In early 1782, the Siege of Yorktown was over, but the British government had not yet admitted defeat. Without hindsight, it was impossible to know whether or not the Revolutionary War…
The Metropolitan Museum is showing "Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio" through January 16, 2017. But before we go beyond Caravaggio, let's talk about what made Caravaggio himself such a big…
By late December 1781, Alexander Hamilton was recovering from the Yorktown campaign at the Schuyler family mansion in Albany - still so exhausted that he hardly wrote any letters (see…
In honor of the 235th anniversary of the British surrender at Yorktown, here's a poem mocking Cornwallis that was originally published in Philadelphia on October 11, 1781. At that point,…
In October 1781, immediately after the British surrendered at Yorktown, Hamilton set off on the three-week trip to Albany, arriving there in November. By December 29, 1781, he was writing to his…
Washington Irving on Columbus Certain it is that at the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the most intelligent minds were seeking in every direction for the scattered lights of…
Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, Fleming's Beat the Drum: The Siege of Yorktown, and dozens of other scholarly works state that at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, when the British marched out to surrender to the…
This is one of more than sixty narrations that I wrote for the Guides Who Know app on Central Park. On February 17, 1913, at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street, a…
According to eyewitness accounts of the British surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, the British were valiant enemies, cowardly, and drunk; the Americans were ragged, brave, and snide; and…