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.
Join the Celebration!
Members can complete the 250-Day Challenge on iST, with interactive quizzes for every story at all three grade levels. Track your progress from October 28 through July 4, and you’ll be on your way to earning 13 free gifts—one for each original colony—and a chance to receive a new BBQ grill for your family! (See FAQs below for more information.)
Not a Member?
Join now with code BIRTHDAY250 and get the Bright Beginnings Kit + 1-Year Membership for only $250—a $149 savings!
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. For a complete bibliography of the original sources, click here.
250-Day Calendar
December 1, 1775
The Measure of Mercy
December 1, 1775 – The Measure of Mercy
Would Congress treat prisoners the way the British did—or chart a new course?
As the winter set in, reports reached Philadelphia that captured Loyalists and British troops were being held under rough conditions. The question before Congress was not only what justice required, but what humanity demanded.
On December 1, they resolved that prisoners of war “be treated with kindness, though guarded with care.” It was a simple phrase, but a profound one: a pledge that the Revolution would rest not on revenge, but on principle. This was no minor policy: the colonies had chosen to measure their liberty by the restraint they showed to their enemies.
Across the ocean, Britain’s system of confinement had long been known for its severity. For decades before the Revolution, the Crown had used derelict warships moored in the Thames to hold debtors, deserters, and common criminals when the prisons overflowed. Overcrowding, disease, and limited provisions made these hulks—stripped of rigging and left afloat—notorious. Official reports called them unhealthy and inadequate for humane confinement. Even Parliament admitted the mortality was “shocking to humanity.” Yet the practice continued when rebellion broke out in America.
When the British later occupied New York in 1776, they moored old warships in the harbor as prisons for captured Americans, including the Jersey, Falmouth, and others. On these floating hulks, thousands suffered from starvation, exposure, and disease. Survivors recalled air so stagnant that lamps would not burn.
British commanders maintained that captured Americans were rebels, not soldiers, and therefore not entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war. That legal distinction shaped their treatment throughout the conflict and filled the prison ships of New York Harbor.
In contrast, General Washington later reinforced Congress’s resolution in his own orders, directing that British prisoners “be treated with humanity” and that no act of cruelty be permitted under any pretense. Such discipline, he believed, proved the justice of their cause.
The difference between the two nations’ approaches revealed more than discipline; it revealed conviction. While Britain followed long-established naval practices, Congress sought to ground its own in mercy and restraint. In promising that prisoners “be treated with kindness, though guarded with care,” the colonies aimed to prove that liberty could be firm without being cruel—a moral high ground they meant to hold even amid war.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (December 1, 1775).
Additional background: Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (1789); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Moral Foundations; Faith and Providence
Tags: Continental Congress, Prisoners of War, Mercy, British Prison Ships, 1775
December 1, 1775 – The Measure of Mercy
Would Congress treat prisoners the way the British did—or chart a new course?
As the winter set in, reports reached Philadelphia that captured Loyalists and British troops were being held under rough conditions. The question before Congress was not only what justice required, but what humanity demanded.
On December 1, they resolved that prisoners of war “be treated with kindness, though guarded with care.” It was a simple phrase, but a profound one: a pledge that the Revolution would rest not on revenge, but on principle. This was no minor policy: the colonies had chosen to measure their liberty by the restraint they showed to their enemies.
Across the ocean, Britain’s system of confinement had long been known for its severity. For decades before the Revolution, the Crown had used derelict warships moored in the Thames to hold debtors, deserters, and common criminals when the prisons overflowed. Overcrowding, disease, and limited provisions made these hulks—stripped of rigging and left afloat—notorious. Official reports called them unhealthy and inadequate for humane confinement. Even Parliament admitted the mortality was “shocking to humanity.” Yet the practice continued when rebellion broke out in America.
When the British later occupied New York in 1776, they moored old warships in the harbor as prisons for captured Americans, including the Jersey, Falmouth, and others. On these floating hulks, thousands suffered from starvation, exposure, and disease. Survivors recalled air so stagnant that lamps would not burn.
British commanders maintained that captured Americans were rebels, not soldiers, and therefore not entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war. That legal distinction shaped their treatment throughout the conflict and filled the prison ships of New York Harbor.
In contrast, General Washington later reinforced Congress’s resolution in his own orders, directing that British prisoners “be treated with humanity” and that no act of cruelty be permitted under any pretense. Such discipline, he believed, proved the justice of their cause.
The difference between the two nations’ approaches revealed more than discipline; it revealed conviction. While Britain followed long-established naval practices, Congress sought to ground its own in mercy and restraint. In promising that prisoners “be treated with kindness, though guarded with care,” the colonies aimed to prove that liberty could be firm without being cruel—a moral high ground they meant to hold even amid war.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (December 1, 1775).
Additional background: Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (1789); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Moral Foundations; Faith and Providence
Tags: Continental Congress, Prisoners of War, Mercy, British Prison Ships, 1775
December 2, 1775
The Night Before the Flag
December 2, 1775 – The Night Before the Flag
The crew of the Alfred makes final preparations to accept their naval commission.
The wharves of Philadelphia were alive with preparation. These shipyards on the Delaware River lay far enough inland to be safe from the British Navy, yet close enough to provide ready access to the sea.
Here the Alfred lay at anchor, newly fitted for Continental service—her decks scrubbed, guns secured, and rigging tightened against the winter wind. Named for Alfred the Great, the ninth-century Christian king of England who had driven out invaders, codified law on Biblical principles, and built his nation’s first organized navy, she was one of the first vessels commissioned under the authority of the Continental Congress.
The night of December 2, First Lieutenant John Paul Jones reviewed the Alfred’s readiness for service. For weeks, he had been tasked with transforming a merchant ship into a man-of-war and a collection of raw recruits into a disciplined crew. His tireless supervision in the dockyards had earned him a reputation for precision and order, qualities the infant navy desperately needed.
Until now, America’s naval effort had been little more than a hope and a handful of privateers. But Congress’s authorization of a small fleet that autumn marked a turning point. The Alfred, once a humble ship named the Black Prince, now stood ready to challenge British power at sea.
Jones’s attention to discipline was not merely habit but conviction. He believed that discipline and order were the surest proofs of a just cause. Under his direction, every man learned his station, and every rope had its place. The vessel he prepared would soon hoist a flag new to history, described by some observers as the “Grand Union” of thirteen stripes with the British Union in the corner.
In the morning, those colors would rise for the first time above a Continental ship, and Jones himself would have the honor of setting them aloft. But on this December night, before the first flag and before the first battle, his work was still that of foundation—turning resolve into readiness, and ideals into action.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (November–December 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character; Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (1789).
Themes: American Armed Services
Tags: John Paul Jones, USS Alfred, Continental Navy, Philadelphia, Grand Union Flag, 1775
December 2, 1775 – The Night Before the Flag
The crew of the Alfred makes final preparations to accept their naval commission.
The wharves of Philadelphia were alive with preparation. These shipyards on the Delaware River lay far enough inland to be safe from the British Navy, yet close enough to provide ready access to the sea.
Here the Alfred lay at anchor, newly fitted for Continental service—her decks scrubbed, guns secured, and rigging tightened against the winter wind. Named for Alfred the Great, the ninth-century Christian king of England who had driven out invaders, codified law on Biblical principles, and built his nation’s first organized navy, she was one of the first vessels commissioned under the authority of the Continental Congress.
The night of December 2, First Lieutenant John Paul Jones reviewed the Alfred’s readiness for service. For weeks, he had been tasked with transforming a merchant ship into a man-of-war and a collection of raw recruits into a disciplined crew. His tireless supervision in the dockyards had earned him a reputation for precision and order, qualities the infant navy desperately needed.
Until now, America’s naval effort had been little more than a hope and a handful of privateers. But Congress’s authorization of a small fleet that autumn marked a turning point. The Alfred, once a humble ship named the Black Prince, now stood ready to challenge British power at sea.
Jones’s attention to discipline was not merely habit but conviction. He believed that discipline and order were the surest proofs of a just cause. Under his direction, every man learned his station, and every rope had its place. The vessel he prepared would soon hoist a flag new to history, described by some observers as the “Grand Union” of thirteen stripes with the British Union in the corner.
In the morning, those colors would rise for the first time above a Continental ship, and Jones himself would have the honor of setting them aloft. But on this December night, before the first flag and before the first battle, his work was still that of foundation—turning resolve into readiness, and ideals into action.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (November–December 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character; Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (1789).
Themes: American Armed Services
Tags: John Paul Jones, USS Alfred, Continental Navy, Philadelphia, Grand Union Flag, 1775
December 3, 1775
Sunday: The Women Who Held the Siege Together
December 3, 1775 – Sunday: The Women Who Held the Siege Together
Their work kept the army warm, and their prayers kept it standing.
In the frozen college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the war’s quiet heroes worked by lamplight. The women of Cambridge gathered in homes, meetinghouses, and emptied classrooms, sewing coats and mittens for the soldiers who held the siege lines outside Boston. Elizabeth Ellet, one of the earliest writers to chronicle women’s roles in the Revolution, later wrote that their needles moved “as swiftly as the soldiers’ muskets,” each stitch a small act of endurance in a winter that promised to test every household.
Some cared for the sick and frostbitten in makeshift hospitals: parlors, meetinghouses, and college halls turned into wards where weary men lay beneath quilts pieced from family linen. The women who lived in Cambridge, Roxbury, Watertown, and other nearby towns supported the army from their own homes rather than from tents. They washed, mended, cooked, and carried supplies to the lines, often caring for men who were far from home and unable to return until their enlistments ended. Their letters and prayers offered comfort when blankets and medicine were scarce, and their steady presence helped hold the siege together through the long New England winter.
For these women, service was both duty and devotion. They saw no divide between faith and fortitude, believing that Providence watched over their work as surely as over the men who guarded the siege lines. Their prayers rose with the smoke of hearth fires, asking for safety, strength, and an end to the war.
And what they did in Cambridge was echoed across the colonies. In Philadelphia, women stitched banners and rolled bandages for the first naval crews preparing to sail. In New York and New Jersey, families divided by loyalty or belief found quiet ways to help those in need. In the South, women kept farms and towns running while husbands and sons marched north. Their courage was not measured in battles won, but in burdens carried.
Though their names seldom appeared in the records, their faith and labor sustained an army and a cause. In every stitch, meal, and prayer, the Revolution held together a little longer.
Source: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, Vol. I (1848)
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (December 1775); Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Faith and Providence
Tags: Women of the Revolution, Cambridge, Boston Siege, 1775
December 3, 1775 – Sunday: The Women Who Held the Siege Together
Their work kept the army warm, and their prayers kept it standing.
In the frozen college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the war’s quiet heroes worked by lamplight. The women of Cambridge gathered in homes, meetinghouses, and emptied classrooms, sewing coats and mittens for the soldiers who held the siege lines outside Boston. Elizabeth Ellet, one of the earliest writers to chronicle women’s roles in the Revolution, later wrote that their needles moved “as swiftly as the soldiers’ muskets,” each stitch a small act of endurance in a winter that promised to test every household.
Some cared for the sick and frostbitten in makeshift hospitals: parlors, meetinghouses, and college halls turned into wards where weary men lay beneath quilts pieced from family linen. The women who lived in Cambridge, Roxbury, Watertown, and other nearby towns supported the army from their own homes rather than from tents. They washed, mended, cooked, and carried supplies to the lines, often caring for men who were far from home and unable to return until their enlistments ended. Their letters and prayers offered comfort when blankets and medicine were scarce, and their steady presence helped hold the siege together through the long New England winter.
For these women, service was both duty and devotion. They saw no divide between faith and fortitude, believing that Providence watched over their work as surely as over the men who guarded the siege lines. Their prayers rose with the smoke of hearth fires, asking for safety, strength, and an end to the war.
And what they did in Cambridge was echoed across the colonies. In Philadelphia, women stitched banners and rolled bandages for the first naval crews preparing to sail. In New York and New Jersey, families divided by loyalty or belief found quiet ways to help those in need. In the South, women kept farms and towns running while husbands and sons marched north. Their courage was not measured in battles won, but in burdens carried.
Though their names seldom appeared in the records, their faith and labor sustained an army and a cause. In every stitch, meal, and prayer, the Revolution held together a little longer.
Source: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, Vol. I (1848)
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (December 1775); Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Faith and Providence
Tags: Women of the Revolution, Cambridge, Boston Siege, 1775
December 4, 1775
The Cherokee Council at Chota
December 4, 1775 – The Cherokee Council at Chota
A nation divided sought wisdom before choosing its path.
Far from the frozen camps of Boston, another council met that December to weigh the coming of war. In the Cherokee capital of Chota—southwest of present-day Knoxville, Tennessee—elders and warriors gathered to consider the white men’s conflict that now spread through the mountains.
The town lay beside the Little Tennessee River, its great council house rising from the valley like a living memory of generations who had met there to decide matters of peace and war. Around the fire sat chiefs and orators representing villages scattered across hundreds of miles of forest. Some counseled neutrality, warning that this fight was not their own. Others spoke of broken treaties, vanished hunting grounds, and traders whose promises had dissolved like mist.
The Cherokee had long dealt with British agents who promised protection and trade in exchange for loyalty. Yet now the British called on them again, urging war against the rebellious colonies. To some, this seemed an opportunity to regain lost lands; to others, a trap that could destroy their nation.
Missionary Samuel Kirkland, whose letters from the northern tribes circulated widely among frontier missions, recorded the same rising tension that now reached the Cherokee capital. Traders and interpreters who attended the Chota council wrote of voices rising in debate: solemn, deliberate, and searching for justice in a world that offered little. Beneath the formal speeches ran an older question: who could be trusted?
To the Cherokee, the debate was not just political. They looked to the wisdom of their forebears and signs they recognized in the natural world for guidance as their nation stood between two fires. The elders reminded the young that peace was a sacred path, yet even peace had a cost when surrounded by war.
The council ended without full agreement, only the uneasy awareness that neutrality would soon be tested. Within a year, the flames of revolution would reach the southern frontier, and the decisions made at Chota would shape the fate of a nation seeking to preserve its people amid the quarrels of empires.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (December 1775)
Additional background: Neill, History of the Mission of the Rev. Samuel Kirkland (1866)
Themes: Diplomacy; Faith and Providence
Tags: Cherokee Nation, Chota, Samuel Kirkland, Southern Frontier, 1775
December 4, 1775 – The Cherokee Council at Chota
A nation divided sought wisdom before choosing its path.
Far from the frozen camps of Boston, another council met that December to weigh the coming of war. In the Cherokee capital of Chota—southwest of present-day Knoxville, Tennessee—elders and warriors gathered to consider the white men’s conflict that now spread through the mountains.
The town lay beside the Little Tennessee River, its great council house rising from the valley like a living memory of generations who had met there to decide matters of peace and war. Around the fire sat chiefs and orators representing villages scattered across hundreds of miles of forest. Some counseled neutrality, warning that this fight was not their own. Others spoke of broken treaties, vanished hunting grounds, and traders whose promises had dissolved like mist.
The Cherokee had long dealt with British agents who promised protection and trade in exchange for loyalty. Yet now the British called on them again, urging war against the rebellious colonies. To some, this seemed an opportunity to regain lost lands; to others, a trap that could destroy their nation.
Missionary Samuel Kirkland, whose letters from the northern tribes circulated widely among frontier missions, recorded the same rising tension that now reached the Cherokee capital. Traders and interpreters who attended the Chota council wrote of voices rising in debate: solemn, deliberate, and searching for justice in a world that offered little. Beneath the formal speeches ran an older question: who could be trusted?
To the Cherokee, the debate was not just political. They looked to the wisdom of their forebears and signs they recognized in the natural world for guidance as their nation stood between two fires. The elders reminded the young that peace was a sacred path, yet even peace had a cost when surrounded by war.
The council ended without full agreement, only the uneasy awareness that neutrality would soon be tested. Within a year, the flames of revolution would reach the southern frontier, and the decisions made at Chota would shape the fate of a nation seeking to preserve its people amid the quarrels of empires.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (December 1775)
Additional background: Neill, History of the Mission of the Rev. Samuel Kirkland (1866)
Themes: Diplomacy; Faith and Providence
Tags: Cherokee Nation, Chota, Samuel Kirkland, Southern Frontier, 1775
December 5, 1775
The Whaleboat War
December 5, 1775 – The Whaleboat War
Fishermen turned raiders fought the Revolution one tide at a time.
Across the waters of Long Island Sound, where fishermen had once traded stories and lobster pots, small bands of Patriots and Loyalists now met by moonlight in a private war of their own.
Their whaleboats were narrow, double-ended craft light enough to row and swift enough to vanish into the fog. The men who crewed them knew every current and shoal. They had fished these waters long before the first shot at Lexington. Now they rowed under the cover of night, striking enemy outposts, supply sloops, and coastal farms that had been declared for the Crown.
Their raids often began in silence, with oars muffled in rags and frost whitening their coats. Ice gathered on the gunwales as they crossed the Sound, trusting the stars and their own memory to find the way back. A single glint of moonlight on a blade could betray them, yet they went willingly, knowing capture would be fatal.
From the Connecticut shore to the coves of Long Island, New York, the December raids were growing bolder. Town records from Norwalk, Fairfield, and Oyster Bay told of barns set afire, small vessels captured, and prisoners taken from both sides. No formal army commanded them, only necessity and patriot zeal.
The British called them “pirates in open boats.” Washington, hearing reports of their successes, called them “useful irregulars.” Many were the same seamen whose ships had been seized or burned in prior skirmishes with the British—men who had lost their livelihoods but not their seamanship. The ocean became their battlefield, and their daring struck fear into every Loyalist port from the Hudson to Newport.
By December 1775, the Whaleboat War was raging in earnest—a contest of endurance, darkness, and tide that would last through the Revolution. Their raids brought in powder, provisions, and prisoners, and they kept the British wary of every inlet. To the Patriots who watched from shore, each narrow escape seemed another mercy of Providence. They fought without uniforms or fanfare, guided by faith, salt, and familiarity with the sea.
Long after the major battles were fought, these watermen would still be out there, rowing through mist and moonlight, proving that freedom was defended not only by armies but by neighbors with oars and courage.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Dec. 1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1
Themes: Courage and Ingenuity; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Long Island Sound, Connecticut, New York, privateers, whaleboats, 1775
December 5, 1775 – The Whaleboat War
Fishermen turned raiders fought the Revolution one tide at a time.
Across the waters of Long Island Sound, where fishermen had once traded stories and lobster pots, small bands of Patriots and Loyalists now met by moonlight in a private war of their own.
Their whaleboats were narrow, double-ended craft light enough to row and swift enough to vanish into the fog. The men who crewed them knew every current and shoal. They had fished these waters long before the first shot at Lexington. Now they rowed under the cover of night, striking enemy outposts, supply sloops, and coastal farms that had been declared for the Crown.
Their raids often began in silence, with oars muffled in rags and frost whitening their coats. Ice gathered on the gunwales as they crossed the Sound, trusting the stars and their own memory to find the way back. A single glint of moonlight on a blade could betray them, yet they went willingly, knowing capture would be fatal.
From the Connecticut shore to the coves of Long Island, New York, the December raids were growing bolder. Town records from Norwalk, Fairfield, and Oyster Bay told of barns set afire, small vessels captured, and prisoners taken from both sides. No formal army commanded them, only necessity and patriot zeal.
The British called them “pirates in open boats.” Washington, hearing reports of their successes, called them “useful irregulars.” Many were the same seamen whose ships had been seized or burned in prior skirmishes with the British—men who had lost their livelihoods but not their seamanship. The ocean became their battlefield, and their daring struck fear into every Loyalist port from the Hudson to Newport.
By December 1775, the Whaleboat War was raging in earnest—a contest of endurance, darkness, and tide that would last through the Revolution. Their raids brought in powder, provisions, and prisoners, and they kept the British wary of every inlet. To the Patriots who watched from shore, each narrow escape seemed another mercy of Providence. They fought without uniforms or fanfare, guided by faith, salt, and familiarity with the sea.
Long after the major battles were fought, these watermen would still be out there, rowing through mist and moonlight, proving that freedom was defended not only by armies but by neighbors with oars and courage.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Dec. 1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1
Themes: Courage and Ingenuity; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Long Island Sound, Connecticut, New York, privateers, whaleboats, 1775
December 6, 1775
Guns and Grapeshot in Boston Harbor
December 6, 1775 – Guns and Grapeshot in Boston Harbor
After weeks of waiting, Washington’s men finally answered the silence with cannon fire.
For nearly two months, the lines around Boston had lain quiet. Across the frozen flats of the Charles River, the Redcoats in the city kept to their fortifications, and Washington’s men to theirs, both armies hemmed in by winter. Then, in the first week of December, the calm broke.
From the new American batteries on Lechmere Point, Cobble Hill, and Sewall’s Point, Washington’s artillerymen began testing captured cannon—pieces taken from British supply ships and newly mounted under his orders. The tests were meant to gauge range and readiness while they waited for Knox to arrive with reinforcements, but the results rumbled across the harbor. British outposts returned fire from their floating batteries, and for the first time in weeks, cannon smoke drifted above Boston’s rooftops.
The exchange was brief but fierce: an hour of thunder that shook frozen tents and lifted Patriot spirits. An early historian later described it as “a trial of mettle as much as of metal,” for the men cheered to see their guns roar. Though little damage was done on either side, Washington took it as a sign that discipline was strengthening and morale reviving.
Inside the city, families had huddled behind shuttered windows as cannonballs splashed in the harbor. Yet even there, among those caught between armies, some took courage at the sound. It was proof that the army camped outside had not lost heart.
In his letter of December 6, Washington wrote that “the enemy made no impression,” but the skirmish proved “our own cannon to be well served and our men spirited.” To the troops, it was proof that the siege lines were more than fences of frost and fear. They were a fortress in the making.
When the smoke cleared, both sides settled back into wary quiet. Yet the booming of those first American guns across Boston Harbor carried further than sound—it was a promise that the next time they fired, it might not be for practice.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (letter, Dec. 6, 1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1
Themes: American Armed Services; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Siege of Boston, Lechmere Point, Sewall’s Point, Cobble Hill, artillery, morale, 1775
December 6, 1775 – Guns and Grapeshot in Boston Harbor
After weeks of waiting, Washington’s men finally answered the silence with cannon fire.
For nearly two months, the lines around Boston had lain quiet. Across the frozen flats of the Charles River, the Redcoats in the city kept to their fortifications, and Washington’s men to theirs, both armies hemmed in by winter. Then, in the first week of December, the calm broke.
From the new American batteries on Lechmere Point, Cobble Hill, and Sewall’s Point, Washington’s artillerymen began testing captured cannon—pieces taken from British supply ships and newly mounted under his orders. The tests were meant to gauge range and readiness while they waited for Knox to arrive with reinforcements, but the results rumbled across the harbor. British outposts returned fire from their floating batteries, and for the first time in weeks, cannon smoke drifted above Boston’s rooftops.
The exchange was brief but fierce: an hour of thunder that shook frozen tents and lifted Patriot spirits. An early historian later described it as “a trial of mettle as much as of metal,” for the men cheered to see their guns roar. Though little damage was done on either side, Washington took it as a sign that discipline was strengthening and morale reviving.
Inside the city, families had huddled behind shuttered windows as cannonballs splashed in the harbor. Yet even there, among those caught between armies, some took courage at the sound. It was proof that the army camped outside had not lost heart.
In his letter of December 6, Washington wrote that “the enemy made no impression,” but the skirmish proved “our own cannon to be well served and our men spirited.” To the troops, it was proof that the siege lines were more than fences of frost and fear. They were a fortress in the making.
When the smoke cleared, both sides settled back into wary quiet. Yet the booming of those first American guns across Boston Harbor carried further than sound—it was a promise that the next time they fired, it might not be for practice.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (letter, Dec. 6, 1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1
Themes: American Armed Services; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Siege of Boston, Lechmere Point, Sewall’s Point, Cobble Hill, artillery, morale, 1775
December 7, 1775
Spanish Florida Watches the Northern War
December 7, 1775 – Spanish Florida Watches the Northern War
Empires old and new watched the colonies with wary eyes.
A dozen years before the first shots at Lexington, the great empires of Europe had redrawn the map of North America. France, allied with Spain during the French and Indian War, lost more than it kept when the conflict ended in 1763. Britain claimed victory—and with it, Canada and Florida. Yet France had made one quiet countermove before surrendering: it secretly ceded Louisiana to Spain (the kings of these countries were cousins). The transfer kept much of the Mississippi Valley out of British hands, creating a new frontier of uneasy neighbors with British Florida to the east and Spanish Louisiana to the west.
By the winter of 1775, those old borders were once again alive with tension. St. Augustine had been founded by the Spanish in 1565, but it was now under British rule. Governor Patrick Tonyn faced an influx of Loyalist refugees from Georgia and the Carolinas. They arrived by sea, fleeing Patriot militias, and found in East Florida the nearest safe harbor under the Crown. Tonyn fortified the old Spanish bastion at St. Augustine, knowing the Revolution might soon cross his borders.
Across the Gulf and in Cuba, Spain’s governors watched uneasily. Reports reached Havana, warning that Britain was reinforcing Florida’s defenses, and unrest along the frontier could spill south. Though Spain remained officially neutral in 1775, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez in New Orleans quietly allowed weapons and powder to move up the Mississippi to the rebelling colonies.
For now, the Spanish prepared their coastal forts from Pensacola to New Orleans and waited. The British in East Florida tightened control of the sea routes northward. And as the northern colonies fought for independence, the empires that had carved the continent a decade earlier found themselves once again drawing new lines—not on maps this time, but in the shifting loyalties of a world at war.
Sources: Ramsay, History of South Carolina (1789); Siebert, Loyalists in East Florida (1929).
Additional Detail: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884); Gayarré, History of Louisiana (1866); South Carolina Archives, Journals of the Council of Safety (1775).
Themes: Diplomacy
Tags: Florida, St. Augustine, Patrick Tonyn, Bernardo de Gálvez, Spain, Loyalists, 1775
December 7, 1775 – Spanish Florida Watches the Northern War
Empires old and new watched the colonies with wary eyes.
A dozen years before the first shots at Lexington, the great empires of Europe had redrawn the map of North America. France, allied with Spain during the French and Indian War, lost more than it kept when the conflict ended in 1763. Britain claimed victory—and with it, Canada and Florida. Yet France had made one quiet countermove before surrendering: it secretly ceded Louisiana to Spain (the kings of these countries were cousins). The transfer kept much of the Mississippi Valley out of British hands, creating a new frontier of uneasy neighbors with British Florida to the east and Spanish Louisiana to the west.
By the winter of 1775, those old borders were once again alive with tension. St. Augustine had been founded by the Spanish in 1565, but it was now under British rule. Governor Patrick Tonyn faced an influx of Loyalist refugees from Georgia and the Carolinas. They arrived by sea, fleeing Patriot militias, and found in East Florida the nearest safe harbor under the Crown. Tonyn fortified the old Spanish bastion at St. Augustine, knowing the Revolution might soon cross his borders.
Across the Gulf and in Cuba, Spain’s governors watched uneasily. Reports reached Havana, warning that Britain was reinforcing Florida’s defenses, and unrest along the frontier could spill south. Though Spain remained officially neutral in 1775, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez in New Orleans quietly allowed weapons and powder to move up the Mississippi to the rebelling colonies.
For now, the Spanish prepared their coastal forts from Pensacola to New Orleans and waited. The British in East Florida tightened control of the sea routes northward. And as the northern colonies fought for independence, the empires that had carved the continent a decade earlier found themselves once again drawing new lines—not on maps this time, but in the shifting loyalties of a world at war.
Sources: Ramsay, History of South Carolina (1789); Siebert, Loyalists in East Florida (1929).
Additional Detail: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884); Gayarré, History of Louisiana (1866); South Carolina Archives, Journals of the Council of Safety (1775).
Themes: Diplomacy
Tags: Florida, St. Augustine, Patrick Tonyn, Bernardo de Gálvez, Spain, Loyalists, 1775
December 8, 1775
The Calm before Great Bridge
December 8, 1775 – The Calm before Great Bridge
Across a narrow marsh, two armies waited for dawn to decide Virginia’s fate.
An eerie quiet brooded over the camp at Great Bridge. Only whispers, the wind over the marsh, and the faint roll of British drums broke the stillness. For two weeks, the Virginia militia under Colonel William Woodford had faced Lord Dunmore’s British and Loyalist forces across a swampy estuary near Norfolk. Between them stretched a narrow causeway, scarcely a hundred yards long, connecting the marshy banks to a small wooden bridge over a tidal creek. Whoever held it controlled the road between Virginia’s coast and its countryside.
Both sides knew a direct attack would be disastrous. A single volley along the causeway could cut down men with nowhere to retreat. Dunmore waited for reinforcements and hoped to draw the Virginians into open ground. Woodford chose instead to fortify. The two-week stalemate became a test of endurance, each side waiting for the other to strike.
The defenders’ line stretched across the causeway’s exit. A wall of logs and earth formed breastworks high enough to shield men reloading their muskets. On the Norfolk side, Dunmore’s men had built Fort Murray, a palisade of upright logs. Through the fog, each side could see the flicker of the other’s campfires.
Woodford’s ranks included both Tidewater planters and backcountry riflemen: Virginians fighting together for the first time. That night, they shared rations and read Scripture by lantern light. Chaplains prayed for deliverance, and sentries stood ankle-deep in mud.
One militiaman recorded the night as “cold and misty,” the ground “soft as mire,” yet the men were “cheerful and confident.” Across the marsh, torches glimmered along the palisade as the British readied their gear.
Scouts reported movement in the enemy camp, including drums at odd hours, torches burning late, and the clatter of arms. Before midnight, Woodford gave quiet orders: hold fire until the enemy reached the causeway. Chaplains offered a final prayer. The men bowed their heads in the fog, muskets resting against the parapet.
When dawn came, it would bring either victory or ruin. The men who kept watch that night would remember the silence before the storm—the calm before Great Bridge.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Dec 1775).
Additional background: Virginia, Journals of the House of Burgesses (1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; American Armed Services
Tags: Virginia militia, William Woodford, Lord Dunmore, Great Bridge, Elizabeth River, 1775
December 8, 1775 – The Calm before Great Bridge
Across a narrow marsh, two armies waited for dawn to decide Virginia’s fate.
An eerie quiet brooded over the camp at Great Bridge. Only whispers, the wind over the marsh, and the faint roll of British drums broke the stillness. For two weeks, the Virginia militia under Colonel William Woodford had faced Lord Dunmore’s British and Loyalist forces across a swampy estuary near Norfolk. Between them stretched a narrow causeway, scarcely a hundred yards long, connecting the marshy banks to a small wooden bridge over a tidal creek. Whoever held it controlled the road between Virginia’s coast and its countryside.
Both sides knew a direct attack would be disastrous. A single volley along the causeway could cut down men with nowhere to retreat. Dunmore waited for reinforcements and hoped to draw the Virginians into open ground. Woodford chose instead to fortify. The two-week stalemate became a test of endurance, each side waiting for the other to strike.
The defenders’ line stretched across the causeway’s exit. A wall of logs and earth formed breastworks high enough to shield men reloading their muskets. On the Norfolk side, Dunmore’s men had built Fort Murray, a palisade of upright logs. Through the fog, each side could see the flicker of the other’s campfires.
Woodford’s ranks included both Tidewater planters and backcountry riflemen: Virginians fighting together for the first time. That night, they shared rations and read Scripture by lantern light. Chaplains prayed for deliverance, and sentries stood ankle-deep in mud.
One militiaman recorded the night as “cold and misty,” the ground “soft as mire,” yet the men were “cheerful and confident.” Across the marsh, torches glimmered along the palisade as the British readied their gear.
Scouts reported movement in the enemy camp, including drums at odd hours, torches burning late, and the clatter of arms. Before midnight, Woodford gave quiet orders: hold fire until the enemy reached the causeway. Chaplains offered a final prayer. The men bowed their heads in the fog, muskets resting against the parapet.
When dawn came, it would bring either victory or ruin. The men who kept watch that night would remember the silence before the storm—the calm before Great Bridge.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Dec 1775).
Additional background: Virginia, Journals of the House of Burgesses (1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; American Armed Services
Tags: Virginia militia, William Woodford, Lord Dunmore, Great Bridge, Elizabeth River, 1775
December 9, 1775
The Battle of Great Bridge
December 9, 1775 – The Battle of Great Bridge
The day began with confidence and ended in disbelief.
At dawn, the drums beat reveille through the mist at Fort Murray. Men of the 14th Highland Regiment formed ranks, red uniforms matching smartly, bayonets gleaming, their breath white in the chill air. To them, the day promised not danger but duty, one clean stroke to sweep the rebels from the road to Norfolk.
For weeks, they had watched the colonials across the swamp, rough men in hunting shirts laboring behind muddy earthworks. British officers laughed that farmers could never stand before trained soldiers of the Crown. Discipline and the bayonet had conquered continents; surely it could master Virginia’s marshes. Lord Dunmore’s scouts assured him the rebels were few, their powder low, their courage untested. A swift strike at dawn would scatter them.
As the fog lifted, Captain Charles Fordyce led the advance in perfect order, colors waving above the reeds. The narrow causeway funneled them into a single line as they marched toward the breastworks. The first volley struck without warning, and men dropped where they stood. Still Fordyce pressed on, shouting for his men to follow. Within fifteen paces of the earthworks, he fell, pierced by a dozen balls.
The survivors wavered, then broke. A few fired blindly before retreating across the bridge. When the smoke cleared, the causeway was choked with the fallen, their red coats bright against the gray mire. From the fort, Dunmore watched in stunned silence. Sixty of his men lay dead or wounded, while the Virginians had lost but one.
Later that day, word reached him that the rebels had carried Fordyce’s body to a nearby house and buried him with honor. Wounded British soldiers left behind were tended with the same care as their own. Such mercy confounded expectation. These “rabble” had fought with discipline and extended compassion—a strange sort of enemy indeed.
That night the British drums were silent. The causeway that had promised victory now lay quiet beneath the fog, and this first small victory struck a decisive blow to royal authority in Virginia. In the days that followed, the Patriots burned the bridge to prevent another British foray inland, and Dunmore’s fleet slipped downriver toward the sea.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Dec 9 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Virginia, Journals of the House of Burgesses (1775).
Themes: Campaigns of the War, American Armed Services
Tags: Battle of Great Bridge, William Woodford, Lord Dunmore, Virginia, 1775
December 9, 1775 – The Battle of Great Bridge
The day began with confidence and ended in disbelief.
At dawn, the drums beat reveille through the mist at Fort Murray. Men of the 14th Highland Regiment formed ranks, red uniforms matching smartly, bayonets gleaming, their breath white in the chill air. To them, the day promised not danger but duty, one clean stroke to sweep the rebels from the road to Norfolk.
For weeks, they had watched the colonials across the swamp, rough men in hunting shirts laboring behind muddy earthworks. British officers laughed that farmers could never stand before trained soldiers of the Crown. Discipline and the bayonet had conquered continents; surely it could master Virginia’s marshes. Lord Dunmore’s scouts assured him the rebels were few, their powder low, their courage untested. A swift strike at dawn would scatter them.
As the fog lifted, Captain Charles Fordyce led the advance in perfect order, colors waving above the reeds. The narrow causeway funneled them into a single line as they marched toward the breastworks. The first volley struck without warning, and men dropped where they stood. Still Fordyce pressed on, shouting for his men to follow. Within fifteen paces of the earthworks, he fell, pierced by a dozen balls.
The survivors wavered, then broke. A few fired blindly before retreating across the bridge. When the smoke cleared, the causeway was choked with the fallen, their red coats bright against the gray mire. From the fort, Dunmore watched in stunned silence. Sixty of his men lay dead or wounded, while the Virginians had lost but one.
Later that day, word reached him that the rebels had carried Fordyce’s body to a nearby house and buried him with honor. Wounded British soldiers left behind were tended with the same care as their own. Such mercy confounded expectation. These “rabble” had fought with discipline and extended compassion—a strange sort of enemy indeed.
That night the British drums were silent. The causeway that had promised victory now lay quiet beneath the fog, and this first small victory struck a decisive blow to royal authority in Virginia. In the days that followed, the Patriots burned the bridge to prevent another British foray inland, and Dunmore’s fleet slipped downriver toward the sea.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Dec 9 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Virginia, Journals of the House of Burgesses (1775).
Themes: Campaigns of the War, American Armed Services
Tags: Battle of Great Bridge, William Woodford, Lord Dunmore, Virginia, 1775
December 10, 1775
Sunday: The Eve of the Fast
December 10, 1775 – Sunday: The Eve of the Fast
Across the colonies, the Sabbath was still and solemn on a day set apart for prayer.
The gray light of a winter day fell through oilcloth panes, soft against the flicker of the hearth fire. Around a plain pine table, a family bowed their heads as the father opened the great Bible to read. His voice carried through the room, steady and sure, though the wind pressed against the walls outside. When he finished, they sang an old psalm they knew by heart, then sat together in the quiet that followed.
Their fare was simple: a loaf of quick bread, a pitcher of milk, and a few stored apples from the root cellar. Tomorrow’s fast would be little different. Food was scarce in many towns, with trade disrupted and the year’s harvest already dwindling. Yet the call to fast was not about hunger; it was about humble repentance. Scenes like this played out in homes across the colonies.
The proclamation from Congress echoed that same spirit of repentance, recalling the prayer of the prophet Daniel for his nation. “That we may, with united hearts, confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease God’s righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ obtain His pardon and forgiveness.”
Across the colonies, pastors used this Sabbath to prepare their congregations for the day appointed by Congress: Monday, December 11, a day of fasting, humility, and prayer. There would be no trading, no merriment, no feasting—only repentance, reflection, and petitions for divine favor on the struggling cause of liberty.
In some churches, ministers read from the prophets: “Turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12). In others, from the Psalms: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Soldiers knelt beside muskets stacked in the frost; farmers prayed as they fed their livestock.
As dusk fell, chimney smoke rose straight into the still air. A few lights glimmered in meetinghouse windows where pastors prepared sermons for the morning of the eleventh. The colonies had little in common but hope, hardship, and faith—and for one appointed day, that would be enough.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 23–25, 1775).
Additional background: Daniel 9:4-19; Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Scripture: All quotations from the King James Version (public domain).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Moral Foundations
Tags: Continental Congress, fasting and prayer, Sabbath observance, colonial life, 1775
December 10, 1775 – Sunday: The Eve of the Fast
Across the colonies, the Sabbath was still and solemn on a day set apart for prayer.
The gray light of a winter day fell through oilcloth panes, soft against the flicker of the hearth fire. Around a plain pine table, a family bowed their heads as the father opened the great Bible to read. His voice carried through the room, steady and sure, though the wind pressed against the walls outside. When he finished, they sang an old psalm they knew by heart, then sat together in the quiet that followed.
Their fare was simple: a loaf of quick bread, a pitcher of milk, and a few stored apples from the root cellar. Tomorrow’s fast would be little different. Food was scarce in many towns, with trade disrupted and the year’s harvest already dwindling. Yet the call to fast was not about hunger; it was about humble repentance. Scenes like this played out in homes across the colonies.
The proclamation from Congress echoed that same spirit of repentance, recalling the prayer of the prophet Daniel for his nation. “That we may, with united hearts, confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease God’s righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ obtain His pardon and forgiveness.”
Across the colonies, pastors used this Sabbath to prepare their congregations for the day appointed by Congress: Monday, December 11, a day of fasting, humility, and prayer. There would be no trading, no merriment, no feasting—only repentance, reflection, and petitions for divine favor on the struggling cause of liberty.
In some churches, ministers read from the prophets: “Turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12). In others, from the Psalms: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Soldiers knelt beside muskets stacked in the frost; farmers prayed as they fed their livestock.
As dusk fell, chimney smoke rose straight into the still air. A few lights glimmered in meetinghouse windows where pastors prepared sermons for the morning of the eleventh. The colonies had little in common but hope, hardship, and faith—and for one appointed day, that would be enough.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 23–25, 1775).
Additional background: Daniel 9:4-19; Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Scripture: All quotations from the King James Version (public domain).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Moral Foundations
Tags: Continental Congress, fasting and prayer, Sabbath observance, colonial life, 1775
December 11, 1775
Storms in the Bahama Channel
December 11, 1775 – Storms in the Bahama Channel
While the colonies knelt in prayer, men at sea fought the wind and trusted Providence.
The wind howled through the Bahama Channel, driving rain in sheets across the deck of an American privateer (a privately owned ship serving the Continental cause). The sloop pitched and groaned, its spars creaking under the strain. Salt spray stung the crew’s faces as they reefed the sails, shouting to one another above the roar of the gale. It was the eleventh of December—the very day the colonies were keeping as a fast and day of prayer—and here, far to the south, men prayed with every wave.
For days they had battled the winter storms. The sea ran high, the sky low and gray. Through the flying spindrift, the lookout cried that he saw a sail off the port bow. It was no mirage: a heavy British transport, struggling against the same wind. The men looked to their captain. He nodded once, and they shifted course to get into position.
When the squall broke, the privateer had the weather gauge—sailing upwind and in command of the encounter. The gunners ran out their pieces, and a brief exchange of cannon fire echoed across the gale. The British ship’s mainmast splintered; she hove to, her colors struck. The prize held powder and provisions for the royal army, a treasure the colonies sorely needed.
The storm had carried both pursuer and prey into the same narrow reach of sea, as if by design. “They that go down to the sea in ships,” wrote the psalmist, “that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep” (Psalm 107:23–24).
As the crew secured their lines and tended the wounded, the captain opened a small, salt-stained book and read aloud from Isaac Watts’s Psalms of David Imitated:
The God that rules on high,
And thunders when He please,
That rides upon the stormy sky,
And manages the seas.
This [awesome] God is ours,
Our Father and our Love.
The men stood silent, the wind easing at last. While prayers rose from pulpits on shore, another kind had risen from the deep—and both were heard and answered.
Note: This vignette represents a composite of American privateer experiences based on contemporary reports. The ship and captain are fictional, though several British transports were dispersed or captured off the Bahamas in December 1775.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Dec. 1775); Letters of the Committee of Secret Correspondence (1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Watts, The Psalms of David Imitated (metrical psalter, 1719).
Themes: Faith and Providence; American Armed Services
Tags: Privateers, Bahama Channel, Committee of Secret Correspondence, Isaac Watts, Psalm 107, 1775
December 11, 1775 – Storms in the Bahama Channel
While the colonies knelt in prayer, men at sea fought the wind and trusted Providence.
The wind howled through the Bahama Channel, driving rain in sheets across the deck of an American privateer (a privately owned ship serving the Continental cause). The sloop pitched and groaned, its spars creaking under the strain. Salt spray stung the crew’s faces as they reefed the sails, shouting to one another above the roar of the gale. It was the eleventh of December—the very day the colonies were keeping as a fast and day of prayer—and here, far to the south, men prayed with every wave.
For days they had battled the winter storms. The sea ran high, the sky low and gray. Through the flying spindrift, the lookout cried that he saw a sail off the port bow. It was no mirage: a heavy British transport, struggling against the same wind. The men looked to their captain. He nodded once, and they shifted course to get into position.
When the squall broke, the privateer had the weather gauge—sailing upwind and in command of the encounter. The gunners ran out their pieces, and a brief exchange of cannon fire echoed across the gale. The British ship’s mainmast splintered; she hove to, her colors struck. The prize held powder and provisions for the royal army, a treasure the colonies sorely needed.
The storm had carried both pursuer and prey into the same narrow reach of sea, as if by design. “They that go down to the sea in ships,” wrote the psalmist, “that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep” (Psalm 107:23–24).
As the crew secured their lines and tended the wounded, the captain opened a small, salt-stained book and read aloud from Isaac Watts’s Psalms of David Imitated:
The God that rules on high,
And thunders when He please,
That rides upon the stormy sky,
And manages the seas.
This [awesome] God is ours,
Our Father and our Love.
The men stood silent, the wind easing at last. While prayers rose from pulpits on shore, another kind had risen from the deep—and both were heard and answered.
Note: This vignette represents a composite of American privateer experiences based on contemporary reports. The ship and captain are fictional, though several British transports were dispersed or captured off the Bahamas in December 1775.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Dec. 1775); Letters of the Committee of Secret Correspondence (1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Watts, The Psalms of David Imitated (metrical psalter, 1719).
Themes: Faith and Providence; American Armed Services
Tags: Privateers, Bahama Channel, Committee of Secret Correspondence, Isaac Watts, Psalm 107, 1775
December 12, 1775
Joseph Reed and the “Appeal to Heaven” Flag
December 12, 1775 – Joseph Reed and the Appeal to Heaven Flag
When courage wavered, calling remained.
In the second week of December 1775, the siege of Boston lay cold and uneasy. Washington’s army held its lines faithfully, but the sense of forward momentum had slowed with the weather.
Joseph Reed—Washington’s secretary, adviser, and one of the most trusted voices in headquarters—found himself in a similar place. From Philadelphia, he had written to Washington on December 2 about the rising jealousies within the camp and about his own “situation,” a word that hinted at the inner debate he had carried for weeks. Should he return to Cambridge, or withdraw for a time to tend to his family at home?
Washington’s reply on December 15 reveals the weight of Reed’s dilemma: “Whilst you leave the door open to my expectation of your return, I shall not think of supplying your place. If, ultimately, you resolve against coming, I should be glad to know it…”
The commander in chief needed Reed—not only for administrative order, but for the steady judgment that shaped countless decisions behind the scenes. Yet Washington did not press; he understood that calling is a matter of conscience.
This moment of hesitation becomes even more striking when set beside Reed’s earlier contribution to the cause. Just weeks before, in October, he is said to have proposed a simple but powerful design for the small naval force Washington was assembling: a white field, a green pine, and the words “An Appeal to Heaven.” Borrowed from Locke, the phrase captured the conviction that when human justice fails, a people might appeal their cause to divine justice. The pine tree was a long-standing emblem of New England. Washington approved it immediately, and before winter fell, the pine tree flag was flying over the waters of Massachusetts Bay. Its upward-pointing motto reminded many that Providence—not Parliament—ruled the outcome of their struggle.
Thus December found Reed at a crossroads, though he would soon return. Meanwhile, the emblem he had helped give the Revolution—pointing upward, steady and sure—was already proclaiming confidence in a higher judgment. And even as Reed weighed his own uncertain path, the pine tree stood firm against the winter sky, reminding all who saw it that hope, once planted, does not easily give way.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689); Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Forging Unity
Tags: Joseph Reed, Pine Tree Flag, John Locke, George Washington, Christopher Gadsden, Sons of Liberty, 1775
December 12, 1775 – Joseph Reed and the Appeal to Heaven Flag
When courage wavered, calling remained.
In the second week of December 1775, the siege of Boston lay cold and uneasy. Washington’s army held its lines faithfully, but the sense of forward momentum had slowed with the weather.
Joseph Reed—Washington’s secretary, adviser, and one of the most trusted voices in headquarters—found himself in a similar place. From Philadelphia, he had written to Washington on December 2 about the rising jealousies within the camp and about his own “situation,” a word that hinted at the inner debate he had carried for weeks. Should he return to Cambridge, or withdraw for a time to tend to his family at home?
Washington’s reply on December 15 reveals the weight of Reed’s dilemma: “Whilst you leave the door open to my expectation of your return, I shall not think of supplying your place. If, ultimately, you resolve against coming, I should be glad to know it…”
The commander in chief needed Reed—not only for administrative order, but for the steady judgment that shaped countless decisions behind the scenes. Yet Washington did not press; he understood that calling is a matter of conscience.
This moment of hesitation becomes even more striking when set beside Reed’s earlier contribution to the cause. Just weeks before, in October, he is said to have proposed a simple but powerful design for the small naval force Washington was assembling: a white field, a green pine, and the words “An Appeal to Heaven.” Borrowed from Locke, the phrase captured the conviction that when human justice fails, a people might appeal their cause to divine justice. The pine tree was a long-standing emblem of New England. Washington approved it immediately, and before winter fell, the pine tree flag was flying over the waters of Massachusetts Bay. Its upward-pointing motto reminded many that Providence—not Parliament—ruled the outcome of their struggle.
Thus December found Reed at a crossroads, though he would soon return. Meanwhile, the emblem he had helped give the Revolution—pointing upward, steady and sure—was already proclaiming confidence in a higher judgment. And even as Reed weighed his own uncertain path, the pine tree stood firm against the winter sky, reminding all who saw it that hope, once planted, does not easily give way.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689); Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Forging Unity
Tags: Joseph Reed, Pine Tree Flag, John Locke, George Washington, Christopher Gadsden, Sons of Liberty, 1775
December 13, 1775
Charles Lee’s Urgent Warnings
December 13, 1775 – Charles Lee’s Urgent Warnings
He saw danger clearly and wanted the power to act soon.
A British shell screamed over Plowed Hill, while Charles Lee toured the Boston lines. Lee, long practiced in reading artillery, did not duck. Soldiers nearby dropped flat, but his companion clung to his arm and stood beside him. The man had felt “perfectly safe by doing just as [Lee] did.” Lee later told the story as an example of how civilians reacted to a commander’s steadiness—and how a general’s composure could shape the behavior of those around him. It was an ordinary moment, but one that reminded Lee how closely men watched their leaders—and how urgently strong leadership was needed.
Long before Congress debated creating the Southern Department, Lee was already chafing at the limits of the war as it was being fought. From his camp outside Boston in early December, he sent Franklin a flurry of suggestions—plans to secure the coast, reorganize provincial forces, and either fortify New York or destroy it before the British could seize it. He warned, too, that Virginia was vulnerable, urging Franklin that “you ought to take your precautions.” “Decisive decision,” he wrote, “is the onset of success.”
By early January, he believed that decisive moment had arrived. On January 5 he wrote Washington that the loss of New York would be catastrophic—and that Congress was too cautious to act quickly. Washington must “step in to their relief.” If permitted, he believed he could rally enough volunteers to fortify the city, secure the Hudson River, and disarm hostile Loyalists on Long Island. “The delay of a single day may be fatal,” he warned.
Two days later, Washington agreed. On January 7 he informed the Connecticut governor that a British fleet was preparing to sail and that it was “of the utmost importance” to secure New York before it arrived. He requested that volunteers be raised as Major General Lee passed westward through the colony.
Lee’s restlessness in December now became Washington’s official directive. What followed—Lee’s sweep through Connecticut, his arrival in New York, and the political storm his presence stirred—would unfold in the weeks ahead.
And in March, Congress would send him southward at last, placing him over the very region he had warned Franklin was “in danger”: the new Southern Department.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; The Papers of Benjamin Franklin.
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 4.
Themes: Forging Unity; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Charles Lee, Continental Army, Congress, Siege of Boston, Connecticut, New York, 1775
December 13, 1775 – Charles Lee’s Urgent Warnings
He saw danger clearly and wanted the power to act soon.
A British shell screamed over Plowed Hill, while Charles Lee toured the Boston lines. Lee, long practiced in reading artillery, did not duck. Soldiers nearby dropped flat, but his companion clung to his arm and stood beside him. The man had felt “perfectly safe by doing just as [Lee] did.” Lee later told the story as an example of how civilians reacted to a commander’s steadiness—and how a general’s composure could shape the behavior of those around him. It was an ordinary moment, but one that reminded Lee how closely men watched their leaders—and how urgently strong leadership was needed.
Long before Congress debated creating the Southern Department, Lee was already chafing at the limits of the war as it was being fought. From his camp outside Boston in early December, he sent Franklin a flurry of suggestions—plans to secure the coast, reorganize provincial forces, and either fortify New York or destroy it before the British could seize it. He warned, too, that Virginia was vulnerable, urging Franklin that “you ought to take your precautions.” “Decisive decision,” he wrote, “is the onset of success.”
By early January, he believed that decisive moment had arrived. On January 5 he wrote Washington that the loss of New York would be catastrophic—and that Congress was too cautious to act quickly. Washington must “step in to their relief.” If permitted, he believed he could rally enough volunteers to fortify the city, secure the Hudson River, and disarm hostile Loyalists on Long Island. “The delay of a single day may be fatal,” he warned.
Two days later, Washington agreed. On January 7 he informed the Connecticut governor that a British fleet was preparing to sail and that it was “of the utmost importance” to secure New York before it arrived. He requested that volunteers be raised as Major General Lee passed westward through the colony.
Lee’s restlessness in December now became Washington’s official directive. What followed—Lee’s sweep through Connecticut, his arrival in New York, and the political storm his presence stirred—would unfold in the weeks ahead.
And in March, Congress would send him southward at last, placing him over the very region he had warned Franklin was “in danger”: the new Southern Department.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; The Papers of Benjamin Franklin.
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 4.
Themes: Forging Unity; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Charles Lee, Continental Army, Congress, Siege of Boston, Connecticut, New York, 1775
December 14, 1775
The Defense of Charleston Harbor
December 14, 1775 – The Defense of Charleston Harbor
Sullivan’s Island was only a stretch of sand facing the might of the British Navy.
A young engineer stood near the ocean waterline and let the wind sting his face. The winter sun caught the masts of the Tamar, the British warship anchored nearby. If war returned to the harbor, it would come from that direction.
He looked down at the island itself: no walls, no batteries, only a scatter of stakes marking where some kind of fort might soon rise. The Provincial Congress in town started to examine the city’s defenses and recommend new works. But out here, decisions could not be made on paper—they had to come from the materials at hand.
He took stock of those materials now. Pine? Impossible. Every straight pine trunk belonged to the shipyards. Brick? Too heavy, too dear, and too scarce for island soil. Brushwood for fascines was thin along the shore.
That left palmetto logs—soft, fibrous, and wet inside. Hardly a soldier’s idea of a fortress. Yet they were abundant, and the coastline offered nothing sturdier. And there was sand—endless sand—shifting under his boots, pouring through fingers, refusing to be shaped unless held in place by something stronger.
No one would choose these materials for a grand fortress. But they weren’t building a grand fortress—they were building hope, one log and shovel at a time.
Somewhere behind him, the city was debating reports and drafting orders. Soon men would be sent to turn this bare sandbar into a defensive work. Historians would later write that Charleston’s leaders erected works on Sullivan’s Island in “the close of the year 1775”; Colonel Moultrie himself would record taking ranges from the island that very month. The decisions forming in those meeting rooms would soon reach this shore.
No one knew how well the palmetto would hold against cannonballs. Yet the design took shape as if guided by Providence. The soft wood would one day absorb the shock of British artillery, and the sand packed between would scatter the force harmlessly, though no one could have foreseen it.
The engineer glanced again at the Tamar, still watching. The island was quiet now, but no one doubted what the future held. Before long, this unfinished ground would have to stand between Charleston and the war at sea.
Source: Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina; Force, American Archives, Series 4, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Courage and Ingenuity; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Charleston Harbor, Fort Sullivan, South Carolina, Palmetto Fort, 1775
December 14, 1775 – The Defense of Charleston Harbor
Sullivan’s Island was only a stretch of sand facing the might of the British Navy.
A young engineer stood near the ocean waterline and let the wind sting his face. The winter sun caught the masts of the Tamar, the British warship anchored nearby. If war returned to the harbor, it would come from that direction.
He looked down at the island itself: no walls, no batteries, only a scatter of stakes marking where some kind of fort might soon rise. The Provincial Congress in town started to examine the city’s defenses and recommend new works. But out here, decisions could not be made on paper—they had to come from the materials at hand.
He took stock of those materials now. Pine? Impossible. Every straight pine trunk belonged to the shipyards. Brick? Too heavy, too dear, and too scarce for island soil. Brushwood for fascines was thin along the shore.
That left palmetto logs—soft, fibrous, and wet inside. Hardly a soldier’s idea of a fortress. Yet they were abundant, and the coastline offered nothing sturdier. And there was sand—endless sand—shifting under his boots, pouring through fingers, refusing to be shaped unless held in place by something stronger.
No one would choose these materials for a grand fortress. But they weren’t building a grand fortress—they were building hope, one log and shovel at a time.
Somewhere behind him, the city was debating reports and drafting orders. Soon men would be sent to turn this bare sandbar into a defensive work. Historians would later write that Charleston’s leaders erected works on Sullivan’s Island in “the close of the year 1775”; Colonel Moultrie himself would record taking ranges from the island that very month. The decisions forming in those meeting rooms would soon reach this shore.
No one knew how well the palmetto would hold against cannonballs. Yet the design took shape as if guided by Providence. The soft wood would one day absorb the shock of British artillery, and the sand packed between would scatter the force harmlessly, though no one could have foreseen it.
The engineer glanced again at the Tamar, still watching. The island was quiet now, but no one doubted what the future held. Before long, this unfinished ground would have to stand between Charleston and the war at sea.
Source: Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina; Force, American Archives, Series 4, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Courage and Ingenuity; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Charleston Harbor, Fort Sullivan, South Carolina, Palmetto Fort, 1775
December 15, 1775
Raid on the St. John’s River
December 15, 1775 – Raid on the St. John’s River
A frontier skirmish revealed how far the war’s reach had already spread.
Along the St. John’s River of East Florida (not to be confused with the river of the same name in Canada), a small British–Loyalist party set out from St. Augustine, the capital of Britain’s East Florida province. Their mission: to seize cattle and supplies from neighboring Georgia. The raid would feed the garrison and remind frontier settlers that the King’s reach extended even into the swamps and pine forests beyond the border. Morning mists drifted above the river as flatboats moved quietly through the reeds.
Between the pine barrens and tidal rivers that marked the Florida line, farms stood miles apart, each one its own outpost of the Revolution. The cattle herds of southern Georgia grazed across open cattle ranges that stretched for miles. Because the herds roamed semi-wild and fences were scarce, raiding them was relatively easy—and devastating.
Whoever controlled the cattle controlled survival on the southern frontier. Cattle were Georgia’s chief resource, providing meat and hides for the militia and for nearby settlements. East Florida’s garrison at St. Augustine, cut off from northern supply lines, depended on such raids to feed its troops and Loyalist refugees. To Georgia’s militia, defending the herds meant defending the colony itself.
When word spread that British boats were moving upriver, the militia rode hard through the lowlands to intercept them. In the brief clash that followed, musket fire cracked through the palmettos, their fronds whispering in the wind. The smell of smoke mingled with salt air and trampled grass. Several were wounded on both sides before the Loyalists retreated downriver with what they could carry.
In this borderland, loyalty ran through families as unevenly as the rivers that crossed it. Men who had once traded cattle together now met across gun sights. Such raids would soon draw Georgia’s militia southward in retaliation, beginning a running border war that lasted into 1777. For those who lived by their herds, these raids represented more than a loss of cattle. They were a test of faith that God would provide when the war had found even the poorest homestead.
Note: This account is a composite retelling based on documented patterns of raiding, supply shortages, and militia skirmishes along the Georgia–East Florida frontier in late 1775. While no surviving record describes a raid on the St. John’s River on December 15 specifically, small-scale clashes of this kind were common, often unreported, and formed the lived reality of the borderlands at the opening of the Revolution.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (letters from the Savannah Committee of Safety).
Additional background: Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina, Vol. I.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Loyalty or Independence
Tags: Georgia, St. Augustine, East Florida, militia, Loyalists, cowpens, 1775
December 15, 1775 – Raid on the St. John’s River
A frontier skirmish revealed how far the war’s reach had already spread.
Along the St. John’s River of East Florida (not to be confused with the river of the same name in Canada), a small British–Loyalist party set out from St. Augustine, the capital of Britain’s East Florida province. Their mission: to seize cattle and supplies from neighboring Georgia. The raid would feed the garrison and remind frontier settlers that the King’s reach extended even into the swamps and pine forests beyond the border. Morning mists drifted above the river as flatboats moved quietly through the reeds.
Between the pine barrens and tidal rivers that marked the Florida line, farms stood miles apart, each one its own outpost of the Revolution. The cattle herds of southern Georgia grazed across open cattle ranges that stretched for miles. Because the herds roamed semi-wild and fences were scarce, raiding them was relatively easy—and devastating.
Whoever controlled the cattle controlled survival on the southern frontier. Cattle were Georgia’s chief resource, providing meat and hides for the militia and for nearby settlements. East Florida’s garrison at St. Augustine, cut off from northern supply lines, depended on such raids to feed its troops and Loyalist refugees. To Georgia’s militia, defending the herds meant defending the colony itself.
When word spread that British boats were moving upriver, the militia rode hard through the lowlands to intercept them. In the brief clash that followed, musket fire cracked through the palmettos, their fronds whispering in the wind. The smell of smoke mingled with salt air and trampled grass. Several were wounded on both sides before the Loyalists retreated downriver with what they could carry.
In this borderland, loyalty ran through families as unevenly as the rivers that crossed it. Men who had once traded cattle together now met across gun sights. Such raids would soon draw Georgia’s militia southward in retaliation, beginning a running border war that lasted into 1777. For those who lived by their herds, these raids represented more than a loss of cattle. They were a test of faith that God would provide when the war had found even the poorest homestead.
Note: This account is a composite retelling based on documented patterns of raiding, supply shortages, and militia skirmishes along the Georgia–East Florida frontier in late 1775. While no surviving record describes a raid on the St. John’s River on December 15 specifically, small-scale clashes of this kind were common, often unreported, and formed the lived reality of the borderlands at the opening of the Revolution.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (letters from the Savannah Committee of Safety).
Additional background: Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina, Vol. I.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Loyalty or Independence
Tags: Georgia, St. Augustine, East Florida, militia, Loyalists, cowpens, 1775
December 16, 1775
Remembering the Tea Party
December 16, 1775 – Remembering the Tea Party
Two years after tea steeped in Boston Harbor, the Patriots’ resolve remained.
On December 16, 1773, Boston’s harbor became a symbol of defiance as men in disguise boarded tea ships and poured their cargo overboard, turning the harbor into a vast, salty teapot. Their protest was about more than a tax: it struck at Parliament’s claim to rule a people who had no voice in its councils, and at a monopoly that threatened both commerce and conscience. The act united the colonies in resistance and brought Britain’s wrath upon Massachusetts. Now, two years later, the same harbor lay under blockade, its patriots exiled and the Boston presses silenced.
Boston could not hold public commemorations in December 1775 because the town was still under British occupation. Cannon fire and military patrols had replaced civic gatherings, and the presses that once printed fiery accounts of resistance had long since gone quiet. Yet the anniversary of the Tea Party remained vivid across New England. It was impossible to forget the night when ordinary citizens, acting in concert, sent 342 chests of taxed tea into the harbor and set the colonies on a course no one could easily reverse.
Even without parades or anniversary orations, the date carried weight. The destruction of the tea had become a fixed point in Patriot memory—a reminder of the unity that first checked Parliament’s attempt to enforce a monopoly. In December 1775, that symbolism mattered. The siege of Boston had dragged on for months. Reinforcements, supplies, and winter uniforms were in short supply. Many soldiers had been away from home for nearly a year. The memory of earlier acts of unity—from the destruction of the tea to the Suffolk Resolves and the first muster at Cambridge—helped sustain a sense of shared purpose when the outcome of the struggle remained uncertain. Throughout New England, the story of December 16, 1773 served as a reminder that the tempest began in a teapot.
Two years later, the war was camped on their doorsteps, yet the memory of the Tea Party still burned clearly. It had been the spark that lit the long fuse toward independence, a reminder of the courage ordinary people could show in extraordinary times.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series; The Papers of John Adams (December 17, 1773).
Additional background: Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina, Vol. I; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Siege of Boston
Tags: Siege of Boston, Sons of Liberty, Tea Party Anniversary, 1775
December 16, 1775 – Remembering the Tea Party
Two years after tea steeped in Boston Harbor, the Patriots’ resolve remained.
On December 16, 1773, Boston’s harbor became a symbol of defiance as men in disguise boarded tea ships and poured their cargo overboard, turning the harbor into a vast, salty teapot. Their protest was about more than a tax: it struck at Parliament’s claim to rule a people who had no voice in its councils, and at a monopoly that threatened both commerce and conscience. The act united the colonies in resistance and brought Britain’s wrath upon Massachusetts. Now, two years later, the same harbor lay under blockade, its patriots exiled and the Boston presses silenced.
Boston could not hold public commemorations in December 1775 because the town was still under British occupation. Cannon fire and military patrols had replaced civic gatherings, and the presses that once printed fiery accounts of resistance had long since gone quiet. Yet the anniversary of the Tea Party remained vivid across New England. It was impossible to forget the night when ordinary citizens, acting in concert, sent 342 chests of taxed tea into the harbor and set the colonies on a course no one could easily reverse.
Even without parades or anniversary orations, the date carried weight. The destruction of the tea had become a fixed point in Patriot memory—a reminder of the unity that first checked Parliament’s attempt to enforce a monopoly. In December 1775, that symbolism mattered. The siege of Boston had dragged on for months. Reinforcements, supplies, and winter uniforms were in short supply. Many soldiers had been away from home for nearly a year. The memory of earlier acts of unity—from the destruction of the tea to the Suffolk Resolves and the first muster at Cambridge—helped sustain a sense of shared purpose when the outcome of the struggle remained uncertain. Throughout New England, the story of December 16, 1773 served as a reminder that the tempest began in a teapot.
Two years later, the war was camped on their doorsteps, yet the memory of the Tea Party still burned clearly. It had been the spark that lit the long fuse toward independence, a reminder of the courage ordinary people could show in extraordinary times.
Source: Force, American Archives, 4th Series; The Papers of John Adams (December 17, 1773).
Additional background: Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina, Vol. I; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Siege of Boston
Tags: Siege of Boston, Sons of Liberty, Tea Party Anniversary, 1775
December 17, 1775
The Revolution Before the War
December 17, 1775 – Sunday: The Revolution Before the War
Even as Parliament tried to crush rebellion, the true Revolution had already occurred.
In December 1775, members of the British Parliament stood to debate how to suppress the rebellion in the American colonies. To them, the conflict was a matter of arms and obedience: a revolt to be quelled. But to many colonists, the Revolution was not merely a war for independence. It had begun long before the first shots at Lexington and Concord, in the quiet transformation of minds and hearts across the colonies.
John Adams would later describe that deeper struggle in his famous 1818 letter to Hezekiah Niles. “The Revolution,” he wrote, “was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.” It was a change in the very principles by which they understood liberty, government, and faith.
The roots of that change ran back to the Great Awakening, when revivalist preachers had filled meetinghouses with a message of individual responsibility before God. That spiritual renewal broke through denominational lines and taught an entire generation that conscience could not be commanded by kings or bishops. It prepared the way for a political awakening that would insist the same truth of civil rulers.
When word reached America that some in Parliament had proposed establishing an Anglican bishop over the colonies, many feared not only for their political rights but for their religious liberty. To dissenting Protestants who had built churches from New England to the Carolinas, the plan struck at the heart of why their forefathers had come: Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, and countless others had left England to escape that very system. As Adams later recalled, a “universal alarm” spread across the colonies that Parliament meant to impose bishops, dioceses, and tithes on America. Many feared that such a system, if allowed to prevail, would “extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world.” If Parliament could tax them, it could mandate a specific church.
So when Parliament began imposing its taxes without consent, the colonists recognized the deeper pattern. What looked like a struggle over stamps and tea was, to them, the same old struggle over who ruled the soul of a free people. By December 1775, as Parliament sought to “suppress rebellion,” that inner revolution was already complete. The war that followed was merely its outward defense.
Source: Parliamentary Debates on the American Prohibitory Bill (London, December 1775); John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818 (Niles’ Weekly Register).
Additional background: B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character; Charles Goodrich, Lives of the Signers (John Adams).
Themes: Moral Foundations; Self-Government; Religious Liberty
Tags: John Adams, Great Awakening, Parliament, religious liberty, conscience, Revolution of thought, 1775
December 17, 1775 – Sunday: The Revolution Before the War
Even as Parliament tried to crush rebellion, the true Revolution had already occurred.
In December 1775, members of the British Parliament stood to debate how to suppress the rebellion in the American colonies. To them, the conflict was a matter of arms and obedience: a revolt to be quelled. But to many colonists, the Revolution was not merely a war for independence. It had begun long before the first shots at Lexington and Concord, in the quiet transformation of minds and hearts across the colonies.
John Adams would later describe that deeper struggle in his famous 1818 letter to Hezekiah Niles. “The Revolution,” he wrote, “was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.” It was a change in the very principles by which they understood liberty, government, and faith.
The roots of that change ran back to the Great Awakening, when revivalist preachers had filled meetinghouses with a message of individual responsibility before God. That spiritual renewal broke through denominational lines and taught an entire generation that conscience could not be commanded by kings or bishops. It prepared the way for a political awakening that would insist the same truth of civil rulers.
When word reached America that some in Parliament had proposed establishing an Anglican bishop over the colonies, many feared not only for their political rights but for their religious liberty. To dissenting Protestants who had built churches from New England to the Carolinas, the plan struck at the heart of why their forefathers had come: Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, and countless others had left England to escape that very system. As Adams later recalled, a “universal alarm” spread across the colonies that Parliament meant to impose bishops, dioceses, and tithes on America. Many feared that such a system, if allowed to prevail, would “extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world.” If Parliament could tax them, it could mandate a specific church.
So when Parliament began imposing its taxes without consent, the colonists recognized the deeper pattern. What looked like a struggle over stamps and tea was, to them, the same old struggle over who ruled the soul of a free people. By December 1775, as Parliament sought to “suppress rebellion,” that inner revolution was already complete. The war that followed was merely its outward defense.
Source: Parliamentary Debates on the American Prohibitory Bill (London, December 1775); John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818 (Niles’ Weekly Register).
Additional background: B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character; Charles Goodrich, Lives of the Signers (John Adams).
Themes: Moral Foundations; Self-Government; Religious Liberty
Tags: John Adams, Great Awakening, Parliament, religious liberty, conscience, Revolution of thought, 1775
December 18, 1775
The Western Watch
December 18, 1775 – The Western Watch
On the edge of the wilderness, vigilance was not fear but faith in motion.
Winter lay heavy on the Pennsylvania frontier. Around Fort Pitt and the scattered cabins of the Ohio Valley, settlers took turns keeping watch, scanning the ridgelines for the glow of campfires. Recent memories of Dunmore’s War lingered, particularly the sudden attacks that still haunted the frontier. Now new rumors spread that British agents were again courting the tribes, stirring them to join in the coming war.
Concerns about the British approaching Native nations were well-founded: Samuel Adams reported “full proof” of such efforts in New York, and the Ohio Valley had feared an uprising before the Fort Pitt treaty in October.
But on those cold December nights, watchfulness was not the same as dread. In meetinghouses and along the palisades, men repeated the words they had heard so often from their preachers: “watch and pray” (Matthew 26:41). The phrase echoed in sermons from New England to the frontier and carried a meaning deeper than any military order. It was a call to remain steadfast, to trust that the same Providence who guarded them through past trials would guard them still.
Many of the settlers were people who had been persecuted in Europe—Scots-Irish or German Reformed families. Their forefathers had fled across the sea to claim freedom of conscience and a patch of land they could call their own. Some had first arrived as indentured servants, others as forced laborers bound for years of hardship. Many had pressed westward through the Cumberland Gap in search of a freer life. They had fled oppression once. They meant never to live under it again.
Missionaries like Samuel Kirkland, who traveled widely among the Six Nations, wrote often about the spiritual courage that sustained both settlers and Native converts. They emphasized that Christian faith made men friends to peace without making them strangers to vigilance—a balance essential in a wilderness where danger could rise without warning.
So when the bells of frontier churches called families to prayer, the same men who had stood guard through the night bowed their heads beside their neighbors. Their muskets rested by the door, their faith within reach. The Revolution had not yet come to the western hills, but its spirit already lived there in a people who watched, prayed, and hoped.
Source: Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4, The Adams Papers.
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; Neill, Mission of the Rev. Samuel Kirkland; Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution, Faith and Providence
Tags: Frontier, Fort Pitt, Ohio Valley, Samuel Kirkland, Scots-Irish, Pontiac’s Rebellion, 1775
December 18, 1775 – The Western Watch
On the edge of the wilderness, vigilance was not fear but faith in motion.
Winter lay heavy on the Pennsylvania frontier. Around Fort Pitt and the scattered cabins of the Ohio Valley, settlers took turns keeping watch, scanning the ridgelines for the glow of campfires. Recent memories of Dunmore’s War lingered, particularly the sudden attacks that still haunted the frontier. Now new rumors spread that British agents were again courting the tribes, stirring them to join in the coming war.
Concerns about the British approaching Native nations were well-founded: Samuel Adams reported “full proof” of such efforts in New York, and the Ohio Valley had feared an uprising before the Fort Pitt treaty in October.
But on those cold December nights, watchfulness was not the same as dread. In meetinghouses and along the palisades, men repeated the words they had heard so often from their preachers: “watch and pray” (Matthew 26:41). The phrase echoed in sermons from New England to the frontier and carried a meaning deeper than any military order. It was a call to remain steadfast, to trust that the same Providence who guarded them through past trials would guard them still.
Many of the settlers were people who had been persecuted in Europe—Scots-Irish or German Reformed families. Their forefathers had fled across the sea to claim freedom of conscience and a patch of land they could call their own. Some had first arrived as indentured servants, others as forced laborers bound for years of hardship. Many had pressed westward through the Cumberland Gap in search of a freer life. They had fled oppression once. They meant never to live under it again.
Missionaries like Samuel Kirkland, who traveled widely among the Six Nations, wrote often about the spiritual courage that sustained both settlers and Native converts. They emphasized that Christian faith made men friends to peace without making them strangers to vigilance—a balance essential in a wilderness where danger could rise without warning.
So when the bells of frontier churches called families to prayer, the same men who had stood guard through the night bowed their heads beside their neighbors. Their muskets rested by the door, their faith within reach. The Revolution had not yet come to the western hills, but its spirit already lived there in a people who watched, prayed, and hoped.
Source: Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4, The Adams Papers.
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; Neill, Mission of the Rev. Samuel Kirkland; Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution, Faith and Providence
Tags: Frontier, Fort Pitt, Ohio Valley, Samuel Kirkland, Scots-Irish, Pontiac’s Rebellion, 1775
December 19, 1775
The Capture That Changed a Life
December 19, 1776 – The Capture That Changed a Life
A captured young Virginian’s loyalties would take an unexpected turn.
The sloop Betsey beat its way up the Massachusetts coast with winter winds behind her, carrying dispatches from Lord Dunmore and a young passenger who hoped to rise in the king’s service. John Skey Eustace, a Virginian educated at the College of William and Mary, had spent three years under Dunmore’s protection. Since he was “the son of an unfortunate widow gentlewoman,” Dunmore had taken a personal interest in him. The royal Virginia governor now sought a British commission for the promising youth. Eustace traveled north with Dunmore’s recommendation in his pocket and expectations of a future in red uniform.
As the Betsey neared Boston, however, a Patriot schooner overtook and seized the vessel. The dispatches and passengers—including Eustace—were captured. One can imagine the disappointment and anxiety the young man felt as he faced the famed General Washington and handed over the letter entrusted to him.
On December 18, Washington forwarded the packet of dispatches to Congress. A troubling picture emerged from the captured correspondence. Dunmore’s private letter to General Howe laid out an ambitious southern strategy: reinforcements from Boston, recruits from St. Augustine, cavalry sweeping through fertile country, and a winter campaign that, in Dunmore’s confidence, “would reduce the whole southern Continent to a perfect state of obedience.” Additional letters revealed weaknesses in British positions and the alarming potential for Loyalist and Indian alliances throughout the South. Washington urged Congress to act decisively, warning that the fate of America's southern flank might hinge on Dunmore being driven from Norfolk before winter’s end.
On December 19, Washington sent the final enclosure to Congress—the letter that “was put into my hands by Mr. Eustice.” After that moment in Cambridge, the young man’s trail fades for a time. But someone in the American camp must have taken an interest in him, for Eustace did not remain the protégé Dunmore hoped to fashion. By autumn of 1776, he had entered American service, becoming aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee. In time he would serve under John Sullivan and Nathanael Greene as well.
The seized letters exposed a governor’s design. The seized passenger revealed something quieter: even amid war’s hard lines, a young man’s loyalties could change, and with them, the story of a life.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4.
Themes: Loyalty or Independence; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Washington, Dunmore, John Skey Eustace, the Betsey, Southern Colonies, Loyalists, Dispatches, 1775
December 19, 1776 – The Capture That Changed a Life
A captured young Virginian’s loyalties would take an unexpected turn.
The sloop Betsey beat its way up the Massachusetts coast with winter winds behind her, carrying dispatches from Lord Dunmore and a young passenger who hoped to rise in the king’s service. John Skey Eustace, a Virginian educated at the College of William and Mary, had spent three years under Dunmore’s protection. Since he was “the son of an unfortunate widow gentlewoman,” Dunmore had taken a personal interest in him. The royal Virginia governor now sought a British commission for the promising youth. Eustace traveled north with Dunmore’s recommendation in his pocket and expectations of a future in red uniform.
As the Betsey neared Boston, however, a Patriot schooner overtook and seized the vessel. The dispatches and passengers—including Eustace—were captured. One can imagine the disappointment and anxiety the young man felt as he faced the famed General Washington and handed over the letter entrusted to him.
On December 18, Washington forwarded the packet of dispatches to Congress. A troubling picture emerged from the captured correspondence. Dunmore’s private letter to General Howe laid out an ambitious southern strategy: reinforcements from Boston, recruits from St. Augustine, cavalry sweeping through fertile country, and a winter campaign that, in Dunmore’s confidence, “would reduce the whole southern Continent to a perfect state of obedience.” Additional letters revealed weaknesses in British positions and the alarming potential for Loyalist and Indian alliances throughout the South. Washington urged Congress to act decisively, warning that the fate of America's southern flank might hinge on Dunmore being driven from Norfolk before winter’s end.
On December 19, Washington sent the final enclosure to Congress—the letter that “was put into my hands by Mr. Eustice.” After that moment in Cambridge, the young man’s trail fades for a time. But someone in the American camp must have taken an interest in him, for Eustace did not remain the protégé Dunmore hoped to fashion. By autumn of 1776, he had entered American service, becoming aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee. In time he would serve under John Sullivan and Nathanael Greene as well.
The seized letters exposed a governor’s design. The seized passenger revealed something quieter: even amid war’s hard lines, a young man’s loyalties could change, and with them, the story of a life.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4.
Themes: Loyalty or Independence; Campaigns of the War
Tags: Washington, Dunmore, John Skey Eustace, the Betsey, Southern Colonies, Loyalists, Dispatches, 1775
December 20, 1775
Rumors from the Caribbean
December 20, 1775 – Rumors from the Caribbean
Beyond the blue horizon, quiet alliances kept a cause alive.
By the winter of 1775, word drifted northward from sailors and privateers returning to New England ports. Ships had been seen trading for gunpowder among the islands of the Caribbean. Spanish merchants in Havana and Dutch traders on St. Eustatius were quietly selling powder and lead to American captains. These trades, often through neutral parties, got around Britain’s naval blockade and supplied unofficial aid that kept the Revolution alive through these early months.
The Caribbean was a checkerboard of empires. Spain ruled Cuba and Puerto Rico; France retained Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and Martinique; the Dutch held Curaçao and St. Eustatius; Britain claimed Jamaica, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands. The French had not lost their Caribbean colonies in the French and Indian War—only their mainland territory in Canada—so their islands remained vital waypoints of global trade. In every harbor, rumors carried as fast as cargo. British cruisers searched American ships, while neutral ports winked at commerce that defied the King’s blockade.
Congress knew of these indirect channels. In letters from its Secret Committee, delegates wrote cautiously about securing powder from friends in the islands. The committee avoided naming ports, but later accounts confirmed that American captains purchased supplies at St. Eustatius, Willemstad, and Havana. When the British protested, the Dutch governor of St. Eustatius reportedly replied that he “knew nothing of politics” and dealt only with merchants. Within a year, his island would earn a reputation as the powder magazine of the Revolution.
To New England seamen returning home that December, the Caribbean seemed a world away, sunlit, foreign, and strangely providential. Yet behind every rumor of powder lay the promise that not all the world stood against them. While empires maneuvered for advantage, a handful of traders, governors, and sailors quietly chose commerce over politics. Their choice bridged the gap between a desperate army and the means to continue the fight, proving that even in distant seas, Providence could work through the most unlikely of allies.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; Force, American Archives, Series 4, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884); Gayarré, History of Louisiana (1866).
Themes: Diplomacy
Tags: Caribbean trade, Secret Committee, Spanish aid, Dutch aid, St. Eustatius, Havana, 1775
December 20, 1775 – Rumors from the Caribbean
Beyond the blue horizon, quiet alliances kept a cause alive.
By the winter of 1775, word drifted northward from sailors and privateers returning to New England ports. Ships had been seen trading for gunpowder among the islands of the Caribbean. Spanish merchants in Havana and Dutch traders on St. Eustatius were quietly selling powder and lead to American captains. These trades, often through neutral parties, got around Britain’s naval blockade and supplied unofficial aid that kept the Revolution alive through these early months.
The Caribbean was a checkerboard of empires. Spain ruled Cuba and Puerto Rico; France retained Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and Martinique; the Dutch held Curaçao and St. Eustatius; Britain claimed Jamaica, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands. The French had not lost their Caribbean colonies in the French and Indian War—only their mainland territory in Canada—so their islands remained vital waypoints of global trade. In every harbor, rumors carried as fast as cargo. British cruisers searched American ships, while neutral ports winked at commerce that defied the King’s blockade.
Congress knew of these indirect channels. In letters from its Secret Committee, delegates wrote cautiously about securing powder from friends in the islands. The committee avoided naming ports, but later accounts confirmed that American captains purchased supplies at St. Eustatius, Willemstad, and Havana. When the British protested, the Dutch governor of St. Eustatius reportedly replied that he “knew nothing of politics” and dealt only with merchants. Within a year, his island would earn a reputation as the powder magazine of the Revolution.
To New England seamen returning home that December, the Caribbean seemed a world away, sunlit, foreign, and strangely providential. Yet behind every rumor of powder lay the promise that not all the world stood against them. While empires maneuvered for advantage, a handful of traders, governors, and sailors quietly chose commerce over politics. Their choice bridged the gap between a desperate army and the means to continue the fight, proving that even in distant seas, Providence could work through the most unlikely of allies.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; Force, American Archives, Series 4, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884); Gayarré, History of Louisiana (1866).
Themes: Diplomacy
Tags: Caribbean trade, Secret Committee, Spanish aid, Dutch aid, St. Eustatius, Havana, 1775
December 21, 1775
The Guns Begin to Move
December 21, 1775 – The Guns Begin to Move
Before the guns could move, the fort had to fall.
On this day in 1775, Henry Knox and his team were setting out from Fort George, New York, (across the lake from Ticonderoga) with their “noble train of artillery” bound for Boston.
However, long before they set out across the snow, another stroke of daring had opened the way. The heavy cannon he prepared to haul were trophies from a victory that itself bordered on the miraculous.
Built by the French and captured by the British in the last war, Fort Ticonderoga guarded the narrow land passage between Lake Champlain and Lake George—the gateway between Canada and New York. On a misty morning in May 1775, Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys had crossed the lake in boats before dawn. The men were silent because sound is amplified across water. Their oars dipped quietly through the gray waves until they touched land at the southern tip of Lake Champlain.
In the first light of day, the men rushed the gate, shouting. Ethan Allen claimed the fort “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” The astonished garrison surrendered without a shot. The victory came swiftly, yet its prize was immense: a stronghold commanding the northern frontier and a hoard of artillery.
By December, the captured fort lay hushed under snow, garrisoned only by a few watchful soldiers. Its walls still bore the scars of past wars, and within them waited more than a hundred cannon, mortars, and heavy guns—enough iron to tip the balance of the Boston siege. When Henry Knox arrived, he began selecting the finest pieces, loading them onto sleds, and preparing for the long road south. The task ahead would test strength and patience alike, but it began here, amid the stillness of a captured fortress whose fall had already changed the war. Once the guns were gathered and ferried down Lake George, the long, frozen road to Boston lay before them.
From the silent oars on Lake Champlain to the creak of sleds bound for Boston, Providence seemed to link one impossible act to the next. What began as a midnight surprise in spring was now, at winter’s threshold, set in motion again—the guns that had once defended an empire would soon defend a new nation.
Source: The Papers of Henry Knox, Vol. 1 (1876); Brooks, Henry Knox: A Soldier of the Revolution (1899).
Additional background: The Writings of George Washington; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, (1884).
Themes: Courage and Ingenuity; Faith and Providence
Tags: Henry Knox, Fort Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen, Green Mountain Boys, artillery, 1775
December 21, 1775 – The Guns Begin to Move
Before the guns could move, the fort had to fall.
On this day in 1775, Henry Knox and his team were setting out from Fort George, New York, (across the lake from Ticonderoga) with their “noble train of artillery” bound for Boston.
However, long before they set out across the snow, another stroke of daring had opened the way. The heavy cannon he prepared to haul were trophies from a victory that itself bordered on the miraculous.
Built by the French and captured by the British in the last war, Fort Ticonderoga guarded the narrow land passage between Lake Champlain and Lake George—the gateway between Canada and New York. On a misty morning in May 1775, Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys had crossed the lake in boats before dawn. The men were silent because sound is amplified across water. Their oars dipped quietly through the gray waves until they touched land at the southern tip of Lake Champlain.
In the first light of day, the men rushed the gate, shouting. Ethan Allen claimed the fort “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” The astonished garrison surrendered without a shot. The victory came swiftly, yet its prize was immense: a stronghold commanding the northern frontier and a hoard of artillery.
By December, the captured fort lay hushed under snow, garrisoned only by a few watchful soldiers. Its walls still bore the scars of past wars, and within them waited more than a hundred cannon, mortars, and heavy guns—enough iron to tip the balance of the Boston siege. When Henry Knox arrived, he began selecting the finest pieces, loading them onto sleds, and preparing for the long road south. The task ahead would test strength and patience alike, but it began here, amid the stillness of a captured fortress whose fall had already changed the war. Once the guns were gathered and ferried down Lake George, the long, frozen road to Boston lay before them.
From the silent oars on Lake Champlain to the creak of sleds bound for Boston, Providence seemed to link one impossible act to the next. What began as a midnight surprise in spring was now, at winter’s threshold, set in motion again—the guns that had once defended an empire would soon defend a new nation.
Source: The Papers of Henry Knox, Vol. 1 (1876); Brooks, Henry Knox: A Soldier of the Revolution (1899).
Additional background: The Writings of George Washington; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, (1884).
Themes: Courage and Ingenuity; Faith and Providence
Tags: Henry Knox, Fort Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen, Green Mountain Boys, artillery, 1775
December 22, 1775
The Sea Captain from Providence
December 22, 1775 – The Sea Captain from Providence
Before America had an army at sea, it needed a man it could trust to command it.
On this day in 1775, Congress voted to appoint Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island as the first commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy. That same session approved his list of captains, including a promotion for John Paul Jones.
The choice of Hopkins reflected both experience and trust. His brother, Stephen Hopkins, sat among the delegates of Congress and had signed the charter creating the new fleet. But Esek needed no family favor to earn command. As a veteran mariner from Providence, Rhode Island, he had spent decades in the Atlantic trade, captaining ships through storms and privateer skirmishes long before the Revolution began. In a moment when the colonies feared spies and double agents, experience was not enough. Congress needed a commander whose loyalty was beyond doubt. The Hopkins name, already proven in the councils of liberty, carried that assurance.
Stephen Hopkins himself was among the most respected men in New England. As a founder of Rhode Island’s charter government, former colonial governor, and signer of the Continental Association, he had long stood for liberty under law. At sixty-eight, his hand trembled from palsy, but his mind remained sharp, his speech bold, and his faith in independence unwavering. Later, when he signed the Declaration, he reportedly said, “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”
Rhode Island had been among the first colonies to resist British naval control, expelling royal warships from its waters in the spring of 1775. Its sailors knew both the Atlantic’s dangers and the tyranny of the king’s patrols. Esek Hopkins represented that spirit—steady, self-reliant, and fearless of authority.
When Congress delivered his commission, they also entrusted him with broad and confidential naval instructions—authority that would soon carry his squadron south, toward British powder stores in the Bahamas. The mission would launch in early 1776, marking America’s first coordinated naval action. Hopkins’s ships—Alfred, Columbus, Andrew Doria, and Cabot—would sail under new colors and a new idea: that liberty must be defended on every ocean as well as on land.
The appointment of a sea captain from Providence turned Congress’s resolutions into reality. From frozen ports and half-built hulls would soon rise a navy and a nation ready to fight for freedom in every element under heaven.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (December 22, 1775); Force, American Archives, Series 4, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, Vol. 7.
Themes: American Armed Services
Tags: Esek Hopkins, Stephen Hopkins, Continental Navy, Rhode Island, John Paul Jones, 1775
December 22, 1775 – The Sea Captain from Providence
Before America had an army at sea, it needed a man it could trust to command it.
On this day in 1775, Congress voted to appoint Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island as the first commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy. That same session approved his list of captains, including a promotion for John Paul Jones.
The choice of Hopkins reflected both experience and trust. His brother, Stephen Hopkins, sat among the delegates of Congress and had signed the charter creating the new fleet. But Esek needed no family favor to earn command. As a veteran mariner from Providence, Rhode Island, he had spent decades in the Atlantic trade, captaining ships through storms and privateer skirmishes long before the Revolution began. In a moment when the colonies feared spies and double agents, experience was not enough. Congress needed a commander whose loyalty was beyond doubt. The Hopkins name, already proven in the councils of liberty, carried that assurance.
Stephen Hopkins himself was among the most respected men in New England. As a founder of Rhode Island’s charter government, former colonial governor, and signer of the Continental Association, he had long stood for liberty under law. At sixty-eight, his hand trembled from palsy, but his mind remained sharp, his speech bold, and his faith in independence unwavering. Later, when he signed the Declaration, he reportedly said, “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”
Rhode Island had been among the first colonies to resist British naval control, expelling royal warships from its waters in the spring of 1775. Its sailors knew both the Atlantic’s dangers and the tyranny of the king’s patrols. Esek Hopkins represented that spirit—steady, self-reliant, and fearless of authority.
When Congress delivered his commission, they also entrusted him with broad and confidential naval instructions—authority that would soon carry his squadron south, toward British powder stores in the Bahamas. The mission would launch in early 1776, marking America’s first coordinated naval action. Hopkins’s ships—Alfred, Columbus, Andrew Doria, and Cabot—would sail under new colors and a new idea: that liberty must be defended on every ocean as well as on land.
The appointment of a sea captain from Providence turned Congress’s resolutions into reality. From frozen ports and half-built hulls would soon rise a navy and a nation ready to fight for freedom in every element under heaven.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (December 22, 1775); Force, American Archives, Series 4, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, Vol. 7.
Themes: American Armed Services
Tags: Esek Hopkins, Stephen Hopkins, Continental Navy, Rhode Island, John Paul Jones, 1775
December 23, 1775
Martha Washington’s Christmas Visit
December 23, 1775 – Martha Washington’s Christmas Visit
Her visit brought comfort to a weary commander and hope to an army far from home.
Winter had settled hard over Cambridge. Snow lay on rooftops, the Charles River edged toward ice, and the Continental Army endured cold tents, short supplies, and long uncertainty. Then, just before Christmas, a carriage arrived from the south. Martha Washington had completed the long winter journey from Virginia to join her husband at headquarters.
Among the army, she was known simply as Lady Washington. Her presence was neither ceremonial nor public, but it mattered deeply. She had come to share the hardships of winter quarters, as she would do again each year of the war. In later life, she remarked that it had been her fortune to hear the last cannon of one campaign and the first of the next—arriving for winter encampments and departing again when spring sent the army back into motion. That pattern was already taking shape in Cambridge.
Life at headquarters grew more settled with her arrival. Officers’ families were present that winter, and the season passed more agreeably than many had feared. While hardship remained, Martha Washington’s calm, steady manner helped restore a sense of order to daily life and offered quiet encouragement to those around her. Conversations replaced some anxieties, and the presence of women softened the strain of a long campaign.
Lady Washington shared in the ordinary rhythms of camp life—maintaining household order, receiving visitors, and offering companionship and moral support. In later winters, such habits would include sewing, tending to the needs of the sick and wounded, and seeking out those weighed down by hardship; even here, at the war’s beginning, her presence reflected those same steady patterns of care. By example rather than instruction, she embodied patience, perseverance, and faith during a season when discouragement came easily. Her presence strengthened her husband as well, providing him with companionship and a reminder of the home he fought to preserve.
As Christmas approached, there was little celebration and no luxury. Yet there was gratitude—for endurance, for fellowship, and for the sustaining belief that Providence watched over their cause. In that cold December at Cambridge, Lady Washington stood as a living reminder of home, hope, and the quiet courage required to see the struggle through.
Source: Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution.
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Dec. 1775).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Voices of the Revolution
Tags: Martha Washington, George Washington, Women of the Revolution, Christmas 1775, Continental Army
December 23, 1775 – Martha Washington’s Christmas Visit
Her visit brought comfort to a weary commander and hope to an army far from home.
Winter had settled hard over Cambridge. Snow lay on rooftops, the Charles River edged toward ice, and the Continental Army endured cold tents, short supplies, and long uncertainty. Then, just before Christmas, a carriage arrived from the south. Martha Washington had completed the long winter journey from Virginia to join her husband at headquarters.
Among the army, she was known simply as Lady Washington. Her presence was neither ceremonial nor public, but it mattered deeply. She had come to share the hardships of winter quarters, as she would do again each year of the war. In later life, she remarked that it had been her fortune to hear the last cannon of one campaign and the first of the next—arriving for winter encampments and departing again when spring sent the army back into motion. That pattern was already taking shape in Cambridge.
Life at headquarters grew more settled with her arrival. Officers’ families were present that winter, and the season passed more agreeably than many had feared. While hardship remained, Martha Washington’s calm, steady manner helped restore a sense of order to daily life and offered quiet encouragement to those around her. Conversations replaced some anxieties, and the presence of women softened the strain of a long campaign.
Lady Washington shared in the ordinary rhythms of camp life—maintaining household order, receiving visitors, and offering companionship and moral support. In later winters, such habits would include sewing, tending to the needs of the sick and wounded, and seeking out those weighed down by hardship; even here, at the war’s beginning, her presence reflected those same steady patterns of care. By example rather than instruction, she embodied patience, perseverance, and faith during a season when discouragement came easily. Her presence strengthened her husband as well, providing him with companionship and a reminder of the home he fought to preserve.
As Christmas approached, there was little celebration and no luxury. Yet there was gratitude—for endurance, for fellowship, and for the sustaining belief that Providence watched over their cause. In that cold December at Cambridge, Lady Washington stood as a living reminder of home, hope, and the quiet courage required to see the struggle through.
Source: Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution.
Additional background: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Dec. 1775).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Voices of the Revolution
Tags: Martha Washington, George Washington, Women of the Revolution, Christmas 1775, Continental Army
December 24, 1775
Sunday: Christmas Eve, a Day of Rest and Prayer
December 24, 1775 – Sunday: Christmas Eve at Cambridge
Faith endured the storm, even when comfort did not.
A severe snowstorm swept across Cambridge as the Sabbath dawned. The cold was sharp, the ground frozen, and the work of survival did not pause. Barracks still needed raising, supplies were still scarce, and many soldiers spent the day laboring in the storm. Corporal Moses Sleeper recorded simply that it was Sunday, that the snow was severe, and that the work continued.
Yet Sunday was not ignored. Washington’s standing orders required that the Sabbath be observed with divine service whenever circumstances and weather allowed. Even in hardship, worship was expected to be offered. That did not mean the army gathered as one. In weather like this, attendance would have been uneven and small. Any service held that day was likely brief and improvised—perhaps a handful of men gathered inside a chaplain’s tent or hut, while others worked outside in the snow.
Where worship was possible, chaplains would have turned to the familiar Nativity account from Luke. Scripture and prayer would mark the day quietly, without ceremony, shaped by necessity rather than celebration.
For many in New England, Christmas itself remained a workday rather than a festival, a legacy of Puritan resistance to extravagance that stretched back to Plymouth’s earliest years. That custom still shaped daily life in 1775, and for the common soldier it left little room for sentiment. For twenty-two-year-old Moses Sleeper, the day could be summed up plainly: a “very dull Christmas.”
The commander, however, came from a different religious tradition, one that recognized Christmas even when it was kept without display. Writing that day to a trusted friend, Washington offered the simple courtesies of Christmas, extending “the compliments of the Season” without interrupting duty or order. It was a private acknowledgment, not a public celebration.
So Christmas Eve passed in fragments: prayer offered where it could be, labor endured where it must be, and faith carried quietly through cold and hunger. The storm did not still the guns or the work, but it did not extinguish devotion either. In the long winter of the siege, belief persisted not in comfort, but in obedience, patience, and trust that Providence still watched over the cause.
Source: Washington, The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; Diary of Moses Sleeper.
Additional background: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, Vol. I; Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Voices of the Revolution
Tags: George Washington, Martha Washington, Cambridge, Christmas 1775, New England traditions
December 24, 1775 – Sunday: Christmas Eve at Cambridge
Faith endured the storm, even when comfort did not.
A severe snowstorm swept across Cambridge as the Sabbath dawned. The cold was sharp, the ground frozen, and the work of survival did not pause. Barracks still needed raising, supplies were still scarce, and many soldiers spent the day laboring in the storm. Corporal Moses Sleeper recorded simply that it was Sunday, that the snow was severe, and that the work continued.
Yet Sunday was not ignored. Washington’s standing orders required that the Sabbath be observed with divine service whenever circumstances and weather allowed. Even in hardship, worship was expected to be offered. That did not mean the army gathered as one. In weather like this, attendance would have been uneven and small. Any service held that day was likely brief and improvised—perhaps a handful of men gathered inside a chaplain’s tent or hut, while others worked outside in the snow.
Where worship was possible, chaplains would have turned to the familiar Nativity account from Luke. Scripture and prayer would mark the day quietly, without ceremony, shaped by necessity rather than celebration.
For many in New England, Christmas itself remained a workday rather than a festival, a legacy of Puritan resistance to extravagance that stretched back to Plymouth’s earliest years. That custom still shaped daily life in 1775, and for the common soldier it left little room for sentiment. For twenty-two-year-old Moses Sleeper, the day could be summed up plainly: a “very dull Christmas.”
The commander, however, came from a different religious tradition, one that recognized Christmas even when it was kept without display. Writing that day to a trusted friend, Washington offered the simple courtesies of Christmas, extending “the compliments of the Season” without interrupting duty or order. It was a private acknowledgment, not a public celebration.
So Christmas Eve passed in fragments: prayer offered where it could be, labor endured where it must be, and faith carried quietly through cold and hunger. The storm did not still the guns or the work, but it did not extinguish devotion either. In the long winter of the siege, belief persisted not in comfort, but in obedience, patience, and trust that Providence still watched over the cause.
Source: Washington, The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; Diary of Moses Sleeper.
Additional background: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, Vol. I; Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Voices of the Revolution
Tags: George Washington, Martha Washington, Cambridge, Christmas 1775, New England traditions
December 25, 1775
A Colonial Christmas
December 25, 1775 – A Colonial Christmas
Across a divided land, faith marked the day more deeply than festivity.
Christmas Day dawned cold across the colonies, with war pressing close to hearth and meetinghouse alike. Everyone knew what day it was, but customs varied—then as now—according to church tradition and local practice.
In New England, the legacy of the Puritans still shaped daily life. Many families treated December 25 as an ordinary working day, or at most a solemn one. This restraint reached back to Plymouth’s earliest years, when the first settlers refused to set aside work for Christmas. William Bradford recorded one December 25 when men excused themselves from labor to spend time in quiet devotion. Instead, the work party came home to find them playing games in the street, and Bradford promptly stopped it. In 1775, the day was marked quietly, if at all, with Scripture reading and sober reflection rather than festivity.
Farther south, Anglican households approached Christmas differently. In Virginia and the Carolinas, December 25 was recognized as a holy day of the Church of England, though it was still observed with restraint. Families gathered for prayer and exchanged seasonal courtesies. In the midst of war, Christmas remained a day acknowledged with formality rather than indulgence—a pause for worship, not celebration.
Among German Protestant communities, especially the Moravians of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Christmas held a deeper devotional intensity. These congregations were known for worship shaped by candlelight and congregational singing. Christmas was not merely remembered but carefully observed, with hymns and prayers that emphasized the mystery of Christ’s birth and the hope it brought. Their services were reverent and warm with shared devotion.
Other church traditions fell along similar or contrasting lines. Presbyterians and Baptists generally shared New England’s restraint, while Quakers rejected the church calendar altogether, marking no special holy days. Catholics, though few in number and concentrated chiefly in Maryland, observed Christmas as a sacred feast.
Across the colonies, there was no single Christmas in 1775—only many expressions of the same faith in the One whose birth they celebrated. In a season overshadowed by uncertainty, Americans turned to the forms of worship they knew best. Whether through plain duty, formal prayer, or song-filled devotion, they marked the day with the belief that faith and hope endured even in the darkest winter.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation; Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England.
Additional background: Moravian Hymn Book (1754 ed.).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Voices of the Revolution
Tags: Christmas 1775, Colonial customs, New England, Plymouth, Virginia, Moravian, Hymns
December 25, 1775 – A Colonial Christmas
Across a divided land, faith marked the day more deeply than festivity.
Christmas Day dawned cold across the colonies, with war pressing close to hearth and meetinghouse alike. Everyone knew what day it was, but customs varied—then as now—according to church tradition and local practice.
In New England, the legacy of the Puritans still shaped daily life. Many families treated December 25 as an ordinary working day, or at most a solemn one. This restraint reached back to Plymouth’s earliest years, when the first settlers refused to set aside work for Christmas. William Bradford recorded one December 25 when men excused themselves from labor to spend time in quiet devotion. Instead, the work party came home to find them playing games in the street, and Bradford promptly stopped it. In 1775, the day was marked quietly, if at all, with Scripture reading and sober reflection rather than festivity.
Farther south, Anglican households approached Christmas differently. In Virginia and the Carolinas, December 25 was recognized as a holy day of the Church of England, though it was still observed with restraint. Families gathered for prayer and exchanged seasonal courtesies. In the midst of war, Christmas remained a day acknowledged with formality rather than indulgence—a pause for worship, not celebration.
Among German Protestant communities, especially the Moravians of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Christmas held a deeper devotional intensity. These congregations were known for worship shaped by candlelight and congregational singing. Christmas was not merely remembered but carefully observed, with hymns and prayers that emphasized the mystery of Christ’s birth and the hope it brought. Their services were reverent and warm with shared devotion.
Other church traditions fell along similar or contrasting lines. Presbyterians and Baptists generally shared New England’s restraint, while Quakers rejected the church calendar altogether, marking no special holy days. Catholics, though few in number and concentrated chiefly in Maryland, observed Christmas as a sacred feast.
Across the colonies, there was no single Christmas in 1775—only many expressions of the same faith in the One whose birth they celebrated. In a season overshadowed by uncertainty, Americans turned to the forms of worship they knew best. Whether through plain duty, formal prayer, or song-filled devotion, they marked the day with the belief that faith and hope endured even in the darkest winter.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation; Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England.
Additional background: Moravian Hymn Book (1754 ed.).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Voices of the Revolution
Tags: Christmas 1775, Colonial customs, New England, Plymouth, Virginia, Moravian, Hymns
December 26, 1775
Fort Johnson and the Carolina Coast
December 26, 1775 – Fort Johnson and the Carolina Coast
From the ashes of a royal fort, a new flag and a new resolve arose.
On Christmas Eve 1775, Henry Laurens received troubling news from abroad. British warships were preparing in the West Indies, and the Carolina coast might soon be threatened. The news arrived too late for action that night, so Laurens, president of the Council of Safety, called a meeting in Charleston for December 26. One urgent concern was Fort Johnson, the old royal outpost on James Island whose seizure months earlier had marked South Carolina’s first open break with royal authority.
That September night had changed everything. Before dawn on September 15, 1775, Charleston militiamen crossed the harbor and surrounded Fort Johnson. The small royal garrison, taken by surprise, surrendered without a shot. The British flag was hauled down, and in its place rose a new blue flag bearing a silver crescent. Powder, arms, and stores were removed to the city for safekeeping. From the harbor, royal governor Lord William Campbell watched from the sloop Tamar, protesting the action and relying on British naval power to counter it. Limited cannon fire scarred the fort, leaving its works damaged and incomplete. The rebels had secured the powder, but Fort Johnson itself stood battered and vulnerable.
By late December, with the threat of British ships looming, Charleston turned again to its defenses. Officers were dispatched to inspect and reoccupy Fort Johnson, while work accelerated on Sullivan’s Island, the long sandbar guarding the northern channel into the harbor. Together, these two positions formed the gateposts of Charleston’s defense: whoever held them controlled access to the city. Palmetto logs, earthworks, and hastily mounted guns reshaped the coastline as laborers, mechanics, and soldiers worked under constant pressure to prepare for attack.
The effort reached beyond the forts themselves. In town, uniforms were stitched, ammunition prepared, and artillery moved from wharves to batteries. Civilian artisans and laborers answered repeated calls for service, while military officers struggled with shortages of trained men, powder, and equipment. What had begun in alarm now hardened into organization and resolve. By the turn of the year, Charleston’s harbor stood guarded once more—not by royal decree, but by a people who had committed themselves, their labor, and their authority to the defense of their coast.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Council of Safety (September and December, 1775); Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Ramsay, History of South Carolina, Vol. 1.
Themes: Campaigns of the War
Tags: Fort Johnson, Charleston, James Island, Sullivan’s Island, Lord William Campbell, William Moultrie, 1775
December 26, 1775 – Fort Johnson and the Carolina Coast
From the ashes of a royal fort, a new flag and a new resolve arose.
On Christmas Eve 1775, Henry Laurens received troubling news from abroad. British warships were preparing in the West Indies, and the Carolina coast might soon be threatened. The news arrived too late for action that night, so Laurens, president of the Council of Safety, called a meeting in Charleston for December 26. One urgent concern was Fort Johnson, the old royal outpost on James Island whose seizure months earlier had marked South Carolina’s first open break with royal authority.
That September night had changed everything. Before dawn on September 15, 1775, Charleston militiamen crossed the harbor and surrounded Fort Johnson. The small royal garrison, taken by surprise, surrendered without a shot. The British flag was hauled down, and in its place rose a new blue flag bearing a silver crescent. Powder, arms, and stores were removed to the city for safekeeping. From the harbor, royal governor Lord William Campbell watched from the sloop Tamar, protesting the action and relying on British naval power to counter it. Limited cannon fire scarred the fort, leaving its works damaged and incomplete. The rebels had secured the powder, but Fort Johnson itself stood battered and vulnerable.
By late December, with the threat of British ships looming, Charleston turned again to its defenses. Officers were dispatched to inspect and reoccupy Fort Johnson, while work accelerated on Sullivan’s Island, the long sandbar guarding the northern channel into the harbor. Together, these two positions formed the gateposts of Charleston’s defense: whoever held them controlled access to the city. Palmetto logs, earthworks, and hastily mounted guns reshaped the coastline as laborers, mechanics, and soldiers worked under constant pressure to prepare for attack.
The effort reached beyond the forts themselves. In town, uniforms were stitched, ammunition prepared, and artillery moved from wharves to batteries. Civilian artisans and laborers answered repeated calls for service, while military officers struggled with shortages of trained men, powder, and equipment. What had begun in alarm now hardened into organization and resolve. By the turn of the year, Charleston’s harbor stood guarded once more—not by royal decree, but by a people who had committed themselves, their labor, and their authority to the defense of their coast.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Council of Safety (September and December, 1775); Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Ramsay, History of South Carolina, Vol. 1.
Themes: Campaigns of the War
Tags: Fort Johnson, Charleston, James Island, Sullivan’s Island, Lord William Campbell, William Moultrie, 1775
December 27, 1775
The Physician of Liberty
December 27, 1775 – The Physician of Liberty
Before he entered Congress, this doctor was already binding a nation’s wounds.
While soldiers shivered in camps around Boston, another battle pressed urgently in Philadelphia—against disease, disorder, and despair. The war had strained not only armies, but the fragile medical systems meant to sustain them. Amid that strain worked Dr. Benjamin Rush, a young physician whose service that winter quietly shaped the survival of both soldiers and principles.
By the fall of 1775, Rush had been appointed Physician and Surgeon to Pennsylvania’s armed boats by the colony’s Committee of Safety. His duties quickly extended beyond naval service. As sickness spread among troops and sailors and moved quickly through the city, the Committee turned its attention to quarantine, hospitals, and the care of the infected. The records speak plainly: Rush was among those assigned to care for patients under quarantine (the Pest House), rotating responsibility with fellow physicians and taking “proper care of the sick and wounded men.”
The Pest House—Philadelphia’s isolation hospital—stood at the front line of wartime medicine, where contagious diseases, such as smallpox, threatened to cripple forces already weakened by cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Rush did not merely advise from a distance. Committee minutes place him repeatedly in the machinery of response: reporting to the Board, helping organize care, and assuming responsibility where need was greatest.
Yet Rush’s concern reached beyond the body alone. Trained as both physician and moral thinker, he believed that the health of a republic depended upon more than remedies and hospitals. Years later, reflecting on education and civic life, Rush would argue that liberty itself rested on virtue, and that virtue depended on religion—specifically Christianity, which he described as “the religion of the New Testament.” That conviction was not born in hindsight. In the winter of 1775, it already shaped his work, as he treated medicine, discipline, and moral responsibility as inseparable duties of a free people.
Within months, Rush’s medical judgment would be sought by the Continental Congress itself. In July 1776, he would take his seat as a delegate, and soon after sign the Declaration of Independence. But in December 1775, before office or renown, he labored quietly in Philadelphia—tending the sick, strengthening institutions, and practicing a form of patriotism measured not in speeches or battles, but in care faithfully given.
Sources: Minutes of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety; Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral & Philosophical.
Additional background: The Adams Papers; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Journals of Congress, Vol. 4.
Themes: Moral Foundations; Faith and Providence
Tags: Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia, medicine, Committee of Safety, virtue, 1775
December 27, 1775 – The Physician of Liberty
Before he entered Congress, this doctor was already binding a nation’s wounds.
While soldiers shivered in camps around Boston, another battle pressed urgently in Philadelphia—against disease, disorder, and despair. The war had strained not only armies, but the fragile medical systems meant to sustain them. Amid that strain worked Dr. Benjamin Rush, a young physician whose service that winter quietly shaped the survival of both soldiers and principles.
By the fall of 1775, Rush had been appointed Physician and Surgeon to Pennsylvania’s armed boats by the colony’s Committee of Safety. His duties quickly extended beyond naval service. As sickness spread among troops and sailors and moved quickly through the city, the Committee turned its attention to quarantine, hospitals, and the care of the infected. The records speak plainly: Rush was among those assigned to care for patients under quarantine (the Pest House), rotating responsibility with fellow physicians and taking “proper care of the sick and wounded men.”
The Pest House—Philadelphia’s isolation hospital—stood at the front line of wartime medicine, where contagious diseases, such as smallpox, threatened to cripple forces already weakened by cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Rush did not merely advise from a distance. Committee minutes place him repeatedly in the machinery of response: reporting to the Board, helping organize care, and assuming responsibility where need was greatest.
Yet Rush’s concern reached beyond the body alone. Trained as both physician and moral thinker, he believed that the health of a republic depended upon more than remedies and hospitals. Years later, reflecting on education and civic life, Rush would argue that liberty itself rested on virtue, and that virtue depended on religion—specifically Christianity, which he described as “the religion of the New Testament.” That conviction was not born in hindsight. In the winter of 1775, it already shaped his work, as he treated medicine, discipline, and moral responsibility as inseparable duties of a free people.
Within months, Rush’s medical judgment would be sought by the Continental Congress itself. In July 1776, he would take his seat as a delegate, and soon after sign the Declaration of Independence. But in December 1775, before office or renown, he labored quietly in Philadelphia—tending the sick, strengthening institutions, and practicing a form of patriotism measured not in speeches or battles, but in care faithfully given.
Sources: Minutes of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety; Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral & Philosophical.
Additional background: The Adams Papers; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Journals of Congress, Vol. 4.
Themes: Moral Foundations; Faith and Providence
Tags: Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia, medicine, Committee of Safety, virtue, 1775
December 28, 1775
John Jay and a Fracturing Colony
December 28, 1775 – John Jay and a Fracturing Colony
When New York began to splinter, Congress moved to hold the Revolution together.
By the winter of 1775, New York was no longer acting as a single, coherent colony. Entire counties refused to send delegates to the Provincial Congress. Emergency committees exercised power where courts and assemblies faltered. Loyalist strength lingered openly in some regions, while Patriot authority remained uncertain in others. The danger was not abstract. If New York fractured before the British arrived—as General Washington already feared they would—it could unravel the cause from within.
The strain showed even in Philadelphia. Congress labored through an unusually long session just before Christmas, struggling to maintain a quorum. In the midst of that pressure, New York delegate John Jay warned that if one man fell ill or departed, the colony could lose its voice altogether. Congress did not adjourn for the holidays because it could not afford to. One of the central colonies was beginning to slip toward disorder.
On December 28, Congress responded. Rather than issuing a military order or public rebuke, it appointed a committee “to take into consideration the state of New York.” Its members came from across the colonies—New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South—signaling that New York’s instability was not a local problem, but a continental one. Among them was Jay, the only New York delegate on the committee, and the man best suited to the task.
Jay was not a firebrand. He was a lawyer trained to distrust power exercised without law, whether by kings or by revolutionaries. In private letters that winter, he worried openly about “rival governments” and warned that resistance to Britain must not dissolve into anarchy. Order, he believed, was not the enemy of liberty, but its safeguard. Even as armies gathered and tempers rose, Jay insisted that justice, consent, and lawful authority were the foundations on which independence would have to rest.
Congress’s action that day did not solve New York’s problems, but it acknowledged them. The Revolution would not survive on battlefield victories alone. It would endure only if its leaders could hold fractured communities together long enough to replace emergency rule with lawful government—and men like John Jay were already working toward that end.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; The Papers of John Jay; New York: Journals of the Provincial Congress.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Self-Government; Moral Foundations; Founding Principles
Tags: John Jay, New York delegation, Continental Congress, New York Provincial Congress, 1775
December 28, 1775 – John Jay and a Fracturing Colony
When New York began to splinter, Congress moved to hold the Revolution together.
By the winter of 1775, New York was no longer acting as a single, coherent colony. Entire counties refused to send delegates to the Provincial Congress. Emergency committees exercised power where courts and assemblies faltered. Loyalist strength lingered openly in some regions, while Patriot authority remained uncertain in others. The danger was not abstract. If New York fractured before the British arrived—as General Washington already feared they would—it could unravel the cause from within.
The strain showed even in Philadelphia. Congress labored through an unusually long session just before Christmas, struggling to maintain a quorum. In the midst of that pressure, New York delegate John Jay warned that if one man fell ill or departed, the colony could lose its voice altogether. Congress did not adjourn for the holidays because it could not afford to. One of the central colonies was beginning to slip toward disorder.
On December 28, Congress responded. Rather than issuing a military order or public rebuke, it appointed a committee “to take into consideration the state of New York.” Its members came from across the colonies—New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South—signaling that New York’s instability was not a local problem, but a continental one. Among them was Jay, the only New York delegate on the committee, and the man best suited to the task.
Jay was not a firebrand. He was a lawyer trained to distrust power exercised without law, whether by kings or by revolutionaries. In private letters that winter, he worried openly about “rival governments” and warned that resistance to Britain must not dissolve into anarchy. Order, he believed, was not the enemy of liberty, but its safeguard. Even as armies gathered and tempers rose, Jay insisted that justice, consent, and lawful authority were the foundations on which independence would have to rest.
Congress’s action that day did not solve New York’s problems, but it acknowledged them. The Revolution would not survive on battlefield victories alone. It would endure only if its leaders could hold fractured communities together long enough to replace emergency rule with lawful government—and men like John Jay were already working toward that end.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; The Papers of John Jay; New York: Journals of the Provincial Congress.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Self-Government; Moral Foundations; Founding Principles
Tags: John Jay, New York delegation, Continental Congress, New York Provincial Congress, 1775
December 29, 1775
The Banners of Liberty
December 29, 1775 – The Banners of Liberty
Before there was a single nation, there were many flags—each a prayer stitched in color.
By the end of 1775, banners of every hue rippled over ships, forts, and fields where Americans gathered in defense of freedom. Some appealed to Heaven, some to Liberty, and all to Providence. Each told a story, and together they revealed a people in search of unity.
The Pine Tree Flag, also called the Appeal to Heaven, flew first over small ships commissioned under General Washington in Massachusetts. Its white field and evergreen symbol drew on philosopher John Locke’s phrase, “An appeal to Heaven,” meaning that when justice fails on earth, the final appeal is to God. The motto soon appeared in sermons, pamphlets, and letters.
That December in Philadelphia, the Grand Union Flag was hoisted aboard the Alfred, where Lieutenant John Paul Jones gave the first salute to the new Continental Navy. A few days later, Washington’s army raised the same design at Cambridge, marking another step from rebellion toward nationhood. The flag boasted thirteen red-and-white stripes, representing the united colonies, while the corner still bore the British Union.
The Union was so named because it combined the flags of three countries, superimposing them on each other: the red cross of St. George of England and the diagonal crosses of St. Andrew of Scotland and St. Patrick of Ireland. It was a fitting symbol for a shared heritage, though the colonies would ultimately replace it with a new emblem—a circle of stars on a field of blue.
Across the colonies, local regiments carried their own colors. In Massachusetts, townspeople raised a crimson “Liberty and Union” flag. In South Carolina, militiamen unfurled blue banners bearing silver crescents and the word “Liberty.” In Virginia and Pennsylvania, troops carried mottos drawn from Scripture and conscience alike: “Resistance to Tyrants Is Obedience to God.”
Merchantmen, privateers, and patriot crews painted stripes on sails, pine trees on pennants, or serpents with the warning “Don’t Tread on Me.” Each emblem blended vigilance with faith, and together they signaled that the colonies were no longer merely subjects but a people awakening to purpose.
Their colors varied, but their conviction did not. Before there was one flag to bind thirteen states, there were many banners of liberty—each an appeal for God’s favor in the cause of liberty.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress (Dec. 3, 1775); The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (Dec. 1775); Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, “Union Jack.”
Themes: Forging Unity; Faith and Providence
Tags: flags, Pine Tree Flag, Grand Union Flag, Liberty and Union, Gadsden Flag, John Paul Jones, Washington, Providence, 1775
December 29, 1775 – The Banners of Liberty
Before there was a single nation, there were many flags—each a prayer stitched in color.
By the end of 1775, banners of every hue rippled over ships, forts, and fields where Americans gathered in defense of freedom. Some appealed to Heaven, some to Liberty, and all to Providence. Each told a story, and together they revealed a people in search of unity.
The Pine Tree Flag, also called the Appeal to Heaven, flew first over small ships commissioned under General Washington in Massachusetts. Its white field and evergreen symbol drew on philosopher John Locke’s phrase, “An appeal to Heaven,” meaning that when justice fails on earth, the final appeal is to God. The motto soon appeared in sermons, pamphlets, and letters.
That December in Philadelphia, the Grand Union Flag was hoisted aboard the Alfred, where Lieutenant John Paul Jones gave the first salute to the new Continental Navy. A few days later, Washington’s army raised the same design at Cambridge, marking another step from rebellion toward nationhood. The flag boasted thirteen red-and-white stripes, representing the united colonies, while the corner still bore the British Union.
The Union was so named because it combined the flags of three countries, superimposing them on each other: the red cross of St. George of England and the diagonal crosses of St. Andrew of Scotland and St. Patrick of Ireland. It was a fitting symbol for a shared heritage, though the colonies would ultimately replace it with a new emblem—a circle of stars on a field of blue.
Across the colonies, local regiments carried their own colors. In Massachusetts, townspeople raised a crimson “Liberty and Union” flag. In South Carolina, militiamen unfurled blue banners bearing silver crescents and the word “Liberty.” In Virginia and Pennsylvania, troops carried mottos drawn from Scripture and conscience alike: “Resistance to Tyrants Is Obedience to God.”
Merchantmen, privateers, and patriot crews painted stripes on sails, pine trees on pennants, or serpents with the warning “Don’t Tread on Me.” Each emblem blended vigilance with faith, and together they signaled that the colonies were no longer merely subjects but a people awakening to purpose.
Their colors varied, but their conviction did not. Before there was one flag to bind thirteen states, there were many banners of liberty—each an appeal for God’s favor in the cause of liberty.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress (Dec. 3, 1775); The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (Dec. 1775); Force, American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, “Union Jack.”
Themes: Forging Unity; Faith and Providence
Tags: flags, Pine Tree Flag, Grand Union Flag, Liberty and Union, Gadsden Flag, John Paul Jones, Washington, Providence, 1775
December 30, 1775
Before the Storm at Quebec
December 30, 1775 – Before the Storm at Quebec
Through storm and sacrifice, the colonies tested their unity against impossible odds.
Snow swept through the narrow streets and frozen approaches of Quebec City as two columns of American troops gathered for the coming assault. It was the eve of battle—the last full night of 1775—and they had come farther and endured more than anyone thought possible, pressing north through wilderness, hunger, and winter storms. Their goal was Quebec, the fortified capital of British Canada, perched high above the St. Lawrence River and defended by steep cliffs, walls, and cannon.
General Richard Montgomery would lead one column against the lower town. The other would be commanded by Benedict Arnold, who had already survived a brutal march through the Maine wilderness. The plan was daring: attack before dawn, strike through the storm, and surprise the defenders before they could respond. Snow and wind howled through the darkness, masking the Americans’ movement but numbing hands and clogging muskets with snow and damp powder.
What Montgomery could not know was that British defenders waited in silence ahead—cannon loaded, fuses ready—overlooking the confined approaches below. The very streets meant to shield the advance would channel it forward, leaving little room to maneuver once the first shot was fired.
Few could foresee what dawn would bring: ice-driven winds cutting into faces, muskets misfiring in the snow, and sudden explosions at close range. Montgomery would fall at the first volley, struck down almost instantly. Arnold would be wounded and carried from the field. Many of their men would be killed, captured, or forced to retreat through the storm. Yet on that night, as they prepared in darkness and cold, they believed the cause of liberty worth any cost.
Even in defeat, something lasting emerged. Soldiers from Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia—men of different colonies and backgrounds—fought as one. Montgomery, an Irish-born officer who had once worn the King’s uniform, died an American general. Arnold, though wounded, emerged from the battle hailed at the time as a hero, praised for his courage and leadership under impossible odds.
The campaign would fail to capture Quebec. But it revealed something the colonies had not yet proven: that they could bleed, endure, and strive together for a common cause—even in loss.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 4; The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution; Arnold, Journal of the Expedition to Quebec.
Themes: Continental Army in Canada; Forging Unity
Tags: Richard Montgomery, Benedict Arnold, Quebec, Continental Army, Canada, 1775
December 30, 1775 – Before the Storm at Quebec
Through storm and sacrifice, the colonies tested their unity against impossible odds.
Snow swept through the narrow streets and frozen approaches of Quebec City as two columns of American troops gathered for the coming assault. It was the eve of battle—the last full night of 1775—and they had come farther and endured more than anyone thought possible, pressing north through wilderness, hunger, and winter storms. Their goal was Quebec, the fortified capital of British Canada, perched high above the St. Lawrence River and defended by steep cliffs, walls, and cannon.
General Richard Montgomery would lead one column against the lower town. The other would be commanded by Benedict Arnold, who had already survived a brutal march through the Maine wilderness. The plan was daring: attack before dawn, strike through the storm, and surprise the defenders before they could respond. Snow and wind howled through the darkness, masking the Americans’ movement but numbing hands and clogging muskets with snow and damp powder.
What Montgomery could not know was that British defenders waited in silence ahead—cannon loaded, fuses ready—overlooking the confined approaches below. The very streets meant to shield the advance would channel it forward, leaving little room to maneuver once the first shot was fired.
Few could foresee what dawn would bring: ice-driven winds cutting into faces, muskets misfiring in the snow, and sudden explosions at close range. Montgomery would fall at the first volley, struck down almost instantly. Arnold would be wounded and carried from the field. Many of their men would be killed, captured, or forced to retreat through the storm. Yet on that night, as they prepared in darkness and cold, they believed the cause of liberty worth any cost.
Even in defeat, something lasting emerged. Soldiers from Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia—men of different colonies and backgrounds—fought as one. Montgomery, an Irish-born officer who had once worn the King’s uniform, died an American general. Arnold, though wounded, emerged from the battle hailed at the time as a hero, praised for his courage and leadership under impossible odds.
The campaign would fail to capture Quebec. But it revealed something the colonies had not yet proven: that they could bleed, endure, and strive together for a common cause—even in loss.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 4; The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution; Arnold, Journal of the Expedition to Quebec.
Themes: Continental Army in Canada; Forging Unity
Tags: Richard Montgomery, Benedict Arnold, Quebec, Continental Army, Canada, 1775
December 31, 1775
Sunday: The Year Ends in Faith
December 31, 1775 – Sunday: The Year Ends in Faith
At the dawn of the new year, Washington reflected on Providence and hope for the future.
Winter lay heavy on the Cambridge lines as 1775 drew to a close. Enlistments had expired, supplies ran thin, and thousands of worn-out soldiers were preparing to leave the old army at midnight. Yet Washington—facing uncertainty, short manpower, and the looming reorganization of the entire force—did not frame the year’s end in discouragement. Instead, he looked to Providence, duty, and the moral resolve of a people fighting for liberty.
Weeks earlier, he had appealed to his men to reenlist, reminding them that their service was not only military but moral:
“…[E]ngaging for another year is the highest proof they can give of their attachment to the noble cause of liberty. At the same time that it reflects honor upon themselves, it may, under Providence, give posterity reason to bless them as the happy instruments of their delivery from those chains which were actually forging for them.”
—General Orders, December 10, 1775
In his first orders of the new year, Washington pressed his men toward order, steadiness, and a disciplined courage grounded in something higher than themselves.
“…Subordination & discipline (the life and soul of an army), which next under Providence, is to make us formidable to our enemies, honorable in ourselves, and respected in the world.”
—General Orders, January 1, 1776
For Washington, “subordination and discipline” was moral courage, not merely drill. It was a self-governed steadiness that restrained passion, strengthened character, and made an army, under Providence, truly formidable.
Meanwhile, the struggle for independence was never only a contest of arms. Throughout his life Washington argued that liberty could not stand without virtue, and virtue could not stand without religion. Nineteenth-century collections of Washington’s “maxims” later gathered these convictions into polished summaries—paraphrases rather than exact quotations, yet faithful to the principles he expressed again and again.
One 19th-century summary captured his conviction this way:
“We must take the passions of men as nature has given them… and the surest guides to public happiness are virtue and religion.”
Thus, as the old year passed and the new one rose, Washington looked beyond hardship toward renewal. The fate of the army—and the nation—rested not only on muskets and fortifications, but on Providence and the moral foundations he believed freedom required.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4: General Orders, December 10, 1775 and January 1, 1776.
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character; Schroeder, Maxims of Washington.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Moral Foundations
Tags: Washington, Cambridge, General Orders, Providence, Continental Army, 1775
December 31, 1775 – Sunday: The Year Ends in Faith
At the dawn of the new year, Washington reflected on Providence and hope for the future.
Winter lay heavy on the Cambridge lines as 1775 drew to a close. Enlistments had expired, supplies ran thin, and thousands of worn-out soldiers were preparing to leave the old army at midnight. Yet Washington—facing uncertainty, short manpower, and the looming reorganization of the entire force—did not frame the year’s end in discouragement. Instead, he looked to Providence, duty, and the moral resolve of a people fighting for liberty.
Weeks earlier, he had appealed to his men to reenlist, reminding them that their service was not only military but moral:
“…[E]ngaging for another year is the highest proof they can give of their attachment to the noble cause of liberty. At the same time that it reflects honor upon themselves, it may, under Providence, give posterity reason to bless them as the happy instruments of their delivery from those chains which were actually forging for them.”
—General Orders, December 10, 1775
In his first orders of the new year, Washington pressed his men toward order, steadiness, and a disciplined courage grounded in something higher than themselves.
“…Subordination & discipline (the life and soul of an army), which next under Providence, is to make us formidable to our enemies, honorable in ourselves, and respected in the world.”
—General Orders, January 1, 1776
For Washington, “subordination and discipline” was moral courage, not merely drill. It was a self-governed steadiness that restrained passion, strengthened character, and made an army, under Providence, truly formidable.
Meanwhile, the struggle for independence was never only a contest of arms. Throughout his life Washington argued that liberty could not stand without virtue, and virtue could not stand without religion. Nineteenth-century collections of Washington’s “maxims” later gathered these convictions into polished summaries—paraphrases rather than exact quotations, yet faithful to the principles he expressed again and again.
One 19th-century summary captured his conviction this way:
“We must take the passions of men as nature has given them… and the surest guides to public happiness are virtue and religion.”
Thus, as the old year passed and the new one rose, Washington looked beyond hardship toward renewal. The fate of the army—and the nation—rested not only on muskets and fortifications, but on Providence and the moral foundations he believed freedom required.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4: General Orders, December 10, 1775 and January 1, 1776.
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character; Schroeder, Maxims of Washington.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Moral Foundations
Tags: Washington, Cambridge, General Orders, Providence, Continental Army, 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
November 5, 1775
A Sunday of Deliverance
November 5, 1775 – A Sunday of Deliverance
Liberty demanded not only courage, but conscience.
On this day in England, bonfires once blazed in every town to mark the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt by a group of Catholic conspirators to destroy the Protestant government. They planned to ignite barrels of gunpowder hidden beneath the Houses of Parliament, killing King James I and restoring a Catholic monarchy.
The plot was foiled when Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding the explosives. Though not the leader of the uprising, his name became legend. In the wake of his arrest, Parliament declared each November 5 a Day of Deliverance, celebrating England’s preservation from the threat of a Catholic rebellion.
For the next century and a half, England and its colonies observed the day with fires, bells, parades, and effigies of the pope, celebrating their deliverance from tyranny and treachery. But the custom had grown rowdy and violent, and by 1775 the colonies had greater threats facing it, and fewer reasons to kindle the old hatreds of England.
In 1775, November 5 fell on a Sunday, and General George Washington, now commanding the Continental Army outside Boston, issued new orders. He forbade his troops to take part in the traditional “Pope’s Day” observances and warned against offending the colonies’ Catholic allies, whether in Canada or Rhode Island, whose loyalty he sought to secure.
“As the Commander in Chief has been apprised of a design formed for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the effigy of the pope—He cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense.”
— General Orders, Cambridge, November 5, 1775
Washington’s rebuke was more than a call for decorum. It marked the transformation of an old English holiday into an American moment of conscience. The cause of liberty could not rest on the fires of prejudice. America needed to be delivered from old hatreds to forge a new path of freedom.
Source: General Orders, Cambridge, November 5, 1775, Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Forging Unity
Tags: George Washington, Cambridge, Pope’s Day, Religious Tolerance, Continental Army, 1775
November 5, 1775 – A Sunday of Deliverance
Liberty demanded not only courage, but conscience.
On this day in England, bonfires once blazed in every town to mark the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt by a group of Catholic conspirators to destroy the Protestant government. They planned to ignite barrels of gunpowder hidden beneath the Houses of Parliament, killing King James I and restoring a Catholic monarchy.
The plot was foiled when Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding the explosives. Though not the leader of the uprising, his name became legend. In the wake of his arrest, Parliament declared each November 5 a Day of Deliverance, celebrating England’s preservation from the threat of a Catholic rebellion.
For the next century and a half, England and its colonies observed the day with fires, bells, parades, and effigies of the pope, celebrating their deliverance from tyranny and treachery. But the custom had grown rowdy and violent, and by 1775 the colonies had greater threats facing it, and fewer reasons to kindle the old hatreds of England.
In 1775, November 5 fell on a Sunday, and General George Washington, now commanding the Continental Army outside Boston, issued new orders. He forbade his troops to take part in the traditional “Pope’s Day” observances and warned against offending the colonies’ Catholic allies, whether in Canada or Rhode Island, whose loyalty he sought to secure.
“As the Commander in Chief has been apprised of a design formed for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the effigy of the pope—He cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense.”
— General Orders, Cambridge, November 5, 1775
Washington’s rebuke was more than a call for decorum. It marked the transformation of an old English holiday into an American moment of conscience. The cause of liberty could not rest on the fires of prejudice. America needed to be delivered from old hatreds to forge a new path of freedom.
Source: General Orders, Cambridge, November 5, 1775, Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Forging Unity
Tags: George Washington, Cambridge, Pope’s Day, Religious Tolerance, Continental Army, 1775
November 6, 1775
Voices That Would Shape a Nation
November 6, 1775 – Voices That Would Shape a Nation
Many minds, one mission: Congress learns to govern a new nation.
As Congress worked to sustain the army it had restructured only days before, new voices arrived to shape the course of the cause itself. When Pennsylvania’s new delegation entered the Continental Congress in early November, five men whose influence would echo through the Revolution and beyond took their seats.
Benjamin Franklin had just returned from years in London, where he had pleaded in vain for reconciliation. John Dickinson, his friend and frequent debating partner, still hoped peace could be secured. Though himself an Anglican, Dickinson had been raised in Quaker schools and shaped by their reverence for peace and conscience, principles that guided his caution even as war pressed close. Joining them were Robert Morris, whose financial skill would one day sustain the army; George Ross, a respected judge and future signer of the Declaration; and James Wilson, a brilliant young lawyer whose ideas of liberty and law would help frame the Constitution.
The chamber was thick with the sounds of debate—measured, passionate, sometimes weary—as men of learning and conscience wrestled with what loyalty and liberty required. In their ranks, Franklin urged firm resolve toward independence; Dickinson counseled measured caution and the hope of reunification with the Crown; Wilson sought reasoned balance between them. Together they represented the whole spectrum of colonial thought: from reconciliation to independence, from philosophy to practice.
Their arrival gave Congress both credibility and character. With Franklin’s global experience, Dickinson’s eloquence, and Morris’s mastery of commerce, the assembly began to look less like a protest body and more like a functioning government. Every debate they joined, every vote they cast, became a step toward defining what kind of nation the colonies might become.
When independence was finally declared, Dickinson chose not to sign, but he did not shrink from the cause. He served in uniform, led Pennsylvania’s militia, and later helped frame the very government his caution had sought to preserve. His story, like the Congress he served, reminds us that unity was not achieved once for all, but renewed each day by grace and conviction.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, November 6, 1775.
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Signers of the Declaration; Loyalty or Independence
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Pennsylvania delegation, Continental Congress, 1775
November 6, 1775 – Voices That Would Shape a Nation
Many minds, one mission: Congress learns to govern a new nation.
As Congress worked to sustain the army it had restructured only days before, new voices arrived to shape the course of the cause itself. When Pennsylvania’s new delegation entered the Continental Congress in early November, five men whose influence would echo through the Revolution and beyond took their seats.
Benjamin Franklin had just returned from years in London, where he had pleaded in vain for reconciliation. John Dickinson, his friend and frequent debating partner, still hoped peace could be secured. Though himself an Anglican, Dickinson had been raised in Quaker schools and shaped by their reverence for peace and conscience, principles that guided his caution even as war pressed close. Joining them were Robert Morris, whose financial skill would one day sustain the army; George Ross, a respected judge and future signer of the Declaration; and James Wilson, a brilliant young lawyer whose ideas of liberty and law would help frame the Constitution.
The chamber was thick with the sounds of debate—measured, passionate, sometimes weary—as men of learning and conscience wrestled with what loyalty and liberty required. In their ranks, Franklin urged firm resolve toward independence; Dickinson counseled measured caution and the hope of reunification with the Crown; Wilson sought reasoned balance between them. Together they represented the whole spectrum of colonial thought: from reconciliation to independence, from philosophy to practice.
Their arrival gave Congress both credibility and character. With Franklin’s global experience, Dickinson’s eloquence, and Morris’s mastery of commerce, the assembly began to look less like a protest body and more like a functioning government. Every debate they joined, every vote they cast, became a step toward defining what kind of nation the colonies might become.
When independence was finally declared, Dickinson chose not to sign, but he did not shrink from the cause. He served in uniform, led Pennsylvania’s militia, and later helped frame the very government his caution had sought to preserve. His story, like the Congress he served, reminds us that unity was not achieved once for all, but renewed each day by grace and conviction.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, November 6, 1775.
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Signers of the Declaration; Loyalty or Independence
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Pennsylvania delegation, Continental Congress, 1775
November 7, 1775
The Governors Adrift
November 7, 1775 – The Governors Adrift
As royal governors ruled from exile, the colonies began to govern themselves.
Once, Williamsburg had been the pride of royal Virginia—a quiet capital of brick homes, green lawns, and steady order under the King’s governor. But by the autumn of 1775, its palace stood empty and its assembly hall silent. The House of Burgesses, dissolved by Lord Dunmore, had long since reconvened in the Raleigh Tavern, where men of conscience pledged to govern themselves when royal authority would not. Patrick Henry, famed for his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, was among them.
Now Dunmore ruled from a ship. Earlier that spring, he had ordered the removal of gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine. He claimed this was a precaution to keep it from falling into rebel hands, but Virginians saw it as aggression. Armed militia gathered at his door, and tensions flared in what became known as the Gunpowder Incident. When violence seemed inevitable, Dunmore fled the governor’s mansion and took refuge aboard the British fleet at Norfolk. His “government” now consisted of a few officers and clerks adrift in the harbor, governing by proclamation rather than presence.
From his floating headquarters, Dunmore sought to reassert control. On November 7, 1775, he issued a proclamation promising freedom to enslaved people who joined the British forces. The order alarmed colonists, who feared the war might spill into their own communities, and it hardened their opposition to British rule.
Meanwhile, Dunmore’s retreat to the sea was not unique. In North Carolina, Governor Josiah Martin faced the same fate, forced from his capital at New Bern and conducting affairs from a British sloop offshore. Farther south, other governors watched in alarm, aware their own authority might soon meet the same tide.
By year’s end, the King’s representatives in Virginia and North Carolina ruled little more than the waters beneath their hulls, while assemblies on shore began to govern in their own name. Royal power was drifting away—and with it, the last illusion that reconciliation might bring the colonies back under the Crown.
Source: Proclamation by Lord Dunmore, Norfolk, November 7, 1775; Journals of the Continental Congress (1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Loyalty or Independence; Self-Government
Tags: Gunpowder Incident (Virginia), Dunmore’s Proclamation, colonial governors in exile, royal authority, 1775
November 7, 1775 – The Governors Adrift
As royal governors ruled from exile, the colonies began to govern themselves.
Once, Williamsburg had been the pride of royal Virginia—a quiet capital of brick homes, green lawns, and steady order under the King’s governor. But by the autumn of 1775, its palace stood empty and its assembly hall silent. The House of Burgesses, dissolved by Lord Dunmore, had long since reconvened in the Raleigh Tavern, where men of conscience pledged to govern themselves when royal authority would not. Patrick Henry, famed for his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, was among them.
Now Dunmore ruled from a ship. Earlier that spring, he had ordered the removal of gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine. He claimed this was a precaution to keep it from falling into rebel hands, but Virginians saw it as aggression. Armed militia gathered at his door, and tensions flared in what became known as the Gunpowder Incident. When violence seemed inevitable, Dunmore fled the governor’s mansion and took refuge aboard the British fleet at Norfolk. His “government” now consisted of a few officers and clerks adrift in the harbor, governing by proclamation rather than presence.
From his floating headquarters, Dunmore sought to reassert control. On November 7, 1775, he issued a proclamation promising freedom to enslaved people who joined the British forces. The order alarmed colonists, who feared the war might spill into their own communities, and it hardened their opposition to British rule.
Meanwhile, Dunmore’s retreat to the sea was not unique. In North Carolina, Governor Josiah Martin faced the same fate, forced from his capital at New Bern and conducting affairs from a British sloop offshore. Farther south, other governors watched in alarm, aware their own authority might soon meet the same tide.
By year’s end, the King’s representatives in Virginia and North Carolina ruled little more than the waters beneath their hulls, while assemblies on shore began to govern in their own name. Royal power was drifting away—and with it, the last illusion that reconciliation might bring the colonies back under the Crown.
Source: Proclamation by Lord Dunmore, Norfolk, November 7, 1775; Journals of the Continental Congress (1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Loyalty or Independence; Self-Government
Tags: Gunpowder Incident (Virginia), Dunmore’s Proclamation, colonial governors in exile, royal authority, 1775
November 8, 1775
The Bookseller’s Bold Idea
November 8, 1775 – The Bookseller’s Bold Idea
A young man’s imagination would soon move mountains—and cannon.
Boston had been under siege since the spring when colonial militia surrounded the city after Lexington and Concord. For months, General George Washington’s newly formed Continental Army had dug in along the surrounding hills, keeping the British bottled up.
But by November, the stalemate was wearing thin. The Americans could hold their ground but not advance. Without heavy artillery, Washington could neither storm the city nor force the British to withdraw.
Among his officers was Henry Knox, then twenty-five. A Boston bookseller, he had taught himself engineering and gunnery from the volumes he once sold. Before the war, his shop on Cornhill had been a gathering place for patriots, filled with maps, treatises on fortifications, and discussions of liberty. Tall, stout, and cheerful, Knox possessed both an inquisitive mind and an unshakable confidence that problems existed to be solved.
When the subject turned to artillery, Knox saw a path others had overlooked. Far to the north, Fort Ticonderoga, captured that spring by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, held a vast store of British cannon. If those guns could somehow be transported to Boston, they might give the patriots the upper hand.
The proposal was audacious: hundreds of miles of wilderness, rivers to cross, mountains to climb, and winter on the way. But Washington listened carefully—and told him to prepare a plan. It was the beginning of a friendship and mutual trust that would last the length of the war.
Knox’s plan was simple only in theory. He would travel to Ticonderoga, oversee the selection and packing of the cannon, and haul them south by sled, oxen, and sheer determination. When he departed ten days later, few imagined the scale of the task he had volunteered for, or how decisive it would prove.
What began as the bold idea of a young bookseller would soon become one of the Revolution’s greatest feats of endurance—the journey that changed the fate of Boston and marked Henry Knox as one of Washington’s most faithful comrades.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 8, 1775); General Orders, Cambridge, November 8, 1775, in The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4.
Themes: Siege of Boston; Courage and Ingenuity
Tags: Henry Knox, George Washington, Fort Ticonderoga, Boston Siege, Continental Army, Artillery, 1775
November 8, 1775 – The Bookseller’s Bold Idea
A young man’s imagination would soon move mountains—and cannon.
Boston had been under siege since the spring when colonial militia surrounded the city after Lexington and Concord. For months, General George Washington’s newly formed Continental Army had dug in along the surrounding hills, keeping the British bottled up.
But by November, the stalemate was wearing thin. The Americans could hold their ground but not advance. Without heavy artillery, Washington could neither storm the city nor force the British to withdraw.
Among his officers was Henry Knox, then twenty-five. A Boston bookseller, he had taught himself engineering and gunnery from the volumes he once sold. Before the war, his shop on Cornhill had been a gathering place for patriots, filled with maps, treatises on fortifications, and discussions of liberty. Tall, stout, and cheerful, Knox possessed both an inquisitive mind and an unshakable confidence that problems existed to be solved.
When the subject turned to artillery, Knox saw a path others had overlooked. Far to the north, Fort Ticonderoga, captured that spring by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, held a vast store of British cannon. If those guns could somehow be transported to Boston, they might give the patriots the upper hand.
The proposal was audacious: hundreds of miles of wilderness, rivers to cross, mountains to climb, and winter on the way. But Washington listened carefully—and told him to prepare a plan. It was the beginning of a friendship and mutual trust that would last the length of the war.
Knox’s plan was simple only in theory. He would travel to Ticonderoga, oversee the selection and packing of the cannon, and haul them south by sled, oxen, and sheer determination. When he departed ten days later, few imagined the scale of the task he had volunteered for, or how decisive it would prove.
What began as the bold idea of a young bookseller would soon become one of the Revolution’s greatest feats of endurance—the journey that changed the fate of Boston and marked Henry Knox as one of Washington’s most faithful comrades.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 8, 1775); General Orders, Cambridge, November 8, 1775, in The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4.
Themes: Siege of Boston; Courage and Ingenuity
Tags: Henry Knox, George Washington, Fort Ticonderoga, Boston Siege, Continental Army, Artillery, 1775
November 9, 1775
The Spirit of Boston
November 9, 1775 – The Spirit of Boston
Exiled from his city, Samuel Adams carried Boston’s cause to Congress.
Boston lay silent under siege, its wharves deserted and its meetinghouses closed. The man who had once rallied thousands there now paced the floor of what would later be called Independence Hall in Philadelphia: Samuel Adams, the quiet agitator whose pen and prayers had helped spark a revolution.
Years earlier, Adams had helped found the Sons of Liberty, a network of tradesmen and patriots who resisted British rule through protest and persuasion. His hand guided the committees that organized the Boston Tea Party, not for the thrill of defiance but for the principle that no people should be taxed without consent. When British troops occupied the city in 1775, he left behind his home and friends, knowing that his work would continue on a broader field.
In the Continental Congress, Adams joined his younger cousin John, a lawyer whose reasoned arguments matched Sam’s moral fire. Together they pressed for stronger defenses, a navy to protect commerce, and a national stand for liberty. John argued by law and logic; Samuel spoke with conscience and conviction. To some they seemed relentless, but their faith ran deeper than ambition. “We have appealed to Heaven,” Samuel wrote, convinced that Providence would guide their cause as surely as it had stirred their hearts.
By November 1775, news from home weighed heavily on both cousins. The British still held Boston, and Washington’s army, encamped just across the river, struggled with dwindling supplies and expiring enlistments. Reports of hardship and hope arrived daily. In Congress, debate turned from petitions for peace to the practical needs of war—ships to patrol the coast, powder to arm the troops, and funds to keep them fed. For Samuel Adams, every measure of defense carried a moral weight: the cause must remain just, its conduct honorable, its confidence in Providence unshaken.
The cousins’ partnership helped shape the Revolution’s course. Their voices moved Congress from petitions to preparation, from dependence to determination. When independence finally came the next summer, both men signed their names to the Declaration.
For Boston, their signatures would carry special weight: the city, eventually restored to freedom, found its spirit echoed in the voices of two men who never forgot where liberty was born.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress (November 1775); John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Vol. 9; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Themes: Siege of Boston; Signers of the Declaration
Tags: Samuel Adams, John Adams, Sons of Liberty, Boston Tea Party, Continental Congress, Providence, 1775
November 9, 1775 – The Spirit of Boston
Exiled from his city, Samuel Adams carried Boston’s cause to Congress.
Boston lay silent under siege, its wharves deserted and its meetinghouses closed. The man who had once rallied thousands there now paced the floor of what would later be called Independence Hall in Philadelphia: Samuel Adams, the quiet agitator whose pen and prayers had helped spark a revolution.
Years earlier, Adams had helped found the Sons of Liberty, a network of tradesmen and patriots who resisted British rule through protest and persuasion. His hand guided the committees that organized the Boston Tea Party, not for the thrill of defiance but for the principle that no people should be taxed without consent. When British troops occupied the city in 1775, he left behind his home and friends, knowing that his work would continue on a broader field.
In the Continental Congress, Adams joined his younger cousin John, a lawyer whose reasoned arguments matched Sam’s moral fire. Together they pressed for stronger defenses, a navy to protect commerce, and a national stand for liberty. John argued by law and logic; Samuel spoke with conscience and conviction. To some they seemed relentless, but their faith ran deeper than ambition. “We have appealed to Heaven,” Samuel wrote, convinced that Providence would guide their cause as surely as it had stirred their hearts.
By November 1775, news from home weighed heavily on both cousins. The British still held Boston, and Washington’s army, encamped just across the river, struggled with dwindling supplies and expiring enlistments. Reports of hardship and hope arrived daily. In Congress, debate turned from petitions for peace to the practical needs of war—ships to patrol the coast, powder to arm the troops, and funds to keep them fed. For Samuel Adams, every measure of defense carried a moral weight: the cause must remain just, its conduct honorable, its confidence in Providence unshaken.
The cousins’ partnership helped shape the Revolution’s course. Their voices moved Congress from petitions to preparation, from dependence to determination. When independence finally came the next summer, both men signed their names to the Declaration.
For Boston, their signatures would carry special weight: the city, eventually restored to freedom, found its spirit echoed in the voices of two men who never forgot where liberty was born.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress (November 1775); John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Vol. 9; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution
Themes: Siege of Boston; Signers of the Declaration
Tags: Samuel Adams, John Adams, Sons of Liberty, Boston Tea Party, Continental Congress, Providence, 1775
November 10, 1775
America Takes to the Sea
November 10, 1775 – America Takes to the Sea
The new Navy was followed by a new Marine Corps: a new hope at sea.
Only a week earlier, on November 3, Congress voted to outfit armed vessels for the Continental service, giving the Revolution its first national navy. Private courage on the water now had a public banner to rally under.
For months, privateers—privately owned ships armed with government commissions to attack enemy vessels—had been disrupting British supply lines. To Patriots, they were lawful auxiliaries; to the British, pirates. Brave though they were, they fought as individuals, not as a nation. The November 3 decision began to change that, as Congress moved from scattered commissions to a coordinated naval effort.
On November 9, Congress advanced the plan by expanding purchases and formalizing procedures for command at sea. The next day, November 10, it added the indispensable partner to a navy at war: two battalions of Continental Marines. With that vote, America’s sea services were born side by side. The Navy would patrol the deep, intercept transports, and protect colonial trade. The Marines, soldiers of the sea, would serve aboard those ships, landing where armies could not easily go. Together they created a new defense: disciplined, coordinated, and answerable to Congress rather than to profit alone.
The men who stepped forward were fishermen, merchants, and sailors who traded peacetime nets and ledgers for cutlasses and cannon. Many saw their callings not as abandoned but fulfilled, offered to a cause under Providence. John Adams, serving on the Naval Committee, wrote that “Providence has placed the seas and their resources within our reach for the defense of these colonies,” echoing a belief that duty and faith could sail in the same vessel. Order replaced improvisation; purpose replaced opportunism. Even the ships’ names—Lexington, Providence, Independence—read like a creed.
From these beginnings grew traditions that would echo through storms and centuries. Yet in November 1775, it was still a modest experiment: a handful of vessels, a pair of marine battalions, and a people willing to trust that, by God’s grace, courage at sea could help secure liberty on land.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress (November 3, 9, and 10, 1775); John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Vol. 9 (Naval Committee correspondence, 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
Themes: American Armed Services; Faith and Providence
Tags: Continental Navy, Continental Marines, Privateers, John Adams, Naval Committee, Providence, 1775
November 10, 1775 – America Takes to the Sea
The new Navy was followed by a new Marine Corps: a new hope at sea.
Only a week earlier, on November 3, Congress voted to outfit armed vessels for the Continental service, giving the Revolution its first national navy. Private courage on the water now had a public banner to rally under.
For months, privateers—privately owned ships armed with government commissions to attack enemy vessels—had been disrupting British supply lines. To Patriots, they were lawful auxiliaries; to the British, pirates. Brave though they were, they fought as individuals, not as a nation. The November 3 decision began to change that, as Congress moved from scattered commissions to a coordinated naval effort.
On November 9, Congress advanced the plan by expanding purchases and formalizing procedures for command at sea. The next day, November 10, it added the indispensable partner to a navy at war: two battalions of Continental Marines. With that vote, America’s sea services were born side by side. The Navy would patrol the deep, intercept transports, and protect colonial trade. The Marines, soldiers of the sea, would serve aboard those ships, landing where armies could not easily go. Together they created a new defense: disciplined, coordinated, and answerable to Congress rather than to profit alone.
The men who stepped forward were fishermen, merchants, and sailors who traded peacetime nets and ledgers for cutlasses and cannon. Many saw their callings not as abandoned but fulfilled, offered to a cause under Providence. John Adams, serving on the Naval Committee, wrote that “Providence has placed the seas and their resources within our reach for the defense of these colonies,” echoing a belief that duty and faith could sail in the same vessel. Order replaced improvisation; purpose replaced opportunism. Even the ships’ names—Lexington, Providence, Independence—read like a creed.
From these beginnings grew traditions that would echo through storms and centuries. Yet in November 1775, it was still a modest experiment: a handful of vessels, a pair of marine battalions, and a people willing to trust that, by God’s grace, courage at sea could help secure liberty on land.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress (November 3, 9, and 10, 1775); John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Vol. 9 (Naval Committee correspondence, 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
Themes: American Armed Services; Faith and Providence
Tags: Continental Navy, Continental Marines, Privateers, John Adams, Naval Committee, Providence, 1775
November 11, 1775
The Merchant Who Traded Wealth for Freedom
November 11, 1775 – The Merchant Who Traded Wealth for Freedom
The capture of British ships brought military information and personal vindication.
On this day, General George Washington wrote to John Hancock from Cambridge, reporting the seizure of several British vessels off the New England coast. One had carried dispatches from Ireland; another was laden with supplies meant for the British. The captured cargo was taken into service for the Continental Army, while the intercepted messages furnished new intelligence for the war effort.
To the man receiving that letter, the news struck close to home. John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress (its impartial moderator and facilitator), had once built his fortune upon those same Atlantic trade routes. His ships had carried fish, rum, and textiles until British restrictions strangled his commerce. In 1768, the seizure, under a false charge of smuggling, of his own sloop Liberty had drawn him into open defiance of royal authority.
When Congress elected him president that spring, Hancock had spoken of relying on “the favor of Divine Providence” to guide their counsels. Now, seven months later, the same empire that once impounded his property was seeing its own vessels captured under the authority of a Congress he led. It was not vengeance but vindication: the moral inversion of tyranny into justice. Each seized ship was a reminder that free men, not kings, should command their own trade and their own destiny.
By championing independence, Hancock risked not only his wealth but his life; yet he offered both freely. The war destroyed much of his fortune, and peace did not restore it. His merchant fleet never regained its former glory, but his courage carried him into lasting service. Later, as the first governor of Massachusetts under a new constitution, he guided his state through recovery with the same steady hand that had once signed the Declaration in bold defiance.
In fact, when the time came to sign the Declaration of Independence, Hancock penned his name in bold strokes large enough, he said, for the king to read without his spectacles. Hancock had pledged his life, fortune, and sacred honor, and he risked them all for liberty. His fortune waned, but his honor endured, shining as boldly as the name he signed for freedom.
Source: George Washington to John Hancock, November 11, 1775, The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick.
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Signers of the Declaration; Faith and Providence
Tags: John Hancock, George Washington, Continental Congress, Privateering, Boston, Massachusetts, 1775
November 11, 1775 – The Merchant Who Traded Wealth for Freedom
The capture of British ships brought military information and personal vindication.
On this day, General George Washington wrote to John Hancock from Cambridge, reporting the seizure of several British vessels off the New England coast. One had carried dispatches from Ireland; another was laden with supplies meant for the British. The captured cargo was taken into service for the Continental Army, while the intercepted messages furnished new intelligence for the war effort.
To the man receiving that letter, the news struck close to home. John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress (its impartial moderator and facilitator), had once built his fortune upon those same Atlantic trade routes. His ships had carried fish, rum, and textiles until British restrictions strangled his commerce. In 1768, the seizure, under a false charge of smuggling, of his own sloop Liberty had drawn him into open defiance of royal authority.
When Congress elected him president that spring, Hancock had spoken of relying on “the favor of Divine Providence” to guide their counsels. Now, seven months later, the same empire that once impounded his property was seeing its own vessels captured under the authority of a Congress he led. It was not vengeance but vindication: the moral inversion of tyranny into justice. Each seized ship was a reminder that free men, not kings, should command their own trade and their own destiny.
By championing independence, Hancock risked not only his wealth but his life; yet he offered both freely. The war destroyed much of his fortune, and peace did not restore it. His merchant fleet never regained its former glory, but his courage carried him into lasting service. Later, as the first governor of Massachusetts under a new constitution, he guided his state through recovery with the same steady hand that had once signed the Declaration in bold defiance.
In fact, when the time came to sign the Declaration of Independence, Hancock penned his name in bold strokes large enough, he said, for the king to read without his spectacles. Hancock had pledged his life, fortune, and sacred honor, and he risked them all for liberty. His fortune waned, but his honor endured, shining as boldly as the name he signed for freedom.
Source: George Washington to John Hancock, November 11, 1775, The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick.
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Signers of the Declaration; Faith and Providence
Tags: John Hancock, George Washington, Continental Congress, Privateering, Boston, Massachusetts, 1775
November 12, 1775
Sunday: The Black Robed Regiment
November 12, 1775 – Sunday: The Black Robed Regiment
Sermons of faith and freedom prepared a people for independence.
On this Sunday morning in 1775, the spirit of the Great Awakening still lingered across the colonies. Preachers had taught a generation that conscience could not be commanded and that every man was answerable first to God. That conviction would now shape the struggle for civil liberty as well.
Among the preachers who shaped the Revolution was John Witherspoon, a professor at the College of New Jersey. He taught that true freedom flowed from virtue, and virtue from faith. His students carried that lesson far beyond the classroom as they became lawmakers, soldiers, and ministers themselves.
That year, his teachings on faith and liberty (later gathered and published in May 1776) were spreading in print and from pulpits across the colonies. Witherspoon reminded believers that God’s sovereignty ruled even over the chaos of nations. Yet he urged Christians not to shrink from duty, declaring liberty of conscience to be a sacred trust, not merely a political right. To defend such liberty, he said, was not rebellion against authority, but obedience to God. “He who is the author of our liberty,” Witherspoon said, “is the best guardian of it.”
From New England meetinghouses to Virginia courthouses, men of the cloth echoed that conviction. Pastors prayed for the army, comforted the wounded, and preached against tyranny from open Bibles. British officers scorned them as the Black Robed Regiment, believing the clergy had done more to rouse the colonies than any pamphleteer or politician. The name instead became a badge of honor.
When Witherspoon was elected to Congress the following year, his presence gave visible proof that faith and learning had joined the Revolution. He would become the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence—a living bridge between the pulpit and Independence Hall.
Through his sermons and his statesmanship, Witherspoon embodied the spirit of countless unnamed pastors whose words steadied hearts and strengthened courage. “God grant,” he prayed, “that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.”
Source: The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men (delivered May 1776, reflecting themes Witherspoon taught and published throughout 1775).
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Signers of the Declaration
Tags: John Witherspoon, Black Robed Regiment, sermons, Continental Congress, 1775
November 12, 1775 – Sunday: The Black Robed Regiment
Sermons of faith and freedom prepared a people for independence.
On this Sunday morning in 1775, the spirit of the Great Awakening still lingered across the colonies. Preachers had taught a generation that conscience could not be commanded and that every man was answerable first to God. That conviction would now shape the struggle for civil liberty as well.
Among the preachers who shaped the Revolution was John Witherspoon, a professor at the College of New Jersey. He taught that true freedom flowed from virtue, and virtue from faith. His students carried that lesson far beyond the classroom as they became lawmakers, soldiers, and ministers themselves.
That year, his teachings on faith and liberty (later gathered and published in May 1776) were spreading in print and from pulpits across the colonies. Witherspoon reminded believers that God’s sovereignty ruled even over the chaos of nations. Yet he urged Christians not to shrink from duty, declaring liberty of conscience to be a sacred trust, not merely a political right. To defend such liberty, he said, was not rebellion against authority, but obedience to God. “He who is the author of our liberty,” Witherspoon said, “is the best guardian of it.”
From New England meetinghouses to Virginia courthouses, men of the cloth echoed that conviction. Pastors prayed for the army, comforted the wounded, and preached against tyranny from open Bibles. British officers scorned them as the Black Robed Regiment, believing the clergy had done more to rouse the colonies than any pamphleteer or politician. The name instead became a badge of honor.
When Witherspoon was elected to Congress the following year, his presence gave visible proof that faith and learning had joined the Revolution. He would become the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence—a living bridge between the pulpit and Independence Hall.
Through his sermons and his statesmanship, Witherspoon embodied the spirit of countless unnamed pastors whose words steadied hearts and strengthened courage. “God grant,” he prayed, “that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.”
Source: The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men (delivered May 1776, reflecting themes Witherspoon taught and published throughout 1775).
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Signers of the Declaration
Tags: John Witherspoon, Black Robed Regiment, sermons, Continental Congress, 1775
November 13, 1775
The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
November 13, 1775 — The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
Before Jefferson, Americans had already joined faith to reason in the cause of liberty.
As the guns fell silent for winter in the north, Congress waged a different battle—with pen and paper. This week, letters drafted by John Jay were dispatched to the islands of Jamaica and Bermuda, appealing to fellow British subjects to consider the justice of the American cause. Calm and deliberate, the addresses were written not to incite rebellion but to awaken conscience.
Jay’s words revealed the Revolution’s soul: measured, logical, and faithful. “We reverence our king,” the letter assured, “we wish to enjoy the rights of Englishmen, and to transmit them unimpaired to our posterity.” The colonists sought not new privileges but the ancient rights endowed by God and confirmed by reason.
Like James Otis before him, Jay believed that liberty rested on “the law of nature and of God,” not on the decrees of men. A decade earlier, Otis had written that “the law of nature [is] part of that grand charter given the human race . . . by the only Monarch in the universe.” Jay carried that same conviction into Congress’s addresses of 1775, uniting revelation and reason as the twin foundations of freedom. Their reasoning echoed Scripture itself—that truth, not power, makes men free (John 8:32).
This harmony of faith and natural law set the American cause apart from the rising rationalism of Europe. The patriots’ logic was not godless; it was moral. “We leave our cause,” Jay wrote, “to the justice of Heaven, and to the honest judgment of men.” Even in protest, the colonies appealed to Providence.
Jay’s measured tone reflected both conscience and restraint. His own New York delegation, divided by Loyalist sentiment and still awaiting instructions, often abstained from votes on independence. Yet Jay’s restraint was not hesitation—it was integrity. His calm reasoning, steeped in faith, gave the Revolution a moral vocabulary before it found its political voice.
When Jefferson later wrote of “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” he echoed a truth already spoken in these appeals—that liberty was not man’s invention, but God’s intention.
Source: Journals of Congress (October 26–November 13, 1775); James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764).
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Signers of the Declaration, Faith and Providence
Tags: John Jay, James Otis, Continental Congress, natural law, Providence, Declaration of Independence, 1775
November 13, 1775 — The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
Before Jefferson, Americans had already joined faith to reason in the cause of liberty.
As the guns fell silent for winter in the north, Congress waged a different battle—with pen and paper. This week, letters drafted by John Jay were dispatched to the islands of Jamaica and Bermuda, appealing to fellow British subjects to consider the justice of the American cause. Calm and deliberate, the addresses were written not to incite rebellion but to awaken conscience.
Jay’s words revealed the Revolution’s soul: measured, logical, and faithful. “We reverence our king,” the letter assured, “we wish to enjoy the rights of Englishmen, and to transmit them unimpaired to our posterity.” The colonists sought not new privileges but the ancient rights endowed by God and confirmed by reason.
Like James Otis before him, Jay believed that liberty rested on “the law of nature and of God,” not on the decrees of men. A decade earlier, Otis had written that “the law of nature [is] part of that grand charter given the human race . . . by the only Monarch in the universe.” Jay carried that same conviction into Congress’s addresses of 1775, uniting revelation and reason as the twin foundations of freedom. Their reasoning echoed Scripture itself—that truth, not power, makes men free (John 8:32).
This harmony of faith and natural law set the American cause apart from the rising rationalism of Europe. The patriots’ logic was not godless; it was moral. “We leave our cause,” Jay wrote, “to the justice of Heaven, and to the honest judgment of men.” Even in protest, the colonies appealed to Providence.
Jay’s measured tone reflected both conscience and restraint. His own New York delegation, divided by Loyalist sentiment and still awaiting instructions, often abstained from votes on independence. Yet Jay’s restraint was not hesitation—it was integrity. His calm reasoning, steeped in faith, gave the Revolution a moral vocabulary before it found its political voice.
When Jefferson later wrote of “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” he echoed a truth already spoken in these appeals—that liberty was not man’s invention, but God’s intention.
Source: Journals of Congress (October 26–November 13, 1775); James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764).
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Signers of the Declaration, Faith and Providence
Tags: John Jay, James Otis, Continental Congress, natural law, Providence, Declaration of Independence, 1775
November 14, 1775
The Fleet Sets Sail
November 14, 1775 – The Fleet Sets Sail
America’s first navy left Philadelphia, trusting Providence to steer its course.
The Delaware River glistened with frost as shipbuilders worked from dawn to dusk, hammering masts and hauling guns aboard merchant vessels newly christened for war. Congress’s resolution from a month earlier—to build a navy—was at last becoming reality.
The Alfred, Columbus, Andrew Doria, and Cabot lay at anchor, ready to sail under Commodore Esek Hopkins, a seasoned Rhode Island captain chosen to command America’s first fleet. Their orders were simple and uncertain: intercept British supply ships, defend American trade, and trust Providence for the rest.
Each ship bore a name that spoke to the cause it served. The Alfred honored Alfred the Great, the Christian king who defended England and ruled by biblical law—long revered in the colonies as “the father of English liberty.” The Columbus recalled Christopher Columbus, whose courage opened a path to the New World. The Cabot commemorated John Cabot, explorer of the North Atlantic and symbol of England’s maritime heritage. The Andrew Doria saluted Andrea Doria, the Renaissance admiral who freed Genoa from tyranny and restored its republican government. Together, these names reflected the blend of faith, discovery, and liberty that shaped America’s spirit at sea.
To many, this new naval venture seemed rash. The colonies had no shipyards fit for war, no uniformed sailors, and no flag yet to rally under. Yet their courage was as vast as the sea they faced. Congress debated rules of discipline even as pastors prayed for those who “go down to the sea in ships” (Psalm 107:23). Many who signed aboard carried Bibles beside powder horns, believing—as John Adams wrote—that “Heaven smiled upon so bold an enterprise.”
From the wharves of Philadelphia, onlookers watched the fleet drift toward the bay, sails whitening in the chill November light. No hymn had yet been written for them, yet their hearts could have echoed the hymn sung generations later: “Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave . . . O hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea.”
They were not bound for glory but for service—to guard a fragile cause that had no certainty but faith. And when the fleet finally caught the wind, it carried with it more than cannon and courage: it carried a nation’s hope.
Source: Journals of Congress (October 13–November 14, 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, Christian Life and Character; William Whiting, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”
Themes: Faith and Providence; American Armed Services
Tags: Esek Hopkins, Continental Navy, John Adams, Providence, Philadelphia, Alfred, Columbus, Andrew Doria, Cabot, 1775
November 14, 1775 – The Fleet Sets Sail
America’s first navy left Philadelphia, trusting Providence to steer its course.
The Delaware River glistened with frost as shipbuilders worked from dawn to dusk, hammering masts and hauling guns aboard merchant vessels newly christened for war. Congress’s resolution from a month earlier—to build a navy—was at last becoming reality.
The Alfred, Columbus, Andrew Doria, and Cabot lay at anchor, ready to sail under Commodore Esek Hopkins, a seasoned Rhode Island captain chosen to command America’s first fleet. Their orders were simple and uncertain: intercept British supply ships, defend American trade, and trust Providence for the rest.
Each ship bore a name that spoke to the cause it served. The Alfred honored Alfred the Great, the Christian king who defended England and ruled by biblical law—long revered in the colonies as “the father of English liberty.” The Columbus recalled Christopher Columbus, whose courage opened a path to the New World. The Cabot commemorated John Cabot, explorer of the North Atlantic and symbol of England’s maritime heritage. The Andrew Doria saluted Andrea Doria, the Renaissance admiral who freed Genoa from tyranny and restored its republican government. Together, these names reflected the blend of faith, discovery, and liberty that shaped America’s spirit at sea.
To many, this new naval venture seemed rash. The colonies had no shipyards fit for war, no uniformed sailors, and no flag yet to rally under. Yet their courage was as vast as the sea they faced. Congress debated rules of discipline even as pastors prayed for those who “go down to the sea in ships” (Psalm 107:23). Many who signed aboard carried Bibles beside powder horns, believing—as John Adams wrote—that “Heaven smiled upon so bold an enterprise.”
From the wharves of Philadelphia, onlookers watched the fleet drift toward the bay, sails whitening in the chill November light. No hymn had yet been written for them, yet their hearts could have echoed the hymn sung generations later: “Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave . . . O hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea.”
They were not bound for glory but for service—to guard a fragile cause that had no certainty but faith. And when the fleet finally caught the wind, it carried with it more than cannon and courage: it carried a nation’s hope.
Source: Journals of Congress (October 13–November 14, 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, Christian Life and Character; William Whiting, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”
Themes: Faith and Providence; American Armed Services
Tags: Esek Hopkins, Continental Navy, John Adams, Providence, Philadelphia, Alfred, Columbus, Andrew Doria, Cabot, 1775
November 15, 1775
The Poet and the Patriot
November 15, 1775 — The Poet and the Patriot
In a war of muskets and cannon, her weapon was the written word.
The chill of early winter crept through the harbor at Plymouth as news arrived from nearby besieged Boston. In her quiet study, Mercy Otis Warren took up her pen. While armies gathered and fleets prepared, she armed herself with words, her sentences cutting more cleanly than any sword.
Her brother James Otis, whose writings had once stirred Boston to resistance, could no longer write. Years of struggle and injury had muffled the fiery voice that first declared liberty to be the law of God. A 1769 assault by British customs officers had left him with a severe head injury, and his sister’s pen now carried the cause he had begun. In essays, letters, and verse, she called tyranny a moral disease and virtue the only cure.
Mercy was both poet and patriot, blending reason and narrative with uncommon grace. In her home at Plymouth, patriot leaders gathered to exchange news and ideas, and the stories she shaped helped the cause take root among ordinary colonists. To her, faith and liberty were inseparable: a nation must fear God if it would remain free.
That autumn, she drafted a new satire, The Group, a poetic stage play that portrayed corruption as its own ruin. Circulating privately among friends like Abigail Adams and Hannah Winthrop, it warned that a people who lost their virtue would soon lose their freedom. Her satire unfolded in scenes of pompous officials and hollow courtiers, their greed and flattery revealing tyranny’s true face. The play, though never meant to be performed, turned politics into parable, exposing how corruption degraded civil government and society alike. John Adams called her one of the sharpest pens of the Revolution, and history would remember her as one of America’s first female playwrights.
Like the virtuous woman of Scripture (Proverbs 31:26), she opened her mouth with wisdom, her words shaping courage into conviction.
Sources: The Group (written late 1775; published 1776); Early letters and poems (1772–1775) from the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Additional background: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Forging Unity
Tags: Mercy Otis Warren, James Otis, Women of the Revolution, 1775
November 15, 1775 — The Poet and the Patriot
In a war of muskets and cannon, her weapon was the written word.
The chill of early winter crept through the harbor at Plymouth as news arrived from nearby besieged Boston. In her quiet study, Mercy Otis Warren took up her pen. While armies gathered and fleets prepared, she armed herself with words, her sentences cutting more cleanly than any sword.
Her brother James Otis, whose writings had once stirred Boston to resistance, could no longer write. Years of struggle and injury had muffled the fiery voice that first declared liberty to be the law of God. A 1769 assault by British customs officers had left him with a severe head injury, and his sister’s pen now carried the cause he had begun. In essays, letters, and verse, she called tyranny a moral disease and virtue the only cure.
Mercy was both poet and patriot, blending reason and narrative with uncommon grace. In her home at Plymouth, patriot leaders gathered to exchange news and ideas, and the stories she shaped helped the cause take root among ordinary colonists. To her, faith and liberty were inseparable: a nation must fear God if it would remain free.
That autumn, she drafted a new satire, The Group, a poetic stage play that portrayed corruption as its own ruin. Circulating privately among friends like Abigail Adams and Hannah Winthrop, it warned that a people who lost their virtue would soon lose their freedom. Her satire unfolded in scenes of pompous officials and hollow courtiers, their greed and flattery revealing tyranny’s true face. The play, though never meant to be performed, turned politics into parable, exposing how corruption degraded civil government and society alike. John Adams called her one of the sharpest pens of the Revolution, and history would remember her as one of America’s first female playwrights.
Like the virtuous woman of Scripture (Proverbs 31:26), she opened her mouth with wisdom, her words shaping courage into conviction.
Sources: The Group (written late 1775; published 1776); Early letters and poems (1772–1775) from the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Additional background: Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Forging Unity
Tags: Mercy Otis Warren, James Otis, Women of the Revolution, 1775
November 16, 1775
Resistance in South Carolina
November 16, 1775 — Resistance in South Carolina
The Revolution turned inward as armed neighbors faced off.
The pine forests between the Savannah and Saluda Rivers had long been frontier ground—where traders, settlers, and Cherokee paths crossed. But that autumn, the trail to the frontier outpost of Ninety Six became a road to war.
The Council of Safety in Charleston, led by Henry Laurens, struggled to keep the colony united. Along the coast, Patriots controlled the ports and assemblies, but inland the story was more divided. Many settlers, isolated from trade and weary of coastal influence, still looked to the Crown for protection. Others, especially Presbyterian and Baptist frontiersmen, prized independence of conscience and sided with the Patriot cause. The tension that divided Parliament from the colonies now divided households and churches.
When news spread that Loyalist militias were gathering near Ninety Six, Patriot forces marched west to secure gunpowder and calm the unrest. But talk of peace soon gave way to gunfire. At a small stockade fort, Patriot riflemen and Loyalist frontiersmen faced each other across hastily built earthworks, both believing themselves the defenders of law and liberty. For three days they traded shots from behind logs and fences, the sound rolling over the hills like thunder. Smoke and confusion blurred friend from foe. At last, short of powder and supplies, the rivals agreed to a truce. It was the first organized clash of militias in the South.
The encounter had only a few casualties, but the deeper wounds would not heal quickly. For the first time, the Revolution had reached the Southern frontier, and Americans were fighting Americans. Brothers, cousins, and neighbors found themselves on opposite sides of an invisible line drawn by conscience.
Nearly a century later, those same hills would again echo with divided loyalties. The Civil War would reopen the scars first drawn at Ninety Six—a reminder that the hardest battles are not always between nations, but between brothers.
Laurens’s council urged reconciliation, but the backcountry, once a buffer against foreign threats, had become a battlefield of conviction and kinship. From that week forward, the Revolution would be as much a war within as a war for independence.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Council of Safety (November 1775); Journals of the Continental Congress (November 24, 1775: reports from South Carolina).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Forging Unity
Tags: South Carolina, Ninety Six, Henry Laurens, Council of Safety, backcountry, 1775
November 16, 1775 — Resistance in South Carolina
The Revolution turned inward as armed neighbors faced off.
The pine forests between the Savannah and Saluda Rivers had long been frontier ground—where traders, settlers, and Cherokee paths crossed. But that autumn, the trail to the frontier outpost of Ninety Six became a road to war.
The Council of Safety in Charleston, led by Henry Laurens, struggled to keep the colony united. Along the coast, Patriots controlled the ports and assemblies, but inland the story was more divided. Many settlers, isolated from trade and weary of coastal influence, still looked to the Crown for protection. Others, especially Presbyterian and Baptist frontiersmen, prized independence of conscience and sided with the Patriot cause. The tension that divided Parliament from the colonies now divided households and churches.
When news spread that Loyalist militias were gathering near Ninety Six, Patriot forces marched west to secure gunpowder and calm the unrest. But talk of peace soon gave way to gunfire. At a small stockade fort, Patriot riflemen and Loyalist frontiersmen faced each other across hastily built earthworks, both believing themselves the defenders of law and liberty. For three days they traded shots from behind logs and fences, the sound rolling over the hills like thunder. Smoke and confusion blurred friend from foe. At last, short of powder and supplies, the rivals agreed to a truce. It was the first organized clash of militias in the South.
The encounter had only a few casualties, but the deeper wounds would not heal quickly. For the first time, the Revolution had reached the Southern frontier, and Americans were fighting Americans. Brothers, cousins, and neighbors found themselves on opposite sides of an invisible line drawn by conscience.
Nearly a century later, those same hills would again echo with divided loyalties. The Civil War would reopen the scars first drawn at Ninety Six—a reminder that the hardest battles are not always between nations, but between brothers.
Laurens’s council urged reconciliation, but the backcountry, once a buffer against foreign threats, had become a battlefield of conviction and kinship. From that week forward, the Revolution would be as much a war within as a war for independence.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Council of Safety (November 1775); Journals of the Continental Congress (November 24, 1775: reports from South Carolina).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Forging Unity
Tags: South Carolina, Ninety Six, Henry Laurens, Council of Safety, backcountry, 1775
November 17, 1775
The Six Nation Alliance in the Balance
November 17, 1775 – The Six Nation Alliance in the Balance
As old allies turned against each other, one friendship held firm.
The northern frontier was restless that November. News of the fall of St. John’s had reached Albany, and General Montgomery’s men were pressing north toward Montreal. Amid the marches and rumors, another battle was being fought—this one with words and promises. From Albany, letters passed between General Philip Schuyler, the Continental Congress, and missionary Samuel Kirkland, each trying to preserve the one thing the war had not yet taken: peace with the Iroquois.
For generations the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy had maintained political and trade relationships with both British officials and colonial governments. United by their Great Law of Peace, they were respected as diplomats and feared as warriors. Their council system, which joined independent nations in shared governance, would later draw quiet admiration from several of the Founders as a living example of unity without tyranny. But the Revolution placed that unity in peril. Only a decade earlier, the Iroquois had fought with both Britain and the colonies in the French and Indian War. Now those same allies were turning on each other, and the Iroquois were forced to ask: Which side are we on?
Kirkland, a Congregational missionary who had lived among the Oneida people for ten years, was torn between duty and devotion. He had preached the Gospel in their villages, translated Scripture, and prayed that Christian faith might strengthen the bonds of peace. Yet he saw British influence growing and feared that war would destroy the friendship he had spent years building. British agents offered them gifts and promises, while Congress sent words of friendship but few supplies. His reports to Congress warned that the Covenant Chain—the old bond of trust between the Six Nations and the British colonies—was fraying. On November 17, Congress answered his letters with gratitude for the Oneida’s continued neutrality and with hopes that peace might hold.
It did not. The Oneida and Tuscarora, influenced by Kirkland’s friendship, sided with the Americans; the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga aligned with the Crown. Before long, each side’s warriors raided the other’s villages until Iroquois unity was broken beyond repair.
Yet even in division, friendship survived. The bond between Kirkland and the Oneida endured through the war that followed. While the Covenant Chain was broken, his prayers helped bind two nations in a peace that outlasted it—a reminder that faith sometimes preserves what politics cannot.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, November 12, 1775; letters from Samuel Kirkland.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution. Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac; Neill, Mission of Samuel Kirkland.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Diplomacy
Tags: Samuel Kirkland, Oneida Nation, Mohawk, Iroquois Confederacy, Covenant Chain, 1775
November 17, 1775 – The Six Nation Alliance in the Balance
As old allies turned against each other, one friendship held firm.
The northern frontier was restless that November. News of the fall of St. John’s had reached Albany, and General Montgomery’s men were pressing north toward Montreal. Amid the marches and rumors, another battle was being fought—this one with words and promises. From Albany, letters passed between General Philip Schuyler, the Continental Congress, and missionary Samuel Kirkland, each trying to preserve the one thing the war had not yet taken: peace with the Iroquois.
For generations the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy had maintained political and trade relationships with both British officials and colonial governments. United by their Great Law of Peace, they were respected as diplomats and feared as warriors. Their council system, which joined independent nations in shared governance, would later draw quiet admiration from several of the Founders as a living example of unity without tyranny. But the Revolution placed that unity in peril. Only a decade earlier, the Iroquois had fought with both Britain and the colonies in the French and Indian War. Now those same allies were turning on each other, and the Iroquois were forced to ask: Which side are we on?
Kirkland, a Congregational missionary who had lived among the Oneida people for ten years, was torn between duty and devotion. He had preached the Gospel in their villages, translated Scripture, and prayed that Christian faith might strengthen the bonds of peace. Yet he saw British influence growing and feared that war would destroy the friendship he had spent years building. British agents offered them gifts and promises, while Congress sent words of friendship but few supplies. His reports to Congress warned that the Covenant Chain—the old bond of trust between the Six Nations and the British colonies—was fraying. On November 17, Congress answered his letters with gratitude for the Oneida’s continued neutrality and with hopes that peace might hold.
It did not. The Oneida and Tuscarora, influenced by Kirkland’s friendship, sided with the Americans; the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga aligned with the Crown. Before long, each side’s warriors raided the other’s villages until Iroquois unity was broken beyond repair.
Yet even in division, friendship survived. The bond between Kirkland and the Oneida endured through the war that followed. While the Covenant Chain was broken, his prayers helped bind two nations in a peace that outlasted it—a reminder that faith sometimes preserves what politics cannot.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, November 12, 1775; letters from Samuel Kirkland.
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution. Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac; Neill, Mission of Samuel Kirkland.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Diplomacy
Tags: Samuel Kirkland, Oneida Nation, Mohawk, Iroquois Confederacy, Covenant Chain, 1775
November 18, 1775
The Guns of Ticonderoga
November 18, 1775 – The Guns of Ticonderoga
Faith and endurance would turn a young man’s idea into history.
Far from the encircled city of Boston, across the frozen ridges and lakes of upstate New York, stood Fort Ticonderoga—once a proud British stronghold and now a silent prize of war. Captured the previous May by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, the fort’s stone walls sheltered a treasure Washington desperately needed: cannon, mortars, and barrels of powder—more than a hundred pieces in all.
On this day, Henry Knox mounted his horse and set out from Cambridge to retrieve them. Barely ten days earlier, he had convinced Washington that the impossible was worth attempting. Now he was about to prove it. With a small team of men, Knox would travel north through storms and sleet, select the guns, and haul sixty tons of iron nearly three hundred miles back across the snowbound wilderness.
The route wound over mountains and across rivers that froze and thawed by turns, testing every sled, every ox, and every ounce of resolve. Yet through each delay, Knox pressed on—his letters home brimming with quiet confidence and gratitude to Providence, which he believed guided their way. He reminded his wife that “humanly speaking there was no prospect of success, yet we are carried on wonderfully.”
When he finally reached the Hudson in mid-January, local farmers and townsmen joined in to help drag the guns onward. By March, his “noble train of artillery” would stand on Dorchester Heights, and the British, seeing those gleaming cannon above their ships, would choose to abandon Boston without a fight.
What began as a bookseller’s bold idea became a testament to courage, cooperation, and faith under fire—proof that in the Revolution’s earliest days, faith could indeed move mountains.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 18, 1775); The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4. The Papers of Henry Knox (1876).
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Courage and Ingenuity
Tags: Henry Knox, Fort Ticonderoga, George Washington, Dorchester Heights, Boston Siege, Continental Army, 1775
November 18, 1775 – The Guns of Ticonderoga
Faith and endurance would turn a young man’s idea into history.
Far from the encircled city of Boston, across the frozen ridges and lakes of upstate New York, stood Fort Ticonderoga—once a proud British stronghold and now a silent prize of war. Captured the previous May by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, the fort’s stone walls sheltered a treasure Washington desperately needed: cannon, mortars, and barrels of powder—more than a hundred pieces in all.
On this day, Henry Knox mounted his horse and set out from Cambridge to retrieve them. Barely ten days earlier, he had convinced Washington that the impossible was worth attempting. Now he was about to prove it. With a small team of men, Knox would travel north through storms and sleet, select the guns, and haul sixty tons of iron nearly three hundred miles back across the snowbound wilderness.
The route wound over mountains and across rivers that froze and thawed by turns, testing every sled, every ox, and every ounce of resolve. Yet through each delay, Knox pressed on—his letters home brimming with quiet confidence and gratitude to Providence, which he believed guided their way. He reminded his wife that “humanly speaking there was no prospect of success, yet we are carried on wonderfully.”
When he finally reached the Hudson in mid-January, local farmers and townsmen joined in to help drag the guns onward. By March, his “noble train of artillery” would stand on Dorchester Heights, and the British, seeing those gleaming cannon above their ships, would choose to abandon Boston without a fight.
What began as a bookseller’s bold idea became a testament to courage, cooperation, and faith under fire—proof that in the Revolution’s earliest days, faith could indeed move mountains.
Source: Journals of Congress (November 18, 1775); The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4. The Papers of Henry Knox (1876).
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Courage and Ingenuity
Tags: Henry Knox, Fort Ticonderoga, George Washington, Dorchester Heights, Boston Siege, Continental Army, 1775
November 19, 1775
Sunday: Washington’s Call to Prayer
November 19, 1775 — Sunday: Washington’s Call to Prayer
In the stillness of a Sunday morning, a general led his army by faith as well as discipline.
Frost glistened on the tents outside Boston as soldiers rose to the sound of church bells echoing from nearby towns. For once, no drums beat for drill. It was Sunday, the one day when weary men could rest, worship, and remember why they fought.
From the beginning of the war, General George Washington had made prayer part of army life. In his General Orders of July 4, 1775, he required that all officers and men “attend divine service” when not on duty and “implore the blessings of Heaven upon the means used for our safety and defense.” Profanity and drunkenness, he warned, would bring only dishonor to the cause. To him, faith and discipline were inseparable.
Now, four months later, the army still held the lines around Boston. Supplies were low, enlistments expiring, and snow beginning to fall. Yet Washington reminded his men to give thanks for recent victories at St. John’s and Montreal, urging “all good officers and soldiers to offer up their thanks to Almighty God for His late mercies.”
Around the encampment, chaplains gathered the troops in the open air, reading Scripture from wagon beds and leading psalms that drifted across the frozen fields. Civilians from nearby towns joined the ranks of listening soldiers, bringing bread and warm coats. Some prayed aloud for husbands or sons; others simply bowed their heads. Hymns rang out across the hillsides, faintly audible in the besieged town below.
That same day, Washington wrote to John Hancock that they must rely upon “that Providence which has heretofore been our friend.” To devout men of his generation, Providence was more than a word: it was the name of God’s unseen hand, guiding a just cause through hardship.
Before the roar of cannon came the murmur of prayer. And on that Sabbath in Cambridge, an army born in faith prepared to endure the long winter ahead—trusting that Providence would finish what courage began.
Source: Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4, (General Orders and letter to John Hancock, November 16–19, 1775); General Orders, July 4, 1775.
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Faith and Providence; American Armed Services
Tags: George Washington, Cambridge, Continental Army, Prayer, Providence, 1775
November 19, 1775 — Sunday: Washington’s Call to Prayer
In the stillness of a Sunday morning, a general led his army by faith as well as discipline.
Frost glistened on the tents outside Boston as soldiers rose to the sound of church bells echoing from nearby towns. For once, no drums beat for drill. It was Sunday, the one day when weary men could rest, worship, and remember why they fought.
From the beginning of the war, General George Washington had made prayer part of army life. In his General Orders of July 4, 1775, he required that all officers and men “attend divine service” when not on duty and “implore the blessings of Heaven upon the means used for our safety and defense.” Profanity and drunkenness, he warned, would bring only dishonor to the cause. To him, faith and discipline were inseparable.
Now, four months later, the army still held the lines around Boston. Supplies were low, enlistments expiring, and snow beginning to fall. Yet Washington reminded his men to give thanks for recent victories at St. John’s and Montreal, urging “all good officers and soldiers to offer up their thanks to Almighty God for His late mercies.”
Around the encampment, chaplains gathered the troops in the open air, reading Scripture from wagon beds and leading psalms that drifted across the frozen fields. Civilians from nearby towns joined the ranks of listening soldiers, bringing bread and warm coats. Some prayed aloud for husbands or sons; others simply bowed their heads. Hymns rang out across the hillsides, faintly audible in the besieged town below.
That same day, Washington wrote to John Hancock that they must rely upon “that Providence which has heretofore been our friend.” To devout men of his generation, Providence was more than a word: it was the name of God’s unseen hand, guiding a just cause through hardship.
Before the roar of cannon came the murmur of prayer. And on that Sabbath in Cambridge, an army born in faith prepared to endure the long winter ahead—trusting that Providence would finish what courage began.
Source: Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 4, (General Orders and letter to John Hancock, November 16–19, 1775); General Orders, July 4, 1775.
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution.
Themes: Faith and Providence; American Armed Services
Tags: George Washington, Cambridge, Continental Army, Prayer, Providence, 1775
November 20, 1775
Faith in the Frozen North
November 20, 1775 – Faith in the Frozen North
A march through wilderness, a lesson in endurance, a glimpse of Providence.
Before his name became a byword for betrayal, Benedict Arnold was a symbol of courage. In the autumn of 1775, General Washington entrusted him with a daring mission—to lead a detachment north through the Maine wilderness and attempt to bring the struggle for independence to British-held Quebec. What began as an ambitious march soon became one of the most harrowing ordeals of the Revolution.
The route looked short on a map: two hundred miles of rivers, forests, and swamps. But torrential rains turned the Kennebec and Dead Rivers into torrents that swept away boats and provisions. Sickness thinned their ranks. Rations spoiled. Men boiled candles and shoe leather for food. Some fainted from hunger beside their muskets.
Arnold pressed forward, urging his men to keep faith, trusting that Heaven would yet deliver them. They built rafts from frozen timbers and dragged them through waist-deep mud, their clothes stiff with ice. A few deserted; most marched on, praying for relief.
On November 20, they reached the Chaudière River—exhausted, frostbitten, and starving. Snow began to fall. Scouts pushed ahead and, five days later, stumbled upon the small Canadian village of Sartigan. The settlers took pity, sharing bread and shelter that saved the survivors from certain death. In that act of mercy, combatants became neighbors for a moment, united by compassion stronger than politics. In letters home, soldiers called it a miracle of Providence.
The expedition would go on to join General Montgomery at Quebec, where their attempt failed but their endurance became legend. Even Washington, far away in Cambridge, praised their faith and fortitude.
History would one day remember Arnold for his fall, but on that frozen march he was the embodiment of perseverance, a reminder that while men may falter, faith can still find the way through the wilderness.
Source: Benedict Arnold, Journal of the Expedition to Quebec (1775); The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (Nov. 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Courage and Ingenuity.
Tags: Benedict Arnold, Quebec expedition, Continental Army, faith and endurance, 1775.
November 20, 1775 – Faith in the Frozen North
A march through wilderness, a lesson in endurance, a glimpse of Providence.
Before his name became a byword for betrayal, Benedict Arnold was a symbol of courage. In the autumn of 1775, General Washington entrusted him with a daring mission—to lead a detachment north through the Maine wilderness and attempt to bring the struggle for independence to British-held Quebec. What began as an ambitious march soon became one of the most harrowing ordeals of the Revolution.
The route looked short on a map: two hundred miles of rivers, forests, and swamps. But torrential rains turned the Kennebec and Dead Rivers into torrents that swept away boats and provisions. Sickness thinned their ranks. Rations spoiled. Men boiled candles and shoe leather for food. Some fainted from hunger beside their muskets.
Arnold pressed forward, urging his men to keep faith, trusting that Heaven would yet deliver them. They built rafts from frozen timbers and dragged them through waist-deep mud, their clothes stiff with ice. A few deserted; most marched on, praying for relief.
On November 20, they reached the Chaudière River—exhausted, frostbitten, and starving. Snow began to fall. Scouts pushed ahead and, five days later, stumbled upon the small Canadian village of Sartigan. The settlers took pity, sharing bread and shelter that saved the survivors from certain death. In that act of mercy, combatants became neighbors for a moment, united by compassion stronger than politics. In letters home, soldiers called it a miracle of Providence.
The expedition would go on to join General Montgomery at Quebec, where their attempt failed but their endurance became legend. Even Washington, far away in Cambridge, praised their faith and fortitude.
History would one day remember Arnold for his fall, but on that frozen march he was the embodiment of perseverance, a reminder that while men may falter, faith can still find the way through the wilderness.
Source: Benedict Arnold, Journal of the Expedition to Quebec (1775); The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (Nov. 1775).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Campaigns of the War; Courage and Ingenuity.
Tags: Benedict Arnold, Quebec expedition, Continental Army, faith and endurance, 1775.
November 21, 1775
The Seizure at Charleston Harbor
November 21, 1775 – The Seizure at Charleston Harbor
The South stirred to action as Patriots took the war to the water.
By late 1775, the struggle for liberty had spread far beyond New England. In the South, the King’s governors had taken refuge aboard British warships, clinging to power from the safety of the sea. In Virginia, Lord Dunmore ruled from the Fowey; off the Carolina coast, Josiah Martin of North Carolina commanded from the Cruizer; and in Charleston Harbor, Lord William Campbell kept watch from the Tamar.
From his ship, Campbell sent word to Loyalists inland, urging them to rise against the rebellion. His presence loomed like a threat over the city, the ship’s guns trained on the town that had driven him out. But the people of Charleston—merchants, planters, and dockhands alike—were no longer subjects to be intimidated.
On the morning of November 21, under orders from the South Carolina Council of Safety, Patriot boats moved swiftly through the harbor under Colonel William Moultrie, later famed for defending Fort Sullivan. Major Isaac Motte, a Charleston merchant turned officer, helped lead the boarding of two vessels suspected of carrying rice and supplies to the British. The ships were seized without bloodshed, their cargoes claimed for the Continental cause. British officers hailed them angrily from the Tamar, their voices carrying across the water through a speaking trumpet. The Patriots gave no answer, but the guns on Sullivan’s Island pivoted toward the ship, their silent reply unmistakable.
Word of the seizure spread through the city by noon. Church bells rang. Crowds gathered along the wharf to watch the captured ships being towed ashore. Charleston Harbor, once guarded by royal guns, now flew the blue Liberty flag, a simple banner with a single word that spoke for them all. In the days that followed, committees organized watch patrols, fortified the harbor entrance, and began raising palmetto-log defenses that would later make Charleston famous.
The action was small, but its meaning was large. For the first time, the South had shown that it could stand its ground on both land and sea. Across the colonies, the people were learning to act as one. From the frozen camps of New England to the warm waters of Carolina, a shared resolve was forming, with the courage to stand and the unity to endure.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Council of Safety (November 1775); William Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1 (1802).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers.
Themes: Campaigns of the War, Courage and Ingenuity.
Tags: Charleston, South Carolina, William Moultrie, Isaac Motte, Lord William Campbell, 1775.
November 21, 1775 – The Seizure at Charleston Harbor
The South stirred to action as Patriots took the war to the water.
By late 1775, the struggle for liberty had spread far beyond New England. In the South, the King’s governors had taken refuge aboard British warships, clinging to power from the safety of the sea. In Virginia, Lord Dunmore ruled from the Fowey; off the Carolina coast, Josiah Martin of North Carolina commanded from the Cruizer; and in Charleston Harbor, Lord William Campbell kept watch from the Tamar.
From his ship, Campbell sent word to Loyalists inland, urging them to rise against the rebellion. His presence loomed like a threat over the city, the ship’s guns trained on the town that had driven him out. But the people of Charleston—merchants, planters, and dockhands alike—were no longer subjects to be intimidated.
On the morning of November 21, under orders from the South Carolina Council of Safety, Patriot boats moved swiftly through the harbor under Colonel William Moultrie, later famed for defending Fort Sullivan. Major Isaac Motte, a Charleston merchant turned officer, helped lead the boarding of two vessels suspected of carrying rice and supplies to the British. The ships were seized without bloodshed, their cargoes claimed for the Continental cause. British officers hailed them angrily from the Tamar, their voices carrying across the water through a speaking trumpet. The Patriots gave no answer, but the guns on Sullivan’s Island pivoted toward the ship, their silent reply unmistakable.
Word of the seizure spread through the city by noon. Church bells rang. Crowds gathered along the wharf to watch the captured ships being towed ashore. Charleston Harbor, once guarded by royal guns, now flew the blue Liberty flag, a simple banner with a single word that spoke for them all. In the days that followed, committees organized watch patrols, fortified the harbor entrance, and began raising palmetto-log defenses that would later make Charleston famous.
The action was small, but its meaning was large. For the first time, the South had shown that it could stand its ground on both land and sea. Across the colonies, the people were learning to act as one. From the frozen camps of New England to the warm waters of Carolina, a shared resolve was forming, with the courage to stand and the unity to endure.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Council of Safety (November 1775); William Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, Vol. 1 (1802).
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Goodrich, Lives of the Signers.
Themes: Campaigns of the War, Courage and Ingenuity.
Tags: Charleston, South Carolina, William Moultrie, Isaac Motte, Lord William Campbell, 1775.
November 22, 1775
A Nation in the Making, a Family Apart
November 22, 1775 – A Nation in the Making, a Family Apart
Letters across the miles kept faith alive as one family bore the weight of a nation.
Today we take instant communication for granted. What would be a text-message thread of a few minutes for us took days or even weeks for John and Abigail Adams. Yet across those long silences, their letters carried faith, affection, and the moral courage that sustained the Revolution itself.
In November 1775, John sat in a cold Philadelphia boardinghouse as the Continental Congress argued over navies, armies, and the cost of independence. “Our work is arduous beyond expression,” he wrote to his “dearest friend.” “We must trust Providence for the event.” The weight of the colonies’ future pressed on him, and he longed for home: for the farm in Braintree and the family he had left in danger.
Abigail’s reply traveled north by courier through snow and uncertainty. She described shortages, soldiers quartered nearby, and the smallpox spreading through Boston. Yet her tone was resolute: “The spirit that rises among the people is astonishing.” She reminded him that liberty began within: that they must teach their children “the spirit of liberty which God planted in us.”
Their correspondence was more than affection; it was theology in motion. John’s letters wrestled with duty and divine providence; Abigail’s answered with faith shaped by daily sacrifice. While Congress debated the rights of man, she was defending those rights in her own household: keeping the farm, raising the children, and leading neighbors in prayer.
Their steadfastness reflected the conviction John would later describe as essential to the Republic itself—that its safety rested not in force of arms but in the virtue of its people. It was a belief shared by many founders: that freedom without faith would wither, and that public liberty required private character. In that conviction, husband and wife stood united, their pen and paper becoming the instruments of both duty and devotion.
Together, their words formed one of history’s most enduring dialogues, a conversation between courage and conscience. It was through such faith, written in ink and carried by hand, that a family’s devotion became the nation’s resolve. Across the miles, their letters turned waiting into witness: proving that freedom’s first defenders were not only soldiers, but steadfast souls guided by Providence.
Source: Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail, 1876.
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Faith and Providence.
Tags: John Adams, Abigail Adams, Continental Congress, letters, faith, family, Providence, 1775.
November 22, 1775 – A Nation in the Making, a Family Apart
Letters across the miles kept faith alive as one family bore the weight of a nation.
Today we take instant communication for granted. What would be a text-message thread of a few minutes for us took days or even weeks for John and Abigail Adams. Yet across those long silences, their letters carried faith, affection, and the moral courage that sustained the Revolution itself.
In November 1775, John sat in a cold Philadelphia boardinghouse as the Continental Congress argued over navies, armies, and the cost of independence. “Our work is arduous beyond expression,” he wrote to his “dearest friend.” “We must trust Providence for the event.” The weight of the colonies’ future pressed on him, and he longed for home: for the farm in Braintree and the family he had left in danger.
Abigail’s reply traveled north by courier through snow and uncertainty. She described shortages, soldiers quartered nearby, and the smallpox spreading through Boston. Yet her tone was resolute: “The spirit that rises among the people is astonishing.” She reminded him that liberty began within: that they must teach their children “the spirit of liberty which God planted in us.”
Their correspondence was more than affection; it was theology in motion. John’s letters wrestled with duty and divine providence; Abigail’s answered with faith shaped by daily sacrifice. While Congress debated the rights of man, she was defending those rights in her own household: keeping the farm, raising the children, and leading neighbors in prayer.
Their steadfastness reflected the conviction John would later describe as essential to the Republic itself—that its safety rested not in force of arms but in the virtue of its people. It was a belief shared by many founders: that freedom without faith would wither, and that public liberty required private character. In that conviction, husband and wife stood united, their pen and paper becoming the instruments of both duty and devotion.
Together, their words formed one of history’s most enduring dialogues, a conversation between courage and conscience. It was through such faith, written in ink and carried by hand, that a family’s devotion became the nation’s resolve. Across the miles, their letters turned waiting into witness: proving that freedom’s first defenders were not only soldiers, but steadfast souls guided by Providence.
Source: Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail, 1876.
Additional background: Goodrich, Lives of the Signers; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Voices of the Revolution; Faith and Providence.
Tags: John Adams, Abigail Adams, Continental Congress, letters, faith, family, Providence, 1775.
November 23, 1775
The Ship That Saved a Siege
November 23, 1775 – The Ship That Saved a Siege
A captured ship brought hope and supplies to an army short on powder.
Winter came early to New England in 1775. By late November, icy spray coated the harbor masts around Boston, and the soldiers besieging the city shivered under thin blankets. Washington’s army had courage enough but almost no powder to fire. Even a single captured ship could decide whether the siege held or failed.
North of the city, near Cape Ann, sailors aboard two Continental schooners from Beverly and Salem sighted a British transport sailing toward Massachusetts Bay. The vessel, the Nancy, carried muskets, uniforms, and barrels of gunpowder for the British garrison in Boston. Such ships usually sailed with a naval escort, but not this one. The weather favored the Americans: rough seas, poor visibility, and freezing wind masked their approach.
These were fishing towns turned fighting towns, home to mariners who now sailed under a Continental commission. Their schooners were swift, light, and armed just enough to take what the enemy could not protect. The engagement relied on speed and surprise, not heavy firepower, typical of the quick, daring actions that would define America’s early naval war.
In the bitter cold, the Patriots closed in. A few warning shots cracked across the water. Outnumbered and unprepared, the British crew lowered their flag in surrender. When the Americans boarded, they found their hopes confirmed: the Nancy’s hold was filled with the very powder and arms Washington had prayed for.
The news reached Cambridge within days. Soldiers who had rationed cartridges now saw the capture as a sign of Providence. What the storm might have destroyed instead became deliverance.
Out on the frozen shore, the gray Atlantic roared much as it had 155 years earlier, when the Pilgrims landed on a nearby cape in another November of trial. Both generations faced wind and hunger; both trusted the same unseen Hand to guide them through.
The Nancy’s capture was small beside the great battles to come, but in that winter of want, it meant survival. The Revolution’s faith was not only shouted from pulpits or penned in Congress; it was lived by sailors who steered through darkness, believing that Providence would guide even through the waves.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (letter to John Hancock, Nov. 28, 1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional context: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 29, 1775, recording receipt of Washington’s letter).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Siege of Boston.
Tags: Siege of Boston, Cape Ann, Beverly, Salem, Continental Navy, gunpowder shortage, Providence, 1775.
November 23, 1775 – The Ship That Saved a Siege
A captured ship brought hope and supplies to an army short on powder.
Winter came early to New England in 1775. By late November, icy spray coated the harbor masts around Boston, and the soldiers besieging the city shivered under thin blankets. Washington’s army had courage enough but almost no powder to fire. Even a single captured ship could decide whether the siege held or failed.
North of the city, near Cape Ann, sailors aboard two Continental schooners from Beverly and Salem sighted a British transport sailing toward Massachusetts Bay. The vessel, the Nancy, carried muskets, uniforms, and barrels of gunpowder for the British garrison in Boston. Such ships usually sailed with a naval escort, but not this one. The weather favored the Americans: rough seas, poor visibility, and freezing wind masked their approach.
These were fishing towns turned fighting towns, home to mariners who now sailed under a Continental commission. Their schooners were swift, light, and armed just enough to take what the enemy could not protect. The engagement relied on speed and surprise, not heavy firepower, typical of the quick, daring actions that would define America’s early naval war.
In the bitter cold, the Patriots closed in. A few warning shots cracked across the water. Outnumbered and unprepared, the British crew lowered their flag in surrender. When the Americans boarded, they found their hopes confirmed: the Nancy’s hold was filled with the very powder and arms Washington had prayed for.
The news reached Cambridge within days. Soldiers who had rationed cartridges now saw the capture as a sign of Providence. What the storm might have destroyed instead became deliverance.
Out on the frozen shore, the gray Atlantic roared much as it had 155 years earlier, when the Pilgrims landed on a nearby cape in another November of trial. Both generations faced wind and hunger; both trusted the same unseen Hand to guide them through.
The Nancy’s capture was small beside the great battles to come, but in that winter of want, it meant survival. The Revolution’s faith was not only shouted from pulpits or penned in Congress; it was lived by sailors who steered through darkness, believing that Providence would guide even through the waves.
Source: The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 4 (letter to John Hancock, Nov. 28, 1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional context: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 29, 1775, recording receipt of Washington’s letter).
Themes: Faith and Providence; Siege of Boston.
Tags: Siege of Boston, Cape Ann, Beverly, Salem, Continental Navy, gunpowder shortage, Providence, 1775.
November 24, 1775
The Swamp Before the Storm
November 24, 1775 – The Swamp Before the Storm
In the gray marshes of Virginia, neighbors waited for war to cross the bridge.
The tide was low and the air heavy with fog as the first spades struck the muddy banks of the Elizabeth River. South of Norfolk lay a humble wooden bridge spanning the swamp: Great Bridge, they called it. Whoever held it would control the road between Virginia’s coast and its countryside.
Royal Governor Lord Dunmore watched from the safety of his ships anchored off Norfolk, determined to crush the growing rebellion. By late November, Dunmore’s force consisted of British regulars, Loyalists, and newly enlisted men who had taken the chance for freedom under his recent proclamation. They had built a small fort on the Norfolk side of the bridge. Across the marsh, the Virginia militia under Colonel William Woodford arrived and began throwing up breastworks of logs and mud. The standoff that followed would mark the first true battlefield in Virginia’s Revolution, where the struggle turned from argument to arms.
It was a strange place to fight for liberty: wet ground, tangled reeds, and a narrow causeway no wider than two wagons. Muskets misfired in the damp air; the smell of pine smoke and gun oil hung over the encampments. At night, sentries could hear the enemy’s axes on the other side and the rumble of British cannon being hauled into place.
For the men of Virginia’s backcountry, this was no distant war. They fought on their own soil, defending homes just beyond the tree line. Letters carried north spoke of families praying together and of sermons calling the people to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1).
The Great Bridge would soon become more than a landmark—it was a test of will between loyalty and liberty. The soldiers could not yet see what December would bring. Yet every plank laid and trench dug prepared the way for a reckoning that would decide the fate of Virginia. Neither side knew how soon Providence would decide the balance, but before the snow fell, the quiet of the swamp would break and the sound of war would cross the bridge.
Source: American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Nov–Dec 1775); Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia (1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 304–307.
Themes: The South ignites; courage and local defense.
Tags: Virginia, Great Bridge, Lord Dunmore, William Woodford, Loyalists, Virginia militia, 1775.
November 24, 1775 – The Swamp Before the Storm
In the gray marshes of Virginia, neighbors waited for war to cross the bridge.
The tide was low and the air heavy with fog as the first spades struck the muddy banks of the Elizabeth River. South of Norfolk lay a humble wooden bridge spanning the swamp: Great Bridge, they called it. Whoever held it would control the road between Virginia’s coast and its countryside.
Royal Governor Lord Dunmore watched from the safety of his ships anchored off Norfolk, determined to crush the growing rebellion. By late November, Dunmore’s force consisted of British regulars, Loyalists, and newly enlisted men who had taken the chance for freedom under his recent proclamation. They had built a small fort on the Norfolk side of the bridge. Across the marsh, the Virginia militia under Colonel William Woodford arrived and began throwing up breastworks of logs and mud. The standoff that followed would mark the first true battlefield in Virginia’s Revolution, where the struggle turned from argument to arms.
It was a strange place to fight for liberty: wet ground, tangled reeds, and a narrow causeway no wider than two wagons. Muskets misfired in the damp air; the smell of pine smoke and gun oil hung over the encampments. At night, sentries could hear the enemy’s axes on the other side and the rumble of British cannon being hauled into place.
For the men of Virginia’s backcountry, this was no distant war. They fought on their own soil, defending homes just beyond the tree line. Letters carried north spoke of families praying together and of sermons calling the people to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1).
The Great Bridge would soon become more than a landmark—it was a test of will between loyalty and liberty. The soldiers could not yet see what December would bring. Yet every plank laid and trench dug prepared the way for a reckoning that would decide the fate of Virginia. Neither side knew how soon Providence would decide the balance, but before the snow fell, the quiet of the swamp would break and the sound of war would cross the bridge.
Source: American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. 4 (Nov–Dec 1775); Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia (1775); Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 304–307.
Themes: The South ignites; courage and local defense.
Tags: Virginia, Great Bridge, Lord Dunmore, William Woodford, Loyalists, Virginia militia, 1775.
November 25, 1775
Thanksgiving in the Midst of Hard Times
November 25, 1775 – Thanksgiving in the Midst of Hard Times
Even in hardship, the colonies found cause to give thanks.
The ink on Congress’s latest dispatches was barely dry when another document appeared on the table: not a call to arms, but a call to gratitude. The delegates of the Continental Congress, weary from months of debate and dispatches of war, paused to write a proclamation for a day of public thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God.
It was late November of 1775. The siege of Boston dragged on; British ships still ruled the sea; and the army had little food or powder to spare. Yet in the midst of those trials, Congress declared that the colonies should give thanks “for the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially in that He hath been pleased to continue to us the light of the Gospel, and to grant us union and harmony.” They appointed Thursday, December 11, as a day to pray, confess, and give thanks together as a people.
This was not the first American thanksgiving, but it was the first proclaimed by a united Congress. It drew on a long heritage that reached back to the Pilgrims of 1621 and to generations of colonial governors who had called their people to gratitude after seasons of drought, disease, or danger. Thanksgiving had always been woven with hardship; it was gratitude born of endurance.
From that November forward, the spirit of national thanksgiving never faded. The Continental Congress issued similar proclamations throughout the war years, calling for fasting in times of peril and praise in times of deliverance. Even after the Revolution, the states continued the practice until President George Washington renewed it in 1789. Presidents John Adams and James Madison followed, each urging the young nation to thank the Author of liberty. Decades later, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln would make that observance permanent, calling America to give thanks “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude.”
Through it all, the thread remained unbroken: a people pausing in trial to acknowledge Providence. The thanksgiving proclaimed in 1775 was not a feast but a fast of gratitude—a moment to remember that even in hardship, mercy endured. From the marshes of Virginia to the icy camps of Massachusetts, the colonies bowed in prayer, united in both struggle and thanksgiving.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 23–25, 1775); Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Forging Unity.
Tags: Continental Congress, Thanksgiving, Providence, faith, prayer, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, 1775.
November 25, 1775 – Thanksgiving in the Midst of Hard Times
Even in hardship, the colonies found cause to give thanks.
The ink on Congress’s latest dispatches was barely dry when another document appeared on the table: not a call to arms, but a call to gratitude. The delegates of the Continental Congress, weary from months of debate and dispatches of war, paused to write a proclamation for a day of public thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God.
It was late November of 1775. The siege of Boston dragged on; British ships still ruled the sea; and the army had little food or powder to spare. Yet in the midst of those trials, Congress declared that the colonies should give thanks “for the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially in that He hath been pleased to continue to us the light of the Gospel, and to grant us union and harmony.” They appointed Thursday, December 11, as a day to pray, confess, and give thanks together as a people.
This was not the first American thanksgiving, but it was the first proclaimed by a united Congress. It drew on a long heritage that reached back to the Pilgrims of 1621 and to generations of colonial governors who had called their people to gratitude after seasons of drought, disease, or danger. Thanksgiving had always been woven with hardship; it was gratitude born of endurance.
From that November forward, the spirit of national thanksgiving never faded. The Continental Congress issued similar proclamations throughout the war years, calling for fasting in times of peril and praise in times of deliverance. Even after the Revolution, the states continued the practice until President George Washington renewed it in 1789. Presidents John Adams and James Madison followed, each urging the young nation to thank the Author of liberty. Decades later, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln would make that observance permanent, calling America to give thanks “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude.”
Through it all, the thread remained unbroken: a people pausing in trial to acknowledge Providence. The thanksgiving proclaimed in 1775 was not a feast but a fast of gratitude—a moment to remember that even in hardship, mercy endured. From the marshes of Virginia to the icy camps of Massachusetts, the colonies bowed in prayer, united in both struggle and thanksgiving.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 23–25, 1775); Morris, Christian Life and Character; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Faith and Providence; Forging Unity.
Tags: Continental Congress, Thanksgiving, Providence, faith, prayer, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, 1775.
November 26, 1775
Sunday: Rules for the Sea and the Soul
November 26, 1775 – Sunday: Rules for the Sea and the Soul
Even on open waters, the call to worship set the tone for liberty.
As Congress debated matters of war, it also turned its attention to the sea. On November 28, 1775, the Continental Congress approved the Rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies: a code to guide discipline, duty, and devotion aboard every vessel flying the American flag.
Among its forty-one articles was one that set this new force apart: “Divine service is to be performed twice a day, and a sermon preached on Sundays, unless bad weather or other extraordinary accidents prevent it.”
The call was not merely for order, but for honor. Sailors, long known for rough speech and restless habits, were expected to “behave themselves well” toward officers, comrades, and civilians alike. Congress envisioned a navy whose courage would be matched by conscience, where reverence and restraint would mark American seamanship as surely as skill and valor—virtues that still steady the American Armed Services today.
These were remarkable expectations for a nation not yet born. With no formal navy, few ships, and scarce resources, Congress anchored its first maritime code not in firepower but in faith. The founders believed that character was the truest measure of strength and that public virtue must undergird national defense. Their rules reminded every sailor that liberty required self-control, and discipline began with devotion.
Modern historians often claim that America was not founded as a Christian nation. Yet the Rules for the Regulation of the Navy, written months before the Declaration of Independence, place worship, morality, and divine accountability at the heart of military life. For those who framed them, faith and freedom were not rivals but allies.
Before a single ship of war had yet met the British in battle, Congress established a fleet that recognized Providence as its first captain. The founders knew that discipline at sea began with devotion to God, and that a nation guided by faith could weather any storm.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 28, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: American Armed Services, Faith and Providence.
Tags: Continental Navy, Congress, Naval Code, Divine Service, 1775
November 26, 1775 – Sunday: Rules for the Sea and the Soul
Even on open waters, the call to worship set the tone for liberty.
As Congress debated matters of war, it also turned its attention to the sea. On November 28, 1775, the Continental Congress approved the Rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies: a code to guide discipline, duty, and devotion aboard every vessel flying the American flag.
Among its forty-one articles was one that set this new force apart: “Divine service is to be performed twice a day, and a sermon preached on Sundays, unless bad weather or other extraordinary accidents prevent it.”
The call was not merely for order, but for honor. Sailors, long known for rough speech and restless habits, were expected to “behave themselves well” toward officers, comrades, and civilians alike. Congress envisioned a navy whose courage would be matched by conscience, where reverence and restraint would mark American seamanship as surely as skill and valor—virtues that still steady the American Armed Services today.
These were remarkable expectations for a nation not yet born. With no formal navy, few ships, and scarce resources, Congress anchored its first maritime code not in firepower but in faith. The founders believed that character was the truest measure of strength and that public virtue must undergird national defense. Their rules reminded every sailor that liberty required self-control, and discipline began with devotion.
Modern historians often claim that America was not founded as a Christian nation. Yet the Rules for the Regulation of the Navy, written months before the Declaration of Independence, place worship, morality, and divine accountability at the heart of military life. For those who framed them, faith and freedom were not rivals but allies.
Before a single ship of war had yet met the British in battle, Congress established a fleet that recognized Providence as its first captain. The founders knew that discipline at sea began with devotion to God, and that a nation guided by faith could weather any storm.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 28, 1775)
Additional background: Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: American Armed Services, Faith and Providence.
Tags: Continental Navy, Congress, Naval Code, Divine Service, 1775
November 27, 1775
Faith in the Frozen South
November 27, 1775 – Faith in the Frozen South
When the Revolution reached the Carolina backcountry, it met frost and men of faith.
As the northern armies dug in for winter, another campaign was taking shape hundreds of miles away. In the hills and pine woods of South Carolina, Patriot militias gathered to confront Loyalist forces threatening rebellion from within. It was November 1775, and the struggle for independence had come to the southern wilderness.
The expedition would come to be known as the Snow Campaign, named for the unusually harsh storm that blanketed the region as the men marched. Snow was rare in the Carolina midlands, where winters were generally mild and short. Yet that year, icy winds swept across the backcountry, turning the clay roads to rivers of slush and chilling men who owned neither coats nor tents fit for northern weather. Yet the Patriots pressed on through sleet and mud to disperse Loyalist camps along the Broad and Saluda Rivers. Their goal was not conquest but order: to restore peace among neighbors divided by allegiance.
Few of these militiamen were soldiers by trade. They were farmers, preachers, and tradesmen who left their families to stand for liberty in a land still raw and unsettled. The cold bit deep, supplies ran low, and the mountains offered no mercy.
Contemporary reports spoke of their endurance and cheerfulness despite the storm. Colonel Richard Richardson wrote that his men kept “good order and resolution under extreme cold.” Dr. David Ramsay—himself a veteran of the Revolution and later one of its first historians—recorded that “the snow which fell in the midst of that expedition was uncommon in those parts; yet the men bore it with patience, believing their cause was righteous.” Historian Benson Lossing added that they “suffered much from exposure, yet murmured little, attributing their preservation to Providence.” Family accounts from the Richardson and Thomas papers remembered that their hardships were “borne as Christian men should.”
Faith was their fuel as much as powder or rations, echoes of the same spirit that sustained their northern brethren. By December, the Loyalist uprising had been subdued, and the Patriots returned home through snow that lingered unusually long for the South. Their victory brought a fragile peace, but also a foretaste of the divided loyalties that would pit neighbor against neighbor across the colonies.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Provincial Congress (1775); Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina; Richardson and Thomas Papers, South Carolina Historical Society; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Faith and Providence, Campaigns of the War
Tags: South Carolina, Snow Campaign, Richard Richardson, David Ramsay, Loyalists, Militia, 1775
November 27, 1775 – Faith in the Frozen South
When the Revolution reached the Carolina backcountry, it met frost and men of faith.
As the northern armies dug in for winter, another campaign was taking shape hundreds of miles away. In the hills and pine woods of South Carolina, Patriot militias gathered to confront Loyalist forces threatening rebellion from within. It was November 1775, and the struggle for independence had come to the southern wilderness.
The expedition would come to be known as the Snow Campaign, named for the unusually harsh storm that blanketed the region as the men marched. Snow was rare in the Carolina midlands, where winters were generally mild and short. Yet that year, icy winds swept across the backcountry, turning the clay roads to rivers of slush and chilling men who owned neither coats nor tents fit for northern weather. Yet the Patriots pressed on through sleet and mud to disperse Loyalist camps along the Broad and Saluda Rivers. Their goal was not conquest but order: to restore peace among neighbors divided by allegiance.
Few of these militiamen were soldiers by trade. They were farmers, preachers, and tradesmen who left their families to stand for liberty in a land still raw and unsettled. The cold bit deep, supplies ran low, and the mountains offered no mercy.
Contemporary reports spoke of their endurance and cheerfulness despite the storm. Colonel Richard Richardson wrote that his men kept “good order and resolution under extreme cold.” Dr. David Ramsay—himself a veteran of the Revolution and later one of its first historians—recorded that “the snow which fell in the midst of that expedition was uncommon in those parts; yet the men bore it with patience, believing their cause was righteous.” Historian Benson Lossing added that they “suffered much from exposure, yet murmured little, attributing their preservation to Providence.” Family accounts from the Richardson and Thomas papers remembered that their hardships were “borne as Christian men should.”
Faith was their fuel as much as powder or rations, echoes of the same spirit that sustained their northern brethren. By December, the Loyalist uprising had been subdued, and the Patriots returned home through snow that lingered unusually long for the South. Their victory brought a fragile peace, but also a foretaste of the divided loyalties that would pit neighbor against neighbor across the colonies.
Source: Journals of the South Carolina Provincial Congress (1775); Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina; Richardson and Thomas Papers, South Carolina Historical Society; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Faith and Providence, Campaigns of the War
Tags: South Carolina, Snow Campaign, Richard Richardson, David Ramsay, Loyalists, Militia, 1775
November 28, 1775
The Wilderness Road to Freedom
November 28, 1775 – The Wilderness Road to Freedom
Faith was their compass when every road led into the unknown.
While Congress in Philadelphia drafted laws for armies and fleets, a different kind of struggle unfolded far beyond the frontier line. In a small clearing beside the Kentucky River, Daniel Boone and a handful of families prepared to face their first winter in the wilderness.
They had crossed the Cumberland Gap earlier that year—two hundred miles through forest and ridge—to open the Wilderness Road and establish a settlement for the Transylvania Company. The path they blazed was more than a trail; it was a statement of faith in freedom’s future. Here, on ground claimed by Britain, contested by tribes, and barely known to mapmakers, they built the first fortified outpost of what would become Kentucky: Boonesborough.
By late November 1775, the cabins were few, the provisions thin, and the sense of isolation complete. British agents from Detroit were courting nearby Shawnee and Cherokee leaders, urging them to resist the encroaching settlements. Boone’s men kept nightly watch, “trusting Providence for our preservation,” as one later account recalled. Each sound in the forest could mean wind through the pines—or the warning of war.
Hunger, sickness, and loneliness pressed as heavily as danger. Yet faith endured. When Boone later dictated his autobiography to John Filson, his reflections tell of a man who saw worship not as a duty but as a refuge: “I often found the woods a chapel, and the birds and trees my choir.” When snow came early to the ridges, the settlers gathered to pray in their cabins, reading Scripture by firelight while wolves howled beyond the walls.
Long before independence was declared, faith was blazing trails through the wilderness. These pioneers had not come seeking battle, but liberty—the chance to live and worship without fear. As Filson later recorded, Boone came “not to fight the Indians, but to live quietly upon our own land.” Yet danger followed freedom’s path. Boone would remember, in words echoed by his family and friends, that they came not seeking war but freedom—and found that freedom must be defended, even in the wilderness. In their endurance lay the Revolution’s quiet echo: courage, conscience, and the conviction that Providence had led them there for a purpose.
Source: Boone, Daniel, The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, as dictated to John Filson (1784); Draper Manuscripts, Boone Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
Additional background: Bakeless, John, Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness, New York: Morrow, 1939; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Faith and Courage on the Frontier; Liberty Beyond the Appalachians
Tags: Daniel Boone, Boonesborough, Cumberland Gap, Wilderness Road, Frontier, Kentucky, 1775
November 28, 1775 – The Wilderness Road to Freedom
Faith was their compass when every road led into the unknown.
While Congress in Philadelphia drafted laws for armies and fleets, a different kind of struggle unfolded far beyond the frontier line. In a small clearing beside the Kentucky River, Daniel Boone and a handful of families prepared to face their first winter in the wilderness.
They had crossed the Cumberland Gap earlier that year—two hundred miles through forest and ridge—to open the Wilderness Road and establish a settlement for the Transylvania Company. The path they blazed was more than a trail; it was a statement of faith in freedom’s future. Here, on ground claimed by Britain, contested by tribes, and barely known to mapmakers, they built the first fortified outpost of what would become Kentucky: Boonesborough.
By late November 1775, the cabins were few, the provisions thin, and the sense of isolation complete. British agents from Detroit were courting nearby Shawnee and Cherokee leaders, urging them to resist the encroaching settlements. Boone’s men kept nightly watch, “trusting Providence for our preservation,” as one later account recalled. Each sound in the forest could mean wind through the pines—or the warning of war.
Hunger, sickness, and loneliness pressed as heavily as danger. Yet faith endured. When Boone later dictated his autobiography to John Filson, his reflections tell of a man who saw worship not as a duty but as a refuge: “I often found the woods a chapel, and the birds and trees my choir.” When snow came early to the ridges, the settlers gathered to pray in their cabins, reading Scripture by firelight while wolves howled beyond the walls.
Long before independence was declared, faith was blazing trails through the wilderness. These pioneers had not come seeking battle, but liberty—the chance to live and worship without fear. As Filson later recorded, Boone came “not to fight the Indians, but to live quietly upon our own land.” Yet danger followed freedom’s path. Boone would remember, in words echoed by his family and friends, that they came not seeking war but freedom—and found that freedom must be defended, even in the wilderness. In their endurance lay the Revolution’s quiet echo: courage, conscience, and the conviction that Providence had led them there for a purpose.
Source: Boone, Daniel, The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, as dictated to John Filson (1784); Draper Manuscripts, Boone Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
Additional background: Bakeless, John, Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness, New York: Morrow, 1939; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. 1.
Themes: Faith and Courage on the Frontier; Liberty Beyond the Appalachians
Tags: Daniel Boone, Boonesborough, Cumberland Gap, Wilderness Road, Frontier, Kentucky, 1775
November 29, 1775
The Committee of Secret Correspondence
November 29, 1775 – The Committee of Secret Correspondence
Long before the first treaty was signed, the pen was already as mighty as the sword.
While General Washington watched the British from frozen hills outside Boston, another kind of warfare began in Philadelphia: one of letters, codes, and unseen allies. On November 29, 1775, the Continental Congress created the Committee of Secret Correspondence to open communication with “friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world.”
Its charge was simple but daring: to seek aid, gather intelligence, and test whether Providence might be preparing allies for the cause of liberty. Among its members were Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, John Jay, Robert Morris, and Thomas Johnson of Maryland—statesmen whose pens would prove as vital as muskets.
For Franklin, this was not new ground. Having spent nearly two decades in London as the colonies’ agent, he knew how to move through the drawing rooms and back corridors of diplomacy. He began writing immediately to trusted acquaintances abroad, including Charles Dumas, a Dutch scholar in The Hague, a hub for governance and diplomacy in the Netherlands. Dumas became one of America’s first foreign correspondents, translating congressional papers, gathering news from European courts, and passing intelligence back to Franklin under coded phrases and invisible ink.
The Journals of Congress record that the committee’s proceedings were to “be kept secret, and that the members be under the strongest obligations of secrecy.” Yet even in its secrecy, the work bore the mark of Providence. The friendships formed through these letters would lay the groundwork for future alliances. Within a year, Franklin himself would cross the Atlantic to seek France’s aid, building upon the very channels of communication this committee first opened. The success of that mission would turn the tide of the Revolution, bringing not only funding but friends abroad. Among them were the Marquis de Lafayette, a young nobleman who fought beside Washington, and France’s commanders, General Rochambeau and Admiral de Grasse, who joined forces on land and sea to help win the war.
In a time when armies fought in open fields, faith and foresight labored unseen. Through ink-stained hands and guarded words, the cause of freedom was already finding allies.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 29, 1775); Franklin Correspondence, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 22; Dumas, Correspondence Politique (1775–1783), The Hague Archives.
Additional Background: Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Diplomacy; Self-Government
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, Committee of Secret Correspondence, Congress, Charles Dumas, Diplomacy, Intelligence, 1775
November 29, 1775 – The Committee of Secret Correspondence
Long before the first treaty was signed, the pen was already as mighty as the sword.
While General Washington watched the British from frozen hills outside Boston, another kind of warfare began in Philadelphia: one of letters, codes, and unseen allies. On November 29, 1775, the Continental Congress created the Committee of Secret Correspondence to open communication with “friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world.”
Its charge was simple but daring: to seek aid, gather intelligence, and test whether Providence might be preparing allies for the cause of liberty. Among its members were Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, John Jay, Robert Morris, and Thomas Johnson of Maryland—statesmen whose pens would prove as vital as muskets.
For Franklin, this was not new ground. Having spent nearly two decades in London as the colonies’ agent, he knew how to move through the drawing rooms and back corridors of diplomacy. He began writing immediately to trusted acquaintances abroad, including Charles Dumas, a Dutch scholar in The Hague, a hub for governance and diplomacy in the Netherlands. Dumas became one of America’s first foreign correspondents, translating congressional papers, gathering news from European courts, and passing intelligence back to Franklin under coded phrases and invisible ink.
The Journals of Congress record that the committee’s proceedings were to “be kept secret, and that the members be under the strongest obligations of secrecy.” Yet even in its secrecy, the work bore the mark of Providence. The friendships formed through these letters would lay the groundwork for future alliances. Within a year, Franklin himself would cross the Atlantic to seek France’s aid, building upon the very channels of communication this committee first opened. The success of that mission would turn the tide of the Revolution, bringing not only funding but friends abroad. Among them were the Marquis de Lafayette, a young nobleman who fought beside Washington, and France’s commanders, General Rochambeau and Admiral de Grasse, who joined forces on land and sea to help win the war.
In a time when armies fought in open fields, faith and foresight labored unseen. Through ink-stained hands and guarded words, the cause of freedom was already finding allies.
Source: Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3 (Nov. 29, 1775); Franklin Correspondence, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 22; Dumas, Correspondence Politique (1775–1783), The Hague Archives.
Additional Background: Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Diplomacy; Self-Government
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, Committee of Secret Correspondence, Congress, Charles Dumas, Diplomacy, Intelligence, 1775
November 30, 1775
Benjamin Franklin’s Plan for Colonial Union
November 30, 1775 – Benjamin Franklin’s Plan for Colonial Union
A plan for unity was already taking shape decades before.
Long before the first shots were fired, one man had imagined a union strong enough to weather them. Benjamin Franklin had spent much of his life envisioning cooperation among the colonies: not as a dreamer, but as a printer, scientist, and statesman who saw patterns in both nature and nations.
For more than a century, the American colonies had governed themselves as separate provinces, each with its own assemblies, and united only by their shared allegiance to the British Crown. They viewed local interests as paramount. But in 1754, as war with France loomed across the frontier, the need for common defense forced them to think as one people.
That summer, Franklin presented his Albany Plan of Union, proposing a general council for mutual protection and shared governance. The plan was bold—too bold for its time. Parliament feared it granted the colonies too much independence, while the assemblies feared it gave them too little. Yet its principles of shared strength and self-rule would echo through every later plan for independence.
By November 1775, Franklin was again turning ideas into action. As a member of Congress, he served on committees for foreign correspondence, finance, and defense, but his most visionary work looked beyond the war itself. Drawing on his earlier Albany Plan of Union, he urged his fellow delegates to consider how thirteen separate governments might act as one: sharing burdens, standardizing laws, and securing liberty through cooperation. He saw that freedom would require structure, not sentiment, and that Providence had given the colonies complementary gifts. “Join, or die,” his famous cartoon had warned two decades earlier. Now, joined in common cause, they were learning to live as one.
His reputation as a man of science and letters gave him rare influence at home and abroad. Though critics often label him a deist, Franklin’s belief was not a cold rejection of faith but a reflection of the Christian worldview common to his age. He saw the universe as ordered by a Creator and human virtue as its highest duty. To him, science revealed the wisdom of God’s design, and public service was a form of gratitude for it. And the union he imagined would one day bind thirteen separate voices into a single nation.
Sources: Franklin, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vols. 5 and 22; Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William Temple Franklin, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Franklin, Letter to Ezra Stiles (1790); Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; Speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Unity and Foresight; Providence and Wisdom
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, Colonial Union, Albany Plan, Committee of Secret Correspondence, 1775
November 30, 1775 – Benjamin Franklin’s Plan for Colonial Union
A plan for unity was already taking shape decades before.
Long before the first shots were fired, one man had imagined a union strong enough to weather them. Benjamin Franklin had spent much of his life envisioning cooperation among the colonies: not as a dreamer, but as a printer, scientist, and statesman who saw patterns in both nature and nations.
For more than a century, the American colonies had governed themselves as separate provinces, each with its own assemblies, and united only by their shared allegiance to the British Crown. They viewed local interests as paramount. But in 1754, as war with France loomed across the frontier, the need for common defense forced them to think as one people.
That summer, Franklin presented his Albany Plan of Union, proposing a general council for mutual protection and shared governance. The plan was bold—too bold for its time. Parliament feared it granted the colonies too much independence, while the assemblies feared it gave them too little. Yet its principles of shared strength and self-rule would echo through every later plan for independence.
By November 1775, Franklin was again turning ideas into action. As a member of Congress, he served on committees for foreign correspondence, finance, and defense, but his most visionary work looked beyond the war itself. Drawing on his earlier Albany Plan of Union, he urged his fellow delegates to consider how thirteen separate governments might act as one: sharing burdens, standardizing laws, and securing liberty through cooperation. He saw that freedom would require structure, not sentiment, and that Providence had given the colonies complementary gifts. “Join, or die,” his famous cartoon had warned two decades earlier. Now, joined in common cause, they were learning to live as one.
His reputation as a man of science and letters gave him rare influence at home and abroad. Though critics often label him a deist, Franklin’s belief was not a cold rejection of faith but a reflection of the Christian worldview common to his age. He saw the universe as ordered by a Creator and human virtue as its highest duty. To him, science revealed the wisdom of God’s design, and public service was a form of gratitude for it. And the union he imagined would one day bind thirteen separate voices into a single nation.
Sources: Franklin, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vols. 5 and 22; Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 3; Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William Temple Franklin, Vol. 1.
Additional background: Franklin, Letter to Ezra Stiles (1790); Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; Speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787; Morris, Christian Life and Character.
Themes: Unity and Foresight; Providence and Wisdom
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, Colonial Union, Albany Plan, Committee of Secret Correspondence, 1775
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 Rebecca and Frances 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 Rebecca and Frances 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 Roxbury, and sometimes, on the wind, hear 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 Roxbury, and sometimes, on the wind, hear 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 war 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 in Cambridge 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 Cambridge they once knew. 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 war 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 in Cambridge 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 Cambridge they once knew. 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.
They were in a peculiar and distressing situation, as Washington warned Congress. The army was nearly without powder, and there was no certainty when more could be found. 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 was certain the crisis had been averted by “the favor of Providence,” yet he also 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.
They were in a peculiar and distressing situation, as Washington warned Congress. The army was nearly without powder, and there was no certainty when more could be found. 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 was certain the crisis had been averted by “the favor of Providence,” yet he also 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
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.
Have questions about the 250-Day Challenge?
You’ll find the answers here! The Challenge is a members-only experience on SchoolhouseTeachers.com that takes families on a journey of faith and freedom—250 daily stories, interactive quizzes, and 13 gifts celebrating America’s original colonies.
The 250-Day stories are available in the accordion folders above, organized by month. Click the teaser question for any listed date to open and read the full story in a popup box. (The teaser questions on this page are just for fun—your official progress and eligibility are tracked through iST.)
While the stories themselves are free to view on this page, the 250-Day Challenge is completed entirely on the interactive iST platform for members only. If you are a member and are not yet signed up to use interactive.schoolhouseteachers.com, please sign up here. (This is free for members, but it does require a separate username and password.)
Everyone can freely read the stories on this page, but only SchoolhouseTeachers.com members can officially participate in the Challenge through the iST platform.
Log in to your interactive iST account, read each daily story, and complete its short quiz. Your progress is tracked within iST as you go. After finishing all 250 stories, a parent or teacher submits the official verification form for each student to confirm completion.
The Challenge runs from October 28, 2025, through July 4, 2026—but you may begin anytime and work at your own pace. All lessons must be finished by July 11, 2026 to qualify for rewards and the Essay Contest (see below).
No. You can move at your own pace, but all 250 stories and quizzes must be completed by July 11 to qualify for rewards.
All students who have been verified to complete the Challenge will receive a reward package of 13 digital or physical gifts, as determined by The Old Schoolhouse® (TOS). Physical items ship only within the lower 48 states; members outside that area receive digital substitutions of comparable value.
You can join anytime before the deadline. All stories remain available in iST for self-paced completion.
Yes! Each enrolled student on your family’s iST account can complete their own level (elementary, middle, or high school).
Visit SchoolhouseTeachers.com and use code BIRTHDAY250 to join and gain full access to iST courses—including the 250-Day Challenge! In addition, you will enjoy complete membership benefits, including:
- Hundreds of parent-led digital courses in text format, many with supporting media elements
- Eight full collections of World Book content for various age groups, with articles, multimedia, games, eBooks, and more
- Thousands of family-friendly streaming videos via an included RightNow Media membership
- The Homeschool Records Center on SchoolhouseTeachers.com with fillable forms for documentation, portfolios, report cards, and more
Finished the Challenge?
Once your student has completed all 250 stories and the parent has submitted the verification form, they’ll be eligible to enter the 250 Days Essay Contest, where one student will be awarded the grand-prize BBQ grill!
The 250 Days Essay Contest celebrates students who complete the Challenge. It’s open to U.S. members (K–12) who finish all 250 stories and submit their verification form by July 11, 2026.
Read the details below.
The Essay Contest is open to U.S. members (K–12 students) who complete the Challenge and submit the verification form by July 11, 2026. Children of staff members may participate in a separate staff-family competition.
Students will reflect on the overall theme of the 250 Days Before 250 Years stories—how faith and reliance on God shaped America’s founding and the Revolution.
The contest opens July 11, 2026, and closes July 18, 2026. Entries must be received within that week.
The grand-prize essay winner receives a BBQ grill (gas powered, approximate value $250 +). If the winner resides outside the contiguous U.S., they will receive a digital prize of equal or greater value instead. A separate staff-family competition awards a $50 gift card.
Entries are judged by SchoolhouseTeachers.com staff on originality (40%), clarity (30%), and faith and historical insight (30%). This is a skill-based contest; chance plays no part.
The winning essay will be published on the official 250 Days Before 250 Years webpage. No honorable mentions will be issued. SchoolhouseTeachers.com editors will review the winning essay to ensure it is publication-ready before posting.
See the complete Essay Contest Terms and Conditions for eligibility, deadlines, and prize details.
Keep celebrating freedom all year long!
Read new stories, share your progress, and follow SchoolhouseTeachers.com for more ways to connect faith, history, and homeschool learning as America turns 250.
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.
