and A section to read the full story.
250-Day Calendar
October 28, 1775
The Papers That Sank Peace
October 28, 1775 – The Papers That Sank Peace
A wrecked British transport off New Jersey exposed secret orders to arm Loyalists, and with them, the first clear signs that peace with Britain was slipping away.
Only months earlier, Congress had sent the Olive Branch Petition to King George III, pleading for peace and a restoration of the liberties the colonies had long enjoyed. After the “shot heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord, the British had seized control of Boston, calling it a hotbed of rebellion. They imposed martial law and fortified the city, setting in motion what would later be called the Siege of Boston.
When General George Washington took command of the Continental Army on July 3, he found the British bottled up in Boston and American forces encamped in a ragged semicircle around the city. The stalemate dragged on for months—neither side strong enough to strike the other decisively.
Then, in late October, a British transport called the Blue Mountain Valley ran aground off the coast of New Jersey while bound for Boston. Local militia boarded the wreck, seizing its passengers, a cargo of arms and uniforms, and dispatches from General Thomas Gage. Among the papers were secret instructions to raise Loyalist regiments and suppress “rebellious subjects” throughout the colonies—proof that the war would soon reach beyond New England.
When Congress examined the evidence, the mood shifted. On October 28, it ordered the captured officers confined and quietly authorized new defenses along the Hudson River, where another front might soon open. The sea itself had exposed what diplomacy could no longer conceal: Britain was arming Americans against Americans.
For delegates still clinging to the hope of peace, the discovery was sobering. For others, it confirmed what they already feared—that reconciliation was slipping away, and independence was becoming the only viable option. Some called it providential that the tide had cast those papers ashore, revealing the truth just as Congress stood between petition and revolution.
Source: Journals of Congress (October 28, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Siege of Boston; Loyalty or Independence
Tags: Washington, Congress, Loyalists, Olive Branch Petition, 1775
October 28, 1775 – The Papers That Sank Peace
A wrecked British transport off New Jersey exposed secret orders to arm Loyalists, and with them, the first clear signs that peace with Britain was slipping away.
Only months earlier, Congress had sent the Olive Branch Petition to King George III, pleading for peace and a restoration of the liberties the colonies had long enjoyed. After the “shot heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord, the British had seized control of Boston, calling it a hotbed of rebellion. They imposed martial law and fortified the city, setting in motion what would later be called the Siege of Boston.
When General George Washington took command of the Continental Army on July 3, he found the British bottled up in Boston and American forces encamped in a ragged semicircle around the city. The stalemate dragged on for months—neither side strong enough to strike the other decisively.
Then, in late October, a British transport called the Blue Mountain Valley ran aground off the coast of New Jersey while bound for Boston. Local militia boarded the wreck, seizing its passengers, a cargo of arms and uniforms, and dispatches from General Thomas Gage. Among the papers were secret instructions to raise Loyalist regiments and suppress “rebellious subjects” throughout the colonies—proof that the war would soon reach beyond New England.
When Congress examined the evidence, the mood shifted. On October 28, it ordered the captured officers confined and quietly authorized new defenses along the Hudson River, where another front might soon open. The sea itself had exposed what diplomacy could no longer conceal: Britain was arming Americans against Americans.
For delegates still clinging to the hope of peace, the discovery was sobering. For others, it confirmed what they already feared—that reconciliation was slipping away, and independence was becoming the only viable option. Some called it providential that the tide had cast those papers ashore, revealing the truth just as Congress stood between petition and revolution.
Source: Journals of Congress (October 28, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Siege of Boston; Loyalty or Independence
Tags: Washington, Congress, Loyalists, Olive Branch Petition, 1775
October 29, 1775
A Sunday Under Siege
October 29, 1775 – A Sunday Under Siege
Amid occupation and fear, the Sabbath became a quiet act of resistance.
Sunday dawned gray and still over the city of Boston, its church bells muffled by the distant sounds of hammers and marching boots. Inside the occupied town, red-coated soldiers paced their posts while families dressed for worship, careful to keep their heads low and their words lower still. In some houses, British Redcoats were quartered in the very next room, an ever-present reminder of the uneasy stalemate between conqueror and captive.
Nearly half the city’s residents had fled months earlier, but those who remained lived under British martial law—watched, questioned, and rationed. The soldiers called it keeping order. The townspeople called it endurance. Outside the city, rumors stirred: a British transport had wrecked on the Jersey coast, its captured papers revealing plans to raise Loyalist forces across the colonies. The rumors reached Boston’s ears like distant thunder, a sign that the war was widening.
In the pulpits beyond the city walls, ministers of the so-called Black Robed Regiment preached messages of repentance, courage, and steadfast faith. Those still in Boston spoke cautiously, watched by the army of occupation. Yet even here, in whispers and prayers, the same hope lived on: that freedom, though distant, was still within sight.
Beyond the city, the Continental Army’s encampments ringed the hills, their campfires flickering like watchlights in the distance. From the steeples, townsfolk could glimpse the rebel fortifications on Breed’s Hill and Dorchester, and sometimes, on the wind, the faint sound of fifes and drums.
For those inside Boston, it was a Sunday like every other since the shooting began: a day of prayer beneath occupation, of quiet courage in the face of bayonets, and of faith that the day of deliverance would come. Even under siege, faith refused surrender, turning every whispered prayer into a declaration of hope.
Primary background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Additional background: Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Siege of Boston
Tags: Boston, Black Robed Regiment, Continental Army, Faith, Occupation, 1775
October 29, 1775 – A Sunday Under Siege
Amid occupation and fear, the Sabbath became a quiet act of resistance.
Sunday dawned gray and still over the city of Boston, its church bells muffled by the distant sounds of hammers and marching boots. Inside the occupied town, red-coated soldiers paced their posts while families dressed for worship, careful to keep their heads low and their words lower still. In some houses, British Redcoats were quartered in the very next room, an ever-present reminder of the uneasy stalemate between conqueror and captive.
Nearly half the city’s residents had fled months earlier, but those who remained lived under British martial law—watched, questioned, and rationed. The soldiers called it keeping order. The townspeople called it endurance. Outside the city, rumors stirred: a British transport had wrecked on the Jersey coast, its captured papers revealing plans to raise Loyalist forces across the colonies. The rumors reached Boston’s ears like distant thunder, a sign that the war was widening.
In the pulpits beyond the city walls, ministers of the so-called Black Robed Regiment preached messages of repentance, courage, and steadfast faith. Those still in Boston spoke cautiously, watched by the army of occupation. Yet even here, in whispers and prayers, the same hope lived on: that freedom, though distant, was still within sight.
Beyond the city, the Continental Army’s encampments ringed the hills, their campfires flickering like watchlights in the distance. From the steeples, townsfolk could glimpse the rebel fortifications on Breed’s Hill and Dorchester, and sometimes, on the wind, the faint sound of fifes and drums.
For those inside Boston, it was a Sunday like every other since the shooting began: a day of prayer beneath occupation, of quiet courage in the face of bayonets, and of faith that the day of deliverance would come. Even under siege, faith refused surrender, turning every whispered prayer into a declaration of hope.
Primary background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Additional background: Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Siege of Boston
Tags: Boston, Black Robed Regiment, Continental Army, Faith, Occupation, 1775
October 30, 1775
Hannah Winthrop’s Window
October 30, 1775 – Hannah Winthrop’s Window
A war had come to her doorstep—and she found faith enough to endure it.
From her home in Cambridge, Hannah Winthrop could look across the river toward Boston and see the city she once loved now filled with soldiers, smoke, and fear. The British had turned her husband’s college into barracks and her quiet street into a garrison town. Harvard’s halls echoed not with scholars’ voices but with marching boots.
Hannah’s husband was Professor John Winthrop, a noted astronomer whose lectures had once drawn the colony’s brightest minds. He was also a direct descendant of Governor John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Like his forefather, he believed that knowledge and faith must walk hand in hand—that the heavens declared God’s order as clearly as Scripture proclaimed His truth. When the British advanced, Professor Winthrop helped evacuate the college’s instruments and library to Concord, then continued his scientific work at Princeton under the protection of the Continental Army.
For both the professor and his wife, scholarship had become exile, and home a memory. Yet Hannah’s heart remained fixed on the home they had left behind. Her letters, written that autumn, described the cost of war not in battles but in daily displacements—the uprooted families, the silence of closed churches, and the ache of separation from friends now trapped within Boston’s lines.
She wrote of the soldiers’ tents that “whiten our fields” and the daily prayers of those who “tremble for the event.” From her window she could see both the encampments of the Continental Army and, far in the distance, the spires of the city still held by British troops. Between them lay the frozen uncertainty of an unfinished struggle.
In her faith and her words, Hannah Winthrop gave voice to the women of New England who watched, waited, and bore the quiet burdens of revolution. Through the eyes of a faithful witness, even waiting became an act of courage.
Source: Letters of Hannah Winthrop to Mercy Otis Warren (1775–1776)
Additional background: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, Vol. I (1848); John Winthrop, “Lecture on the Transit of Venus” (1769).
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Women of Faith
Tags: Hannah Winthrop, Mercy Otis Warren, Cambridge, Harvard College, Siege of Boston, 1775
October 30, 1775 – Hannah Winthrop’s Window
A war had come to her doorstep—and she found faith enough to endure it.
From her home in Cambridge, Hannah Winthrop could look across the river toward Boston and see the city she once loved now filled with soldiers, smoke, and fear. The British had turned her husband’s college into barracks and her quiet street into a garrison town. Harvard’s halls echoed not with scholars’ voices but with marching boots.
Hannah’s husband was Professor John Winthrop, a noted astronomer whose lectures had once drawn the colony’s brightest minds. He was also a direct descendant of Governor John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Like his forefather, he believed that knowledge and faith must walk hand in hand—that the heavens declared God’s order as clearly as Scripture proclaimed His truth. When the British advanced, Professor Winthrop helped evacuate the college’s instruments and library to Concord, then continued his scientific work at Princeton under the protection of the Continental Army.
For both the professor and his wife, scholarship had become exile, and home a memory. Yet Hannah’s heart remained fixed on the home they had left behind. Her letters, written that autumn, described the cost of war not in battles but in daily displacements—the uprooted families, the silence of closed churches, and the ache of separation from friends now trapped within Boston’s lines.
She wrote of the soldiers’ tents that “whiten our fields” and the daily prayers of those who “tremble for the event.” From her window she could see both the encampments of the Continental Army and, far in the distance, the spires of the city still held by British troops. Between them lay the frozen uncertainty of an unfinished struggle.
In her faith and her words, Hannah Winthrop gave voice to the women of New England who watched, waited, and bore the quiet burdens of revolution. Through the eyes of a faithful witness, even waiting became an act of courage.
Source: Letters of Hannah Winthrop to Mercy Otis Warren (1775–1776)
Additional background: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, Vol. I (1848); John Winthrop, “Lecture on the Transit of Venus” (1769).
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Women of Faith
Tags: Hannah Winthrop, Mercy Otis Warren, Cambridge, Harvard College, Siege of Boston, 1775
October 31, 1775
The First Frost
October 31, 1775 – The First Frost
The first frost came to Boston’s hills—and with it, the quiet testing of faith.
The first frost had come to the hills around Boston. Canvas tents shone pale in the dawn light, their edges stiff with ice. In the makeshift huts and trenches of the Continental Army, men stirred to the cold reality of another day of waiting. Frost rimed their blankets; thin smoke rose from green wood fires. From every quarter, the low murmur of prayer and resolve mingled with the creak of frozen leather.
The Siege of Boston had stretched for more than six months. Food and firewood were scarce, powder scarcer still. Many soldiers’ enlistments would expire at the year’s end, and few were eager to reenlist without pay or proper clothing. Yet from his headquarters in Cambridge, General George Washington pressed on, writing letters, inspecting fortifications, and pleading with Congress for men, money, and munitions.
Only a few weeks before, Washington’s army had discovered its powder stores held barely enough for nine cartridges per man—a revelation so alarming that he ordered the shortage kept secret lest panic spread through the ranks.
“We are in a peculiar, distressing situation,” he wrote to Congress. “The army is without powder, and no certainty of a supply.” Small shipments arrived from New York and Connecticut, and a few barrels were captured from British supply ships, but the danger remained constant. When the worst had passed, Washington said the crisis had been averted by “the favor of Providence,” yet he knew the situation was not fully resolved. He urged his officers to keep faith as well as discipline, reminding them that courage alone could not sustain the cause without the blessing of Heaven.
Washington worried about morale as much as he did muskets. His soldiers were farmers far from home, watching their fields go untended while the war idled before them. The enemy was near, yet the battle refused to come.
Still, the camps held. Men patched their clothes, mended fences, and kept their muskets dry. Beyond the harbor, the redcoats waited too. Between them lay the silent space of a frozen stalemate, the stillness before a storm that would not break until spring. Yet beneath the frost, faith endured—the belief that Providence, having carried them this far, would not desert their cause now.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vols. 3–4, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Themes: Faith and Providence; Siege of Boston
Tags: Washington, Cambridge, Continental Army, Gunpowder Shortage, Providence, 1775
October 31, 1775 – The First Frost
The first frost came to Boston’s hills—and with it, the quiet testing of faith.
The first frost had come to the hills around Boston. Canvas tents shone pale in the dawn light, their edges stiff with ice. In the makeshift huts and trenches of the Continental Army, men stirred to the cold reality of another day of waiting. Frost rimed their blankets; thin smoke rose from green wood fires. From every quarter, the low murmur of prayer and resolve mingled with the creak of frozen leather.
The Siege of Boston had stretched for more than six months. Food and firewood were scarce, powder scarcer still. Many soldiers’ enlistments would expire at the year’s end, and few were eager to reenlist without pay or proper clothing. Yet from his headquarters in Cambridge, General George Washington pressed on, writing letters, inspecting fortifications, and pleading with Congress for men, money, and munitions.
Only a few weeks before, Washington’s army had discovered its powder stores held barely enough for nine cartridges per man—a revelation so alarming that he ordered the shortage kept secret lest panic spread through the ranks.
“We are in a peculiar, distressing situation,” he wrote to Congress. “The army is without powder, and no certainty of a supply.” Small shipments arrived from New York and Connecticut, and a few barrels were captured from British supply ships, but the danger remained constant. When the worst had passed, Washington said the crisis had been averted by “the favor of Providence,” yet he knew the situation was not fully resolved. He urged his officers to keep faith as well as discipline, reminding them that courage alone could not sustain the cause without the blessing of Heaven.
Washington worried about morale as much as he did muskets. His soldiers were farmers far from home, watching their fields go untended while the war idled before them. The enemy was near, yet the battle refused to come.
Still, the camps held. Men patched their clothes, mended fences, and kept their muskets dry. Beyond the harbor, the redcoats waited too. Between them lay the silent space of a frozen stalemate, the stillness before a storm that would not break until spring. Yet beneath the frost, faith endured—the belief that Providence, having carried them this far, would not desert their cause now.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vols. 3–4, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Themes: Faith and Providence; Siege of Boston
Tags: Washington, Cambridge, Continental Army, Gunpowder Shortage, Providence, 1775
November 1, 1775
Hope from the North
November 1, 1775 – Hope from the North
A hard-won victory in Canada gave Congress its first clear glimpse of hope.
In Philadelphia, the delegates of the Continental Congress read new letters from the northern army. General Richard Montgomery, advancing through the waterways of Canada, reported that Fort St. John’s was on the brink of surrender. Soon the road to Montreal would open—a moment that promised the first clear victory of the war.
The campaign had been long and bitter. Montgomery’s troops slogged through autumn rains, built roads through wilderness, and besieged the fort for nearly two months under constant fire. Sickness spread through the camp, supplies dwindled, and yet discipline held. “Patience and perseverance,” Montgomery wrote, “will overcome all difficulties.”
The province of Quebec had been under British rule for only fifteen years, and many of its French-speaking inhabitants still remembered the days of New France, before its defeat in the French and Indian War. To secure their loyalty, Parliament had passed the Quebec Act of 1774, allowing Catholics to worship freely and restoring French civil law. After that, most in Quebec preferred neutrality, content to keep their faith and farms rather than risk another upheaval.
Still, Congress hoped that Montgomery’s advance (and Benedict Arnold’s grueling march through Maine) might secure the northern frontier and win the friendship of their neighbors who shared a distrust of British authority. If the province of Quebec could be persuaded to join the cause, the Revolution would no longer stand alone against an empire.
The campaign’s success was brief but important. Within days, Fort St. John’s fell and the British evacuated Montreal, leaving the city to Montgomery’s arriving troops. The victory not only raised morale across the colonies but delayed British invasion routes through Canada until 1777, buying the Revolution precious time to survive.
For a few bright weeks, news from the north seemed to prove that courage and cooperation could carry a new nation forward, even across the frozen rivers and uncertain loyalties of a contested land.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 1, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe; Quebec Act (1774).
Theme: Continental Army in Canada; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Montgomery, Arnold, Congress, Montreal, Fort St. John’s, 1775
November 1, 1775 – Hope from the North
A hard-won victory in Canada gave Congress its first clear glimpse of hope.
In Philadelphia, the delegates of the Continental Congress read new letters from the northern army. General Richard Montgomery, advancing through the waterways of Canada, reported that Fort St. John’s was on the brink of surrender. Soon the road to Montreal would open—a moment that promised the first clear victory of the war.
The campaign had been long and bitter. Montgomery’s troops slogged through autumn rains, built roads through wilderness, and besieged the fort for nearly two months under constant fire. Sickness spread through the camp, supplies dwindled, and yet discipline held. “Patience and perseverance,” Montgomery wrote, “will overcome all difficulties.”
The province of Quebec had been under British rule for only fifteen years, and many of its French-speaking inhabitants still remembered the days of New France, before its defeat in the French and Indian War. To secure their loyalty, Parliament had passed the Quebec Act of 1774, allowing Catholics to worship freely and restoring French civil law. After that, most in Quebec preferred neutrality, content to keep their faith and farms rather than risk another upheaval.
Still, Congress hoped that Montgomery’s advance (and Benedict Arnold’s grueling march through Maine) might secure the northern frontier and win the friendship of their neighbors who shared a distrust of British authority. If the province of Quebec could be persuaded to join the cause, the Revolution would no longer stand alone against an empire.
The campaign’s success was brief but important. Within days, Fort St. John’s fell and the British evacuated Montreal, leaving the city to Montgomery’s arriving troops. The victory not only raised morale across the colonies but delayed British invasion routes through Canada until 1777, buying the Revolution precious time to survive.
For a few bright weeks, news from the north seemed to prove that courage and cooperation could carry a new nation forward, even across the frozen rivers and uncertain loyalties of a contested land.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 1, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe; Quebec Act (1774).
Theme: Continental Army in Canada; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Montgomery, Arnold, Congress, Montreal, Fort St. John’s, 1775
November 2, 1775
The Passamaquoddy Petition
November 2, 1775 – The Passamaquoddy Petition
A frontier people lifted their voices for liberty—and for faith that knew no border.
The hope for friendship to the north was not without precedent. As Congress rejoiced over news from Quebec, another voice reached them from beyond the recognized colonies, coming from settlers living along Passamaquoddy Bay near the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia.
On November 2, 1775, these residents—New Englanders by birth, living under British rule—sent a petition to the Continental Congress. They pledged sympathy with the American cause and asked for protection “in the liberties for which we contend.”
They wrote from a lonely edge of the continent, where fog drifted over spruce-lined shores and trade passed through quiet coves watched by British patrols. Isolated yet steadfast, they followed events to the south with anxious hope, aware that rebellion might bring both peril and purpose. Their message came from a land that had changed hands and peoples more than once.
Two decades earlier, this region had been part of the Acadian expulsion, when thousands of French Catholic families were driven from their homes by British forces during the French and Indian War. The farms they left behind were resettled by New England Planters, many of them shaped by the revival fervor of the Great Awakening. They brought north the language of liberty and conscience, believing that faith and freedom were inseparable.
Their petition came from that same northern frontier where faith, culture, and memory intertwined: the borderland where Acadian exile and New England revival met. Like Congress’s appeals to French Canada, it carried the hope that liberty might speak a language all could understand.
Congress had no ships or soldiers to send, but the message from Passamaquoddy reminded them that the cause of freedom was already echoing beyond the colonies’ borders. Their words endure as a quiet testament that conviction knows no frontier.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 2, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States of America
Themes: Faith and Providence; Continental Army in Canada
Tags: Passamaquoddy Bay, Nova Scotia, Congress, Great Awakening, Liberty, 1775
November 2, 1775 – The Passamaquoddy Petition
A frontier people lifted their voices for liberty—and for faith that knew no border.
The hope for friendship to the north was not without precedent. As Congress rejoiced over news from Quebec, another voice reached them from beyond the recognized colonies, coming from settlers living along Passamaquoddy Bay near the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia.
On November 2, 1775, these residents—New Englanders by birth, living under British rule—sent a petition to the Continental Congress. They pledged sympathy with the American cause and asked for protection “in the liberties for which we contend.”
They wrote from a lonely edge of the continent, where fog drifted over spruce-lined shores and trade passed through quiet coves watched by British patrols. Isolated yet steadfast, they followed events to the south with anxious hope, aware that rebellion might bring both peril and purpose. Their message came from a land that had changed hands and peoples more than once.
Two decades earlier, this region had been part of the Acadian expulsion, when thousands of French Catholic families were driven from their homes by British forces during the French and Indian War. The farms they left behind were resettled by New England Planters, many of them shaped by the revival fervor of the Great Awakening. They brought north the language of liberty and conscience, believing that faith and freedom were inseparable.
Their petition came from that same northern frontier where faith, culture, and memory intertwined: the borderland where Acadian exile and New England revival met. Like Congress’s appeals to French Canada, it carried the hope that liberty might speak a language all could understand.
Congress had no ships or soldiers to send, but the message from Passamaquoddy reminded them that the cause of freedom was already echoing beyond the colonies’ borders. Their words endure as a quiet testament that conviction knows no frontier.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 2, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States of America
Themes: Faith and Providence; Continental Army in Canada
Tags: Passamaquoddy Bay, Nova Scotia, Congress, Great Awakening, Liberty, 1775
November 3, 1775
Charting a Course
November 3, 1775 – Charting a Course
A nation still unnamed began to govern itself beneath the hand of Providence.
While armies stood watch in Boston and Canada, another kind of battle was beginning in Philadelphia. The delegates of the Continental Congress, once a loose gathering of colonial dissenters, were learning to govern as one people. On this day, they turned their attention from petitions and protests to policy and permanence, laying the groundwork for a navy of their own.
Three weeks earlier, on October 13, Congress had resolved to purchase and arm two vessels to intercept British supply ships. Now, in early November, that bold idea was taking shape. Committees drafted pay scales and naval regulations, authorized construction, and began appointing officers. The move was as practical as it was visionary. Without a navy, the colonies could not protect their coasts or their commerce; with one, they could challenge an empire’s hold upon the seas. For the first time, the colonies were not merely resisting but creating: building the institutions of a nation still unnamed.
Among those soon to take command was a young Scotsman named John Paul Jones, newly arrived in America and eager to serve. Just a month later, he would raise the first Continental flag at sea aboard the Alfred and carry the struggle for liberty to the open ocean. The decisions of this week made his mission—and the navy itself—possible.
As Congress debated tonnage and rations, its actions echoed the covenantal courage of another assembly long before, the Mayflower Compact of 1620, when free men first pledged to “combine ourselves together” for the common good. Like that early compact, this Congress was testing its wings, charting a course by conscience and necessity toward self-government under Providence.
No one in that chamber could foresee the storms ahead or the legend the new navy would write upon the seas. Yet in their votes and resolutions lay the first glimmer of a nation taking command of its own destiny.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 3, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Themes: Self-Government; American Armed Services
Tags: Continental Navy, John Paul Jones, Congress, Mayflower Compact, 1775
November 3, 1775 – Charting a Course
A nation still unnamed began to govern itself beneath the hand of Providence.
While armies stood watch in Boston and Canada, another kind of battle was beginning in Philadelphia. The delegates of the Continental Congress, once a loose gathering of colonial dissenters, were learning to govern as one people. On this day, they turned their attention from petitions and protests to policy and permanence, laying the groundwork for a navy of their own.
Three weeks earlier, on October 13, Congress had resolved to purchase and arm two vessels to intercept British supply ships. Now, in early November, that bold idea was taking shape. Committees drafted pay scales and naval regulations, authorized construction, and began appointing officers. The move was as practical as it was visionary. Without a navy, the colonies could not protect their coasts or their commerce; with one, they could challenge an empire’s hold upon the seas. For the first time, the colonies were not merely resisting but creating: building the institutions of a nation still unnamed.
Among those soon to take command was a young Scotsman named John Paul Jones, newly arrived in America and eager to serve. Just a month later, he would raise the first Continental flag at sea aboard the Alfred and carry the struggle for liberty to the open ocean. The decisions of this week made his mission—and the navy itself—possible.
As Congress debated tonnage and rations, its actions echoed the covenantal courage of another assembly long before, the Mayflower Compact of 1620, when free men first pledged to “combine ourselves together” for the common good. Like that early compact, this Congress was testing its wings, charting a course by conscience and necessity toward self-government under Providence.
No one in that chamber could foresee the storms ahead or the legend the new navy would write upon the seas. Yet in their votes and resolutions lay the first glimmer of a nation taking command of its own destiny.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 3, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Themes: Self-Government; American Armed Services
Tags: Continental Navy, John Paul Jones, Congress, Mayflower Compact, 1775
November 4, 1775
Forging an Army, Shaping a Nation
November 4, 1775 – Forging an Army, Shaping a Nation
As Congress unified the militias, a new nation began to govern itself.
When the Continental Army was first established by Congress on June 14, 1775, it was little more than a patchwork of colonial militias united under a single commander. George Washington took command at Cambridge on July 3, but the army he led still drew pay, rations, and orders from thirteen different systems. Each colony supplied its own men and managed its own affairs.
By November, Congress saw the need for something stronger—an army that belonged not to Massachusetts or Virginia, but to all the united colonies. Washington’s letters from Cambridge that month told of men “going home as fast as their time expired.” His reports made clear that the cause could not survive without a unified system of command, pay, and supply.
In response, delegates spent days debating how to standardize ranks, clothing, and enlistment terms. The resolutions they adopted began to transform a collection of provincial troops into the first truly national force. Officers were now to be commissioned by Congress, not local assemblies. Soldiers’ wages and rations were made uniform across the lines, and supply chains and provisions were brought under central oversight. These acts gave Washington the authority he needed to reorganize his regiments and shape what he hoped would become, at last, an army in fact, as well as in name.
It was a practical decision born of necessity—but also a symbolic one. To sustain a common defense, the colonies had to act as one people. Each step toward military order was also a step toward political unity, proving that they could govern themselves in matters of life and liberty alike.
From those early votes came the foundation of all the American armed services that would follow—the Navy, authorized in October; the Marines, soon to be raised in November; and the Army that would carry the cause through eight long years of war.
The soldiers who stood watch that autumn could not know they were serving in the first national institution of the United States. Yet as Congress learned to bring order from chaos and unity from division, many saw in it a sign of Providence: that freedom would endure where discipline and shared purpose held it fast.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, November 3–4, 1775; letters from Cambridge, November 1775, The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Self-Government; American Armed Services
Tags: Continental Army, Congress, American Armed Services, military organization, 1775
November 4, 1775 – Forging an Army, Shaping a Nation
As Congress unified the militias, a new nation began to govern itself.
When the Continental Army was first established by Congress on June 14, 1775, it was little more than a patchwork of colonial militias united under a single commander. George Washington took command at Cambridge on July 3, but the army he led still drew pay, rations, and orders from thirteen different systems. Each colony supplied its own men and managed its own affairs.
By November, Congress saw the need for something stronger—an army that belonged not to Massachusetts or Virginia, but to all the united colonies. Washington’s letters from Cambridge that month told of men “going home as fast as their time expired.” His reports made clear that the cause could not survive without a unified system of command, pay, and supply.
In response, delegates spent days debating how to standardize ranks, clothing, and enlistment terms. The resolutions they adopted began to transform a collection of provincial troops into the first truly national force. Officers were now to be commissioned by Congress, not local assemblies. Soldiers’ wages and rations were made uniform across the lines, and supply chains and provisions were brought under central oversight. These acts gave Washington the authority he needed to reorganize his regiments and shape what he hoped would become, at last, an army in fact, as well as in name.
It was a practical decision born of necessity—but also a symbolic one. To sustain a common defense, the colonies had to act as one people. Each step toward military order was also a step toward political unity, proving that they could govern themselves in matters of life and liberty alike.
From those early votes came the foundation of all the American armed services that would follow—the Navy, authorized in October; the Marines, soon to be raised in November; and the Army that would carry the cause through eight long years of war.
The soldiers who stood watch that autumn could not know they were serving in the first national institution of the United States. Yet as Congress learned to bring order from chaos and unity from division, many saw in it a sign of Providence: that freedom would endure where discipline and shared purpose held it fast.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, November 3–4, 1775; letters from Cambridge, November 1775, The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Self-Government; American Armed Services
Tags: Continental Army, Congress, American Armed Services, military organization, 1775
Teach History with Purpose
Bring faith-filled lessons and the truth of America’s founding into your homeschool with these courses on SchoolhouseTeachers.com:
- Age of Revolution (Grades 7–12): Examine the worldwide movements that ignited the American Revolution.
- American History for Beginners (K–Grade 2): Discover the people and places that shaped our young nation through gentle introductions and stories.
- American History in Picture Books (Grades 1–5): Use beloved library books to bring U.S. history to life for early readers.
- American Revolution (Grades 4–7): Explore the struggle for independence and the birth of a new nation.
- Drive Thru History: American History (Grades 6–9): Take a video tour through the sights and sounds of America’s story.
- This Changed Everything: Turning Points in History (Grades 9–12): Trace the threads of liberty woven through generations, leading to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
- This Day in History (K–Grade 12): Enjoy daily stories from across the world and the centuries that shaped the world we know today.
Start learning today at SchoolhouseTeachers.com. Not sure where to start? Find the homeschooling path that fits your family best.
“250 Days Before 250 Years – Countdown to Freedom” is a project of The Old Schoolhouse®, celebrating faith and freedom in America’s founding. All stories are historically verified and drawn from original sources from 1775–1776. Lessons on SchoolhouseTeachers.com are created and edited by humans who may potentially use automatic tools such as Grammarly, ChatGPT, CoPilot, etc. Images are primarily sourced from stock images or personal photographs, with some being created using Canva, Dall-E, or other image generation software. All content remains the property of SchoolhouseTeachers.com or its original copyright holder.
