2025 Harry M. Ward Book Prize Winner

John Dickinson finally has a comprehensive and readable biography, thanks to Dr. Jane E. Calvert. Her book, Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson, was selected by the ARRT of Richmond’s Book Prize Committee for the 2025 Harry M. Ward Book Prize. Her research and in-depth knowledge of Dickinson explains why it’s not a paradox that the author of the influential Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania could abstain from voting for independence, how a man with many Quaker beliefs could endorse military action, or how Dickinson and John Adams shared many convictions but became adversaries. Most significantly, the book documents the overlooked influence of Dickinson’s writings and actions upon all aspects of the revolution and America’s transformation from colonies to nation.

Meeting Notes: November 19, 2025

The November meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on November 19, 2025, in the Gottwald Science Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation was made by Elizabeth Reese, author of Marquis de Lafayette Returns: A Tour of America's National Capital Region published by The History Press (imprint of Arcadia Publishing) in 2024.

Elizabeth is the Senior Manager of Public Programs and Interpretation at Woodlawn plantation and Pope-Leighey House and is completing her Master of Arts in American History from Gettysburg College. She has worked at Hamilton Grange National Memorial and the United States Capitol. She serves as the co-chair for the American Friends of Lafayette Bicentennial Committee for Washington, D.C. Her work has been published in “TIME,” the “Journal of the American Revolution,” the “New York Times,” and can be seen on C-SPAN.

Her presentation was entitled “The Marquis de Lafayette Returns: The Farwell Tour of 1824-1825.” In her presentation, Elizabeth traced Lafayette’s farewell route throughout the United States, highlighting the locations and people the famous General held in high regard.

The Marquis de Lafayette’s “return to America” refers to his celebrated 1824–1825 farewell tour of the United States, when he came back as an elderly hero to visit the nation he had helped win independence. During this thirteen‑month visit, he traveled thousands of miles through nearly every state, drawing huge crowds and being honored as “the Nation’s Guest.”

At age 19, Lafayette defied French orders and family wishes, bought his own ship, and sailed to America in 1777 to volunteer for the Continental Army. Congress made him a major general despite his youth. He quickly bonded with George Washington. As Washington had no biological children, and Lafayette had lost his own father in battle as a child, these circumstances led into a relationship as between a child and parent. Lafayette openly referred to Washington as a father figure and later named his son George Washington Lafayette.

Washington used Lafayette as both a field commander and trusted aide, beginning with his wounding and steady leadership at the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777. After the war he returned to France, where he was deeply involved in the French Revolution and later political struggles, enduring imprisonment, and periods of exile.

Lafayette played a crucial military and diplomatic role in the American Revolution, serving both as a combat commander in the Continental Army and as a vital link to French political and military support. His efforts on the battlefield and in European courts helped secure the French aid that was essential to eventual American victory. Lafayette took part in several major campaigns, including Brandywine, the winter at Valley Forge, Barren Hill, and Monmouth, gaining a reputation for courage and resilience. Between tours of duty, Lafayette returned to France in 1779 and worked with figures like Benjamin Franklin to press King Louis XVI’s ministers for troops, ships, and money for the American cause. His lobbying helped bring the major French expeditionary force under Rochambeau and a powerful fleet, turning the war into a true Franco‑American alliance that shifted the balance against Britain. By 1781, he commanded Continental forces in Virginia, where he shadowed and harassed Lord Cornwallis’s army, helping contain the British until Washington and allied forces could converge on Yorktown. ​ In the Yorktown campaign, Lafayette’s troops helped pin Cornwallis on the Yorktown peninsula and held key ground until Washington and Rochambeau completed the encirclement. The combined Franco‑American siege led to Cornwallis’s surrender in October 1781, and the decisive blow that effectively ended large‑scale fighting and secured American independence.

​In 1824, President James Monroe and Congress invited Lafayette to visit the United States on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, seeing him as the last major general of the Continental Army still alive. He sailed from France in July 1824 and landed near New York City in mid‑August to salutes, parades, and immense public enthusiasm. ​ Lafayette’s tour lasted from August 1824 to September 1825 and covered roughly 6,000 miles across 24 states. He traveled by stagecoach, horseback, steamboat, and canal boat, visiting major cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, and the young capital of Washington, D.C. ​ Lafayette made a point of visiting Mount Vernon and Washington’s tomb, turning these stops into powerful patriotic rituals. He visited the Mount Vernon estate several times during the tour, paying respects at Washington’s tomb. Walking the grounds as the celebrated “Nation’s Guest,” Lafayette helped transform Mount Vernon into a national shrine to Washington’s memory.

Everywhere he went Lafayette was greeted with processions, military salutes, and reviews, dinners, balls, speeches, having his portrait painted, and monuments created. Towns, streets, and counties were named or renamed for him. Americans saw him as a living link to George Washington and the Revolution, and his presence helped revive patriotic feelings and interest in preserving Revolutionary sites and memories. ​ While visiting Boston, Lafayette laid the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument. He met with surviving Founders, such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, reinforcing his status as a symbol of shared Franco‑American ideals of liberty. In September 1825, he departed from the United States aboard the frigate Brandywine, leaving behind a landscape dotted with places bearing his name and a powerful memory of national gratitude.

Lafayette embraced Enlightenment ideas of liberty and later pushed both antislavery measures and broader human‑rights principles, seeing the American struggle as part of a wider fight for freedom. Because he combined military service in America with revolutionary leadership in France, later generations celebrated him as the “Hero of Two Worlds” and a symbol of Franco‑American friendship.

He died on May 20, 1834. He is buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, under soil taken from Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, Boston for his grave.

--Fred Sorrell

Next Meeting: January 21, 2026 (ZOOM Meeting)

 

Woody Holton, "Abigail Adams"

Woody is currently the Peter and Bonnie McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. After receiving his B.A. in English from the University of Virginia and his PhD in History from Duke University, Woody was an Assistant Professor then full Professor of History at the University of Richmond. He is the author of numerous books about the American Revolution period, including Abigail Adams; Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History with documents; Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution; and Forced Founders: Indians, debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Woody's most recent book, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, has become a nationwide best-seller.

*** NOTE: THIS IS A ZOOM MEETING ONLY... BEGINS AT 6:30 p.m. ***

The Revolution's First Battle Outside the Northeast was in Virginia

Art Ritter shared the following link from the "Cardinal News." An interesting story that I'm sure not many are familiar with.

The revolution's first battle outside Northeast was in Virginia. It started with a dispute over a runaway slave. - Cardinal News

Chesterfield County Revolutionary War 250 Commemorative Brick Project

Chesterfield Historical Society is sponsoring a 250 Commemorative project to honor the brave men and boys who trained at the Chesterfield Camp in the bitter cold winter of 1780-81.  These Patriots were from multiple counties throughout the State of Virginia and other states.

Attached is information on the Chesterfield County, Virginia Revolutionary War 250 Commemorative Brick Project honoring the Patriots and a list of soldiers who trained at the Chesterfield Camp.

Click here to see the brochure

Click here to see a listing of soldiers who trained at the Chesterfield Camp

Click here for additional information on the proposed site

Next Meeting: November 19, 2025 **Location Change**

Elizabeth Reese is a public historian and writer living in the Washington, D.C. area. She has previously worked at a variety of museums and historic sites, including Hamilton Grange National Memorial and the United States Capitol Visitor Center. She has developed interpretive programs on civil rights, women’s history and Founding America and was a Scott Hartwig Public History Fellow at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg. She currently serves as the chair for the American Friends of Lafayette Bicentennial Committee for Washington, D.C. She will speak on her book, Marquis de Lafayette Returns: A Tour of America's National Capital Region.

This in-person meeting will be in the Gottwald Science Center in the lower lecture hall (we've met there previously) at the University of Richmond. You may still have dinner at the dining hall but must eat in the main room with everyone else. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Meeting Notes: September 17, 2025

The September meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on September 17, 2025, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation was made by Robert F. Smith, author of Manufacturing Independence: Industrial Innovation in the American Revolution, Westholme Publishing, 2021. Dr. Smith is Provost of the Valley Forge Military College in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He received an MA in American History from Villanova University and a PhD in Early American History and Technology from Lehigh University. He is the author of numerous articles on military history and the history of technology. Manufacturing relies heavily on the documents of the Department of the Commissary General of Military Stores, a resource not extensively used by previous historians on the topic of manufacturing and is consequently rich with historical information.

“The nation had embarked on a war for independence without the domestic availability of weapons, the productive design to make weapons, or the trade connections to import well-made weapons.” [Manufacturing, p. xii]

America did not have the capacity to manufacture weapons to wage war against the world’s most powerful military force; guns, ammunition, bayonets, cartridge boxes, gunpowder, wagons, and every other accoutrement of war. The range of fighting equipment was vast. It is estimated that there were 350 gunsmiths in the colonies when war was declared against the British. They were craftsmen in the art of making rifles and were mostly located on the western frontier. There were no centralized manufactories for creating all the products necessary to support the fight for independence. There had been no need to mass produce the products necessary for warfare.

“When the revolution began, the family was the production team, with wife and children assisting the artisan in a shop either in or attached to his house. A master craftsman took on an apprentice or two if finances allowed. Yet a craftsman and his workers could make no more than a handful of items per week, depending on the nature of the craft. It took a gunsmith three days to make one weapon from scratch with some of the more intricate parts premade. Building an entire musket could take up to a week and required the gunsmith to have the ironworking skills of a blacksmith, the woodworking skills of a carpenter, and the crafting skills of a clockmaker and engraver. There was little division of labor in gunsmithing in particular and craftsmanship in general in America. An artisan worked on all aspects of a single product, because colonial markets were not large enough to call forth the development of large-scale production, general craftsmen were specialty producers. Thus, most gunsmiths were also blacksmiths and often produced rifles as well as muskets. With no requirement from the market to produce on a large scale, craftsmen never developed the means to do so. And, as will be seen in chapter 6, large-scale producers that did exist, like ironmongers, had no experience in making military stores. The American Revolution changed the nature of craft production, but in 1776, craftsmen were in no position to serve the military market on their own. And the nation's need for craftsmen skilled in military stores production exacerbated the limits of craft production in that particular industry.” [Manufacturing, p. 12]

Trade networks were destroyed, inflation undermined the economy, and American artisans could not produce or repair enough weapons to keep the Continental Army in the field. The Continental Congress responded to this crisis by mobilizing the nation’s manufacturing resources for war. The Continental Congress became familiar with the latest manufacturing techniques and processes of the expanding European industrial revolution. The Congress, therefore, initiated a program of munitions manufacturing under the newly created Department of the Commissary General of Military Stores. The department gathered craftsmen and workers into three national arsenals located in Philadelphia, Carlisle, and Springfield. They were trained in the large-scale production of weapons using groups of workers who were organized on their individualized skills and made components. For example, a gunsmith is not needed to produce a gun stock when a carpenter can be used to do that. A barrel can be made by a blacksmith. It is the gunsmith’s highly-skilled talent that is required for putting all the pieces together. The department also engaged private manufacturers, providing them with materials through bartering, cross-training their workers in marketable skills, and instituting programs of inspecting finished products to ensure consistent quality and uniformity.

Dr. Smith spoke about how the colonies were able to provide their military with the arms and accoutrements needed to fight, survive, and outlast the enemy—supplying weapons for the victory at Saratoga, rearming their armies in the South on three different occasions, and providing munitions to sustain the siege at Yorktown. These actions dispelled the general opinion that Americans and their Continental government did very little to manufacture stores for their own army. [Manufacturing, p. xvi] But this manufacturing system not only successfully supported the Continental Army, it also demonstrated new production ideas to the nation as implemented by the Department of the Commissary General. Through this system, the government went on to promote domestic manufacturing after the war, becoming a model for how the nation could produce goods for its own needs. “Americans imported the Industrial Revolution to mobilize the resources they had available. The short-term result was the effective arming of the nation, but the long-term implications involved placing the government at the forefront of industrialization in the United States.” [Manufacturing, p. xv] The War for Independence was not just a political revolution; it was an integral part of the Industrial Revolution in America.

--Fred Sorrell