“The British are Coming!” Really?

     For more than a hundred fifty years, school children have been introduced to birth of the United States by the thrilling verses penned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Listen my children and you shall here of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.  On the eighteenth of...

The American Flag – Decades in the Making?

        Meeting in the Pennsylvania State House on June 14, 1775, just two months after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress voted to create a Continental Army to coordinate the military response of thirteen British colonies to...

To Pray or Not to Pray: That Was the Question

        In early September 1774, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to consider a collective response to the British government’s coercive actions. A little more than a year and a half later, the Second Continental Congress would declare independence...

Past is Prologue: 1215 – 1776

    The story is familiar to anyone who has studied history at even its most elementary level.  Its heroes and villains, struggles, strife, and victory over oppression are the stuff of which legends have been made, as well as innumerable books, films, artistic works...

“Old Glory:” Driven on Winds of War

In 1803, a young man ran away from his home in Salem, Massachusetts. He was only thirteen, but even at that young age the sea called to him as the mythical Sirens had lured the ancient mariners. Like other young men of his age, his life as a sailor began as a cabin...