On the eve of the Civil War, the mayor of Dutch-founded NYC sought to secede from the union to escape the Yankee-settled Upstate I wrote about it -- and the many related Gotham statehood drives that followed -- for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social: www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time...

Are you finalizing a syllabus and looking for short, accessible articles to assign on some aspect of American history before 1900? Did you know that Commonplace has a subject tags page that allows you to easily browse our 25 year back catalog? Check it out here: 🗃️ commonplace.online/article/subj...

Cover shows watercolor & ink illustration depicting a panoramic view of the West Point encampment done in 1782 by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French engineer serving in the Continental Army. To preorder at generous discount, visit Fort Plain Museum Store fortplainmuseum.square.site/product/preo...

Coming out in late May. It is an honor to be sharing the story of James Selkirk, Scottish immigrant and New Yorker who spent over seven years serving in the Continental Army.

I finally got around to reading Sharon Salinger and Nina Dayton’s Robert Love’s Warnings, and it’s absolutely fantastic: a fine-grained urban social history that never loses sight of the bigger picture or the largest questions about identity, mobility, poverty, and belonging 🗃️

We were delighted to welcome Julie Kim and her @fordham.edu University students last week for a tour and nature journaling session! Julie has collaborated with our Collections team on work related to John Tyley, who worked for Alexander Anderson, Superintendent of the St Vincent Botanical Gardens.

This is an amazing essay, dataset, maps, analysis about commerce between Philadelphia and Haiti across the revolutionary period. A model for other studies. Highly recommend!

NEW EPISODE! In which Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson undertakes a fundraising campaign that is a smidge harder than just going door to door. www.r2studios.org/show/your-mo...

“The game's afoot: follow your spirit, and upon this charge, cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’” Wishing all my followers a very happy Saint George’s Day x

The Early Republic Tracker is now live! This new initiative from the #JERPano documents efforts to alter or erase interpretations of early U.S. history at public sites, national parks, and federal websites through citizen contributions. Visit the site at: thepanorama.shear.org/2025/04/09/t...

The Society for Military History is now archiving historical materials related to military history that are disappearing from federal or state websites. We are open to submissions, anonymously or otherwise. Please see www.smh-hq.org/archivedreso... and note there the submission links.

The @humanitiesall.bsky.social has a resource, NEH for All, w data about the impact of the NEH locally and nationally. Yes, it is important to right now use the contact and advocacy resources, but it's also critical, imho, to read, gather, & share this info w family &community. www.nehforall.org

Let it be so. “Many Americans do care about the country’s past; they can handle the truth:conflicts, tragedies, redemptions and all. They actually prefer complexity to patriotic straitjackets.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/o...

#OnThisDay in 1818, the War Pension Act was signed to address care for veterans. Continental Army veteran Lieutenant Samuel Gerock presented this almanac on display at the Museum as proof of his military service for his 1818 pension application. Explore with our online interactive: bit.ly/4hisyPZ

Not “disappeared.” Erased by frightened small-minded petty racist individuals.

Dictator shit

Judge Okamoto was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart with 3x oak leaf clusters. He was a 1967 commissionee of the UCLA Army ROTC Program, despite being a graduate of crosstown rival USC. I have had the honor of attending dinners with him twice

The Washington Post has now picked up on my recent newsletter post about the scrubbing of web pages at Arlington National Cemetery. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

This is not about “removing all references to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It’s about resegregating the US military and the US government more broadly. We don’t need to accept the right-wing framing of this.

Running this one again. Wearily

Between illegally firing Inspectors General and illegally impounding Congressionally appropriated spending and setting his militia free and purging the Justice Department and unleashing the ethnic cleansing police, I’m starting to think that “just for one day” might not have been on the level.

Read Belinda Sutton's petition here @harvardlibrary.bsky.social iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/vi...

"Began to mend by degrees." Dec 1777. Mad day but never too busy to think about how we know the past. A lovely family gifted this Revolutionary War soldier's diary to the JCB today. He writes about getting sick. Illness rather than battlefield wounds the most common medical issues. 🗃️

Inspired by the recent #JERWinter2024 conversation on the Revolution at 250, Dillon Streifeneder considers how historians in recent years have worked to bring military history back into the history of the American Revolution: thepanorama.shear.org/2025/01/21/a...

Enjoyed sharing my research on James Selkirk at the American Historical Association annual meeting. #AHA2025 #AmRev #ContinentalArmy #JamesSelkirk #SelkirkMemoir

History Friends, if you are attending the AHA conference in January, stop by Poster Session #1 (Sunday morning) and say hello. Here's a sneak peek of my presentation: "A Personal Account and a Borrowed History: The Revolutionary War Memoir of James Selkirk."

See the original here: www.masshist.org/database/788 #MHS1791

My book talk at the Filson Historical Society, on The Cutting Off Way, is now up. youtu.be/dWpxLBAxP94?...

There's a new review of The Cutting-Off Way on H-War (and also in Ethnohistory). The H-War one, lacking a word limit, is pretty comprehensive. www.h-net.org/reviews/show... read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory...

Calling all history lovers in NY's Hudson Valley: Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Henry Wallace Center at the FDR house in Hyde Park at 6pm. My interlocutor will be the excellent @alexiscoe.bsky.social. It's free to the public but you need to register.

Do I have *another* public appearance to announce? Why, yes, I do. This one's a biggie. It's in Van Buren's hometown of Kinderhook. A talk, book signing, cake, drinks—a veritable bacchanal. Details below.

Over the weekend I shared the call for papers for the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife @dublinseminar.bsky.social June 2025 conference on “Recalling the Revolution in New England” for reasons that become clear: boston1775.blogspot.com/2024/11/reca...

History peeps (and anyone else): go buy Mark's book!

Happy Birthday CT Militia & Continental Army soldier Joseph Plumb Martin. If you don't know him, today would be a great day to check out William Huntting Howell's Commonplace piece on him, his fascinating narrative (published 1830), and a story of Revolution. 🗃️ commonplace.online/article/star...

Julius A. Haberman (1925-2017) Served in 1945 in the Central Europe and Rhineland campaigns with the 3rd Battalion Battle Patrol, L Company, 272d Regiment, 69th Infantry Division