Popular understandings of the American Revolution tend to overlook the contributions of women. In fact, Carol Berkin observes that just three women: Abigail Adams, “Molly Pitcher,” and Betsy Ross, are readily associated with the War. She corrects this “gender amnesia,” as she calls it, in her work, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence, in which she retells the story of the creation of the new nation through the accounts of individual women. Berkin finds that while women of various races, classes, ages, and backgrounds experienced war differently, they each played a unique and important role in the Revolution.

While most histories of the Founding of the United States tell an uplifting story, historian Gerald Horne’s recent work, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America, finds that the creation of the republic was neither positive nor inevitable, especially for Africans. Rather, Horne demonstrates how the Revolution reinvigorated the slave trade and subsequently bore a counter-revolution of slavery. He argues that African slaves played an important role in igniting the rebellion that would become the American Revolution, a conflict he traces back to crucial turning points like the Glorious Revolution. Horne ultimately contends that our current understanding of the Founding is in need of revisiting.

During the winter at Valley Forge General Washington faced chronic shortages of manpower. Rhode Island general James Varnum proposed a possible solution - he suggested that Rhode Island recruit an all-African American regiment to serve in the Continental Army. Washington did not object, and Varnum began recruiting that spring of 1778. In From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution Robert A. Geake and Lorén M. Spears use a combination of microhistory and narrative storytelling to tell the story of the men who enlisted and where the regiment served.

When Ona Judge decided to run away from her enslavement at the President’s House in Philadelphia in 1796, she risked her life in search of freedom. Her journey to escape from the ownership of George and Martha Washington is an inspirational story of survival and determination in the face of slavery. Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar has made Judge’s story more widely known through her 2017 publication Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. To make Judge's story even more accessible, Dr. Armstrong Dunbar teamed up with Kathleen Van Cleve to adapt her telling of Judge’s journey to freedom into a young readers edition.

At the end of the Broadway musical Hamilton, An American Musical, the cast sings the question, “who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” As we were writing the exhibit, Hamilton Was Here: Rising Up in Revolutionary Philadelphia, the curatorial team at the Museum often asked the same questions. Everyone who has ever written about Alexander Hamilton has had their own point of view. Often those views are extreme, authors either celebrate or criticize him. We weren’t interested in judging Hamilton, one way or the other. Rather, we wanted to present several possible views of Hamilton, and allow guests to come to their own conclusions about his life and legacy.

James Madison’s Notes for the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia remain one of the most valuable primary source accounts of the Convention in existence. In Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, historian Mary Sarah Bilder analyzes Madison’s Notes and explores the various ways his revisions to the Notes reflect his shifting understandings of both the Convention and the Constitution. Bilder argues that many historians have misinterpreted the Notes. To correct this imbalance, her work provides readers with a chronological narrative of the political events and debates of the Constitutional Convention, while also deconstructing Madison’s subjectivity.
In this excerpt, Dr. Bilder discusses Madison’s personal and political evolution and his enduring ambivalence toward his Convention Notes throughout his career:

Arranged chronologically, The West Point History of the American Revolution includes essays written by historians Edward Lengel, Stephen J. Watson, and Stephen Conway. These essays, along with maps, images of artifacts, and diagrammed artwork, are used to teach West Point Cadets about the American Revolution. This book is particularly useful to younger readers because it emphasizes visual learning. Visitors to the Museum of the American Revolution will recognize many familiar images that are also used in the Museum’s core exhibition.

Take a break from all the holiday hustle and bustle and indulge in our cookie-themed Read the Revolution! Anne Byrn’s latest cookbook, American Cookie: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved For Generations, mixes sweet treats with history take you on a journey through America's most beloved confectionaries. The following little morsel from the book highlights a classic American cookie–the gingersnap.

A work of historical fiction, I, Eliza Hamilton, tells the story of Elizabeth "Eliza" Hamilton, née Schuyler, the wife of Alexander Hamilton. Present alongside Alexander at pivotal moments in early American history, the story follows their courtship and marriage through the tumultuous years of the Revolutionary War and the uncertain decades of the early American Republic. The novel, written from Eliza's perspective, includes rich historical details of the places she visited, the people she met, and the clothes that she wore.

While George Washington remains a centerpiece of Early American scholarship, few historical works focus on his complex and often fraught relationship with Native Americans. In his most recent book, The Indian World of George Washington, Dr. Colin Calloway attempts to restore Native Americans’ place in Washington’s story, exploring the ways in which the founder and President was inextricably linked to Native America. Throughout the work, Calloway puts Indian relations at the center of his analysis, illustrating Natives’ key role in shaping Washington’s worldview and subsequently creating and defining a nation predicated on Native American and African American exclusion. Despite his prominence as “the father of the nation,” Calloway argues, Washington was also a chief architect of the policies that stripped Natives of their land and culture in the century to follow.