With the Revolution approaching the two-year mark, British war planners believed that the fractious northeast must be split off and separated from the more loyalist mid-Atlantic and southern colonies. A three prong pincer movement was devised by which the western pincer under Lieutenant Colonel Barrimore Matthew “Barry” St. Leger was to move east from Ontario along the Mohawk river, meeting up with a combined force of British regulars, Hessian mercenaries, loyalists and Indian allies under General John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne, moving south from Quebec.
General William Howe was to move north from New York city and converge on the Hudson river valley, completing the pincer movement.
Burgoyne’s movements began well with the near-bloodless capture of Fort Ticonderoga in early July, 1777. By the end of July, logistical and supply problems caused Burgoyne’s forces to bog down. On July 27, a Huron-Wendat warrior allied with the British army murdered one Jane McCrae, the fiancé of a loyalist serving in Burgoyne’s army. Gone was the myth of “civilized” British conduct of the war, as dead as the dark days of late 1776 and General Washington’s “Do or Die” crossing of the Delaware and the Christmas attack on Trenton.
McCrae’s killing was as a hornet’s nest to the cause of patriot recruitment, and a severe blow to loyalist morale.
Meanwhile, attempts to solve the supply problem culminated in the August 16 Battle of Bennington, a virtual buzz saw in which New Hampshire and Massachusetts militiamen under General John Stark along with the Vermont militia of Colonel Seth Warner and Ethan Allen’s “Green Mountain Boys”, killed or captured nearly 1,000 of Burgoyne’s men.
Burgoyne’s Indian support evaporated in the wake of the disaster at Bennington, as did that of Barry St. Leger, following the failed siege of Fort Stanwix. St. Leger’s September arrival at Ticonderoga, was too late to save Burgoyne from what was to come.
Fun fact: On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the resolution: “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white, on a blue field, representing a new constellation.” The measure wouldn’t be adopted until the September 3 signature of the Secretary of congress but the design was well publicized. Massachusetts recruits brought the news to Fort Stanwix, also known at the time as Fort Schuyler. The garrison cut up petticoats and other articles of clothing, and fashioned a banner. So it was the first official United States flag was raised over Fort Schuyler during the battle of August 3, 1777.
As it happened, General Howe moved his forces south by sea to capture Philadelphia. It was Burgoyne alone who met the Americans in battle, first at the small but costly September 19 victory at Freeman’s Farm and then at the decisive battle for Saratoga, the disastrous October 7 defeat at Bemis Heights.
The British defeat was comprehensive. Burgoyne surrendered ten days later, bringing the kingdom of France and Spain into the war on the American side.
Meanwhile Howe’s capture of Philadelphia met with only limited success, leading to his resignation as Commander in Chief of the American station and Sir Henry Clinton, withdrawing troops to New York.
As the war effort collapsed in the north, Secretary of State for the American Department Lord George Germain set his sights on a “southern strategy”. The idea had been around since 1775, that the crown enjoyed greater support in the south. Break the back of the rebels down there, and the war would be won.
The southern strategy began well in late 1778, with the capture of Georgia’s colonial capital at Savannah. Patriot forces held Savannah under siege between September 16 and October 18 1779, without success. A series of diplomatic and logistical blunders culminated in the frontal assault of October 9, one of the bloodiest American defeats of the revolution, saved largely by the intervention of 545 black colonial troops of the “Chasseurs Volontaires de Saint-Domingue” who later returned to their homeland to help win the Haitian Revolution.
Savannah remained in British hands, for the rest of the war. Meanwhile, the Patriot forces of General Benjamin Lincoln found themselves under siege South Carolina, penned up in Charleston by a force of some 5,000 under generals Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Charles Cornwallis.
George Washington had once departed a city in the face of superior enemy forces but Lincoln bent to the wishes of Municipal leaders, and hunkered down to defend the city.
In 1776 and again in 1779, Charleston had successfully repulsed the British invader. In the Spring of 1780, Henry Clinton succeeded where others had failed. Outnumbered and outsmarted with Lincoln’s forces bottled up in the city, Major General William Moultrie the hero of 1776, said “at this time, there never was a country in greater confusion and consternation.”
Fort Moultrie surrendered without a fight on May 7. Clinton demanded unconditional surrender the following day but Lincoln bargained for the “Honours of War”. Prominent citizens were by this time, asking Lincoln to surrender. On May 11, the British fired heated shot into the city, burning several homes. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered on May 12.
On hearing the news, American troops holding the towns of Ninety-Six and Camden surrendered, bringing the British haul to “5,266 prisoners, 311 artillery pieces, 9,178 artillery rounds, 5,916 muskets, 33,000 rounds of ammunition, 15 Regimental colours, 49 ships and 120 boats, plus 376 barrels of flour, and large magazines of rum, rice and indigo”. (H/T Wikipedia).
It was the worst American defeat, of the Revolution.
In the summer of 1780, American General Horatio Gates suffered humiliating defeat at the Battle of Camden. Cornwallis idea of turning over one state after another to loyalists failed to materialize, as the ham-fisted brutality of officers like Banastre Tarleton, incited feelings of resentment among would-be supporters. Like the Roman general Fabius who could not defeat the Carthaginians in pitched battle, General Washington’s brilliant protege Nathaniel Greene pursued a “hit & run” strategy of “scorched earth”, attacking supply trains harassing Cornwallis’ movements at every turn.
British tactics made Patriot militia stronger, not weaker and they proved it in October, defeating Loyalist militia at King’s Mountain in South Carolina, the “Greatest All-American fight of the Revolution”.
Through the Carolinas and on to Virginia, Greene’s forces pursued Cornwallis’ army. With Greene dividing his forces, General Daniel Morgan delivered a crushing defeat, defeating Tarleton’s unit at a place called Cowpens in January, 1781. The battle of Guilford Courthouse was an expensive victory, costing Cornwallis a quarter of his strength and forcing a move to the coast in hopes of resupply.
British troops were harassed that summer by Continentals under the Marquis de Lafayette. By October, Cornwallis found himself pinned down, under siege in a place called Yorktown with Washington himself before him and the French fleet of the Comte de Rochambeau, at his back.
The main British army surrendered on October 19, effectively ending the American Revolution. The ragtag militia once held in such contempt had stood toe to toe with the most powerful military on the planet. And won.
Frequent visits with her brother led to a passionate interest in all things Japanese, most especially the Japanese cherry, Prunus serrulata, commonly known as the Sakura. The Japanese blossoming cherry tree. She called them “the most beautiful thing in the world”.
On March 27, 1912, the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador to the United States joined First Lady Helen Taft, in planting two Japanese Yoshino cherry trees on the bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson memorial.
Rubenstein hated the nickname and was quick to fight anyone who called him that. It may have been that hot temper, that made the name stick.
Ruby was a low-rent gangster, involved in typical underworld activities like gambling, narcotics and prostitution. There were rumored associations with Mafia boss Santo Trafficante.
Today, you may know Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson as musicians who played with Bob Dylan in 1965, later going on the road as “The Band” and performing such rock & roll standards as “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Weight”.
Part of the roof had blown off this joint. Either that or it burned off, depending on which version you believed. Jack, the club owner, tore off the rest of it and kept the insurance money, calling this fine establishment, the “Skyline Lounge”.
The Warren Commission found no evidence linking Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, to any broader conspiracy to assassinate the President. What became of Jacob Leon “Sparky” Rubenstein’s Skyline Lounge, is unknown to this writer.
To anyone under the age of 40, the Cold War must seem a strange and incomprehensible time. Those of us who lived through it, feel the same way.
At 15,000-feet, a warning light came on in the cockpit, indicating the load wasn’t properly secured. Not wanting a thing like that rattling around in the back, Captain Earl E. Koehler sent navigator Bruce M. Kulka, to investigate. Kulka slipped and grabbed out for something, to steady himself. That “something” just happened to be, the emergency release.
Three years later, a B-52 Stratofortress carrying two Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs broke up in the air over Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five crew members ejected from the aircraft at 9,000-feet and landed safely, another ejected but did not survive the landing. Two others died in the crash.
Over the years, members of the flight crew stopped by to apologize for the episode.
Radios of the age didn’t work across the Rockies, and the mail was erratic. The only passenger service available was run by the Yukon Southern airline, a run which locals called the “Yukon Seldom”. For construction battalions at Dawson Creek, Delta Junction and Whitehorse, it was faster to talk to each other through military officials in Washington, DC.
Tent pegs were useless in the permafrost, while the body heat of sleeping soldiers meant waking up in mud. Partially thawed lakes meant that supply planes could use neither pontoon nor ski, as Black flies swarmed the troops by day. Hungry bears raided camps at night, looking for food.
That October, Refines Sims Jr. of Philadelphia, with the all-black 97th Engineers, was driving a bulldozer 20 miles east of the Alaska-Yukon line when the trees in front of him toppled to the ground. Sims slammed his machine into reverse as a second bulldozer came into view, driven by Kennedy, Texas Private Alfred Jalufka. North had met south, and the two men jumped off their machines, grinning. Their triumphant handshake was photographed by a fellow soldier and published in newspapers across the country, becoming an unintended first step toward desegregating the US military.
Dr. Emerson died in 1842, leaving his estate to his wife Eliza, who continued to lease the Scotts out as hired slaves.
The fifty gun HMS Romney arrived in May, 1769. Customs officials seized John Hancock’s merchant sloop “Liberty” the following month, on allegations the vessel was involved in smuggling. Already agitated over Romney’s impressment of local sailors, Bostonians began to riot. By October, the first of four regular British army regiments arrived in Boston.
Edward Garrick was a wigmaker’s apprentice, who worked each day to grease and powder and curl the long hair of the soldier’s wigs.
The two sides stopped for a few seconds to two minutes, depending on the witness. Then they all fired. A ragged, ill-disciplined volley. There was no order, just the flash and roar of gunpowder on the cold late afternoon streets of a Winter’s day. It was March 5. When the smoke cleared, three were dead. Two more lay mortally wounded and another six, seriously injured.
Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of the stockade at Camp Sumter, was tried and executed after the war, only one of two men to be hanged for war crimes. Captain Wirz appeared at trial reclined on a couch, advanced gangrene preventing him from sitting up. To some, the man was a scapegoat. A victim of circumstances beyond his control. To others he is a demon, personally responsible for the hell of Andersonville prison.
One day, the United States Supreme Court would rule the act an unlawful taking and compensate Lee family descendants.
Private Christman was the first military burial, but not the first. One had come before. When Private Christman went to his rest in our nation’s most hallowed ground, his grave joined that of Mary Randolph, laid to rest some thirty-six years earlier.
Mary Randolph, a direct descendant of 
Mary Randolph is best known as the author of America’s first regional cookbook, “The Virginia House-wife” and known to some, as “The Methodical Cook”.
Mary Randolph, wife of David Meade Randolph, was an early advocate of the now-common use of herbs, spices and wines in cooking.
south after a brief stay in Charleston, South Carolina. Landing at Yamacraw bluff, Oglethorpe’s party was greeted by Chief Tomochichi of the Yamacraws, along with two Indian traders, John and Mary Musgrove.
originally come from its native Southeast Asia to West Africa, where the same strains were grown by European colonists. The rice industry failed in Africa, but the combination of English agricultural technology and African labor made the crop a mainstay of the early colonial economy.
On January 20, 1788, Bryan brought official recognition to the First African Baptist Church and its 67 members, five years before the first “white” Baptist Church in Savannah. In 1802, Bryan founded the “Second Colored Baptist Church”, renamed the “Second African Baptist Church” in 1823.
he called “I have a Dream”. Two years later, the same speaker delivered his speech from the steps of the Lincoln memorial in Washington.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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