Events

Prior to the Battle of Brandywine, the American and British armies maneuvered across a suburban landscape familiar to many residents of Delaware and Pennsylvania. Throughout the days before the battle, however, New Castle County, Delaware, and neighboring Chester County, Pennsylvania, were militarized landscapes. During this period, General George Washington seized the strategic initiative and marched his army from a defensive position along Red Clay Creek in Delaware to the Brandywine River in Pennsylvania. In response to this American shift, General…

On June 9, 1772, a group of prominent Rhode Islanders rowed out to the British schooner Gaspee, which had run aground six miles south of Providence while on an anti-smuggling patrol. After threatening and shooting its commanding officer, the raiders looted the vessel and burned it to the waterline. Despite colony-wide sympathy for the raid, neither the government in Providence nor authorities in London could let this pass without a response. As a result, a Royal Commission of Inquiry headed…

Disease was a major part of everyday life in the American colonies, especially during the Revolutionary War. For every soldier dying of wounds in the war, seven died of infections including smallpox, malaria and typhus. Doctors were influenced by ancient medical thought, and with the best intentions, treated diseases with bleedings, leeches and purges. Ronald S. Gibbs, MD, of Stanford University explores the world of medical practice in the Revolutionary War by discussing the various common diseases, forms of treatments…