of muskets and mayhem

Winter Comes to Boston  ∙The Storming of Fort William and Mary  ∙  A Sleeping and Confounded Ministry  ∙  American Clowns∙  Showdown at Salem  ∙  Dividing Lines: Patriots vs. Tories  ∙  The Marshfield Adventures  ∙  Franklin Comes Home  ∙  Gage’s Green Light Winter Comes to Boston A mild winter settled over Boston towards the end of 1774. The town had increasingly grown into a military encampment, given the fortifications on the Neck, the patrols of British redcoats, the withdrawal of patriot citizens to more favorable climes (met on their departure with loyalists coming the opposite way to seek sanctuary among the redcoats), the warships ringing the harbor, and the unremitting arrival of more regiments; by the end of the year, eleven battalions – around 4000 troops – were sequestered in Boston. The dearth of new soldiers required more living quarters, so Gage operated under the revised Quartering Act and forced citiz...

Philadelphia, late 18th century Philadelphia 1774  ∙  The Fairfax Resolves  ∙  First Things: Voting, American Rights, and the Galloway Plan  ∙  The Suffolk Resolves∙  The Association  ∙  The Declaration of Rights  ∙  A Petition to the King  ∙  On Independence and Revolution  ∙  Reactions in the Colonies  ∙  Reactions in England The City of Brotherly Love Philadelphia, 1774. The ‘city of brotherly love’ lie where the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers met. Its founder, William Penn, designed an immaculate grid of broad streets (most named after trees, such as Pine, Locust, and Laurel) with roomy parks, which gave the city an affluent atmosphere foreign to older towns where narrow streets twisted this way and that. Penn’s design, however, wasn’t merely for aesthetic purposes: the wide-open spaces and broad streets helped to prevent decimating fires. Philadelphia also boasted the first volunteer fire departmen...