S.W. O'Connell

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Rev War Tales Last Stand on Manhattan 31 October 1776, Fort Lee, New Jersey. Nathanael Greene reports the enemy above King’s Bridge and asks Washington how far to hold the island around Fort Washington. On 31 October 1776, Greene wrote from Fort Lee that the British held Fort Independence on the heights above King’s Bridge. Valuables were off; bridges were down; he had told Colonel Robert Magaw to block the mountain road. The question was whether to hold the entire line from the Bridge to the lower lines—which would require more men—or to pull the garrison into Mount Washington (Fort Washington) alone, in which case the island would be overmanned. He would send Rawlings’s regiment to Magaw until Washington decided. The grand army’s movements, he added, would settle the point. Three days after White Plains, Greene was still planning to hold the last American work on Manhattan. By mid-November, the plan proved too bold. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Another Halloween Special! Yankee Doodle Spies: Spirits of Seventy-Six yankeedoodlespies.blogspot.c…

Rev War Tales NY Acts Against The Stamp Act 31 October 1765, New York City. Merchants agreed not to sell English goods until the Stamp Act was repealed—the city had already been plastered with threats against anyone who used the stamps. On 31 October 1765, more than two hundred New York merchants met at George Burns’s tavern and voted to send no new orders to Britain unless Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. Retailers bound themselves to the same commitment after the first of January. Eight days earlier, when the stamped paper arrived, placards went up on public doors and street corners: “the first man that either distributes or makes use of stamped paper let him take care of his house, person, and effects.” The sheets themselves were kept under guard in Fort George. The boycott of the 31st turned that street warning into commercial policy on the eve of the tax. New York would not do business on stamped paper. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

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This vintage Yankee Doodle Spies post was my first Halloween Special! Vintage Yankee Doodle Spies: George Washington, Vampire Slayer! yankeedoodlespies.blogspot.c…

Rev War Tales Royal Response 31 October 1776, London. In his first speech to Parliament since the Declaration of Independence, George III admitted that the crisis in America was not over. Opening the session on 31 October 1776, the king told both houses he wished he could say the colonial troubles were over. Instead, “daring and desperate” leaders had “openly renounced all allegiance to the crown” and set up independent states. He cited the Howe brothers’ victory on Long Island and the recovery of New York, then warned that another campaign would still be required. Conciliation, he said, had been rejected with insult. The speech treated July’s Declaration as open treason and asked Parliament to fund the next year’s war. One thing was clear, although Britain had taken New York, it had not yet won the rebellion. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Rev War Tales Secretary at War 30 October 1781, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Confederation Congress appointed Major General Benjamin Lincoln Secretary at War—the original title of what later became the Secretary of War. Lincoln had commanded the American right at Yorktown and accepted the British surrender on 19 October. Ten days later, Congress named him to the new office. The post was intended to replace the Board of War and handle the army's administrative business under the Articles of Confederation. The inspector general, quartermaster general, commissary general, and adjutant general reported to him. Lincoln held the position until November 1783. Congress later thanked him for his perseverance, fortitude, and fidelity in the office. He returned to Massachusetts, led the militia against Shays’s Rebellion in 1787, and later served as collector of the port of Boston. The appointment of 30 October placed a field general in charge of the War Department at the moment the major fighting ended. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Rev War Tales A Tale of Two Navies 30 October 1775 and 30 October 1776, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Congress builds a navy on paper, then sweetens prize money to man it. On 30 October 1775, the Continental Congress named a seven-member committee to buy, arm, and man vessels against Britain—the working arm of the fleet authorized on the 13th. A year later, to the day, it granted navy crews half the value of prizes, hoping to lure men from privateers. Privateers still won the recruiting fight: hundreds of commissioned raiders captured far more British merchantmen than the Continental Navy ever did, straining London’s insurance and supply. The Continental Navy kept a flag at sea, but privateering did most of the economic damage. Together, the two October votes show how the United States chose to fight at sea. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Yankee Doodle Spies: Clan Mother yankeedoodlespies.blogspot.c…

Rev War Tales Number Two is Born 30 October 1735, Braintree, Massachusetts. John Adams was born; he would argue for independence, serve abroad, and become the second president of the United States. On 30 October 1735 (New Style), John Adams was born in the North Precinct of Braintree—today Quincy. A Harvard-trained lawyer, he defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, then became the Revolution’s hardest-working advocate: a member of the Continental Congress, the Declaration’s floor leader, a diplomat in France and the Netherlands, the first vice president, and the second president. He lived to see his son in the same office. Stubborn, vain, and honest, he left a paper trail that still defines how Americans argue about power and law. The Braintree farm boy outlasted most of the founders and never stopped writing. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Rev War Tales Promises Kept… Eventually 29 October 1781, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Congress voted to erect a marble column at Yorktown to mark Cornwallis’s surrender—then waited a century to build it. On 29 October 1781, days after Tench Tilghman brought official word of Yorktown, the United States in Congress assembled resolved to raise, at York, Virginia, “a marble column, adorned with emblems of the alliance” with France and inscribed with the story of the surrender to Washington, Rochambeau, and de Grasse. No stone was laid during the Confederation years. The centennial Congress of 1880 funded the work; the cornerstone was laid in 1881, and the monument, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, was dedicated in 1884. Liberty later gave way to a Victory figure after lightning. The 1781 resolve was the infant republic’s first impulse to turn a battlefield into national memory. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Exciting autumn Sci-Fi read! Take a Leap from 1959 to the year 802 with Envoy of the Lord in paperback. 1959 Ottawa: A top-secret Canadian Cold War program sends an ex-soldier on a time journey meant to counter the Soviets. Instead, he travels to the time of Charlemagne, where he faces a menace greater than Soviet expansion. A dark land of conspiracy, heresies, bloodthirsty Avars, and vicious Saxon tribes awaits him. Can the Envoy of the Lord save Christendom? 1959: Sputnik circles the earth, and the Cold War turns dark. Mattheus Melchior, a cynical veteran of Hitler’s army who moves to Canada to escape war-torn Europe, is recruited by the Canadian Ministry of Defense (MOD) in a scheme to harness the power of the mind to cross time and spy on the Soviets. A team of behavioral scientists and intelligence officers launch Melchior across a millennium and into a world as war-plagued and conflicted as the mid-20th century. Melchior quickly learns that he was, and is, a Missus Dominicus – an envoy of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and his premier warrior. Charlemagne sends Melchior on a covert mission as harrowing as the one that brought him to the 9th century. He must travel to the eastern frontier to find the queen of a renegade pagan Saxon tribe. He is ordered to convert or kill this queen, who is also a witch! Melchior soon faces a host of enemies: pagan Saxon tribes, savage Asiatic horsemen, treasonous knights, packs of assassins, rogue priests, and heretical bishops. But Melchior's greatest struggle is a conflict of mind and heart. Envoy of the Lord is a Cold War espionage time-travel story set in Canada and Germany during the dark days following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in the 1950s. amazon.com/Envoy-Lord-S-W-OC…

Missi Dominici Zaragoza Unyielding 778. Mid-July, Zaragoza, Upper March of al-Andalus. Charlemagne’s combined armies stood before Zaragoza in mid-July. The Muslim allies who had summoned him at Paderborn did not deliver the city. Husayn held it against both the Franks and the emir of Córdoba. The siege was brief. Supplies were running low, autumn was approaching, and urgent reports that Widukind had risen in Saxony convinced the king to act. He lifted the investment, took whatever hostages he could, and turned north in late July. The failure before Zaragoza was the strategic heart of the year’s Spanish venture: an ambitious bid to control the land between the Pyrenees and the Ebro collapsed when the expected revolt of the Muslim governors failed to materialize. Charlemagne left without a lasting foothold on the Ebro, yet the expedition fixed the idea of a Spanish March in Carolingian policy for decades. #History #DarkAges #Medieval #MissiDominici

Rev War Tales Presidential Departure 29 October 1777, York, Pennsylvania. John Hancock leaves the presidency of the Continental Congress after more than two years—the longest tenure of any Continental president. On 29 October 1777, John Hancock stepped down as president of the Continental Congress, a position he had held since 24 May 1775. He had succeeded Peyton Randolph and steered the body through the aftermath of Lexington, the creation of the army, and independence. As president, he was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence; his oversized signature became the document’s emblem. Service at York, after the flight from Philadelphia, wore him down; he sought leave and found Henry Laurens elected in his place on 1 November. No one presided longer. Hancock returned to Massachusetts politics a celebrity of the cause, his name already a byword for a bold hand on parchment. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

For those who missed this yesterday.... Yankee Doodle Spies Instant Replay: The Swamp Fox yankeedoodlespies.blogspot.c…

Rev War Tales Logistics is for Experts 29 October 1776, Fort Lee, New Jersey. Nathanael Greene (pictured) sends Washington an estimate of provisions and forage to stock posts from the Hudson to Philadelphia. On 29 October 1776, Major General Nathanael Greene, commanding the Jersey shore and Forts Lee and Washington, enclosed a magazine plan: barrels of flour and meat, tons of hay, and bushels of grain for Fort Lee, Hackensack, Acquackanonk, Springfield, Bound Brook, Princeton, and Trenton. The chain would feed troops passing between the states and cover a retreat toward Philadelphia if Howe broke the Hudson line. Greene argued that buying in the cheap season and using water carriage would limit waste. Washington’s secretary answered on 3 November that the commander approved both the quantities and the locations. Written the day after White Plains, the letter shows Greene thinking beyond the next skirmish to a line of depots if New York were lost. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

Rev War Tales Warfare in Westchester 28 October 1776, White Plains, New York. Howe’s attack— Hessians and British carried Chatterton’s Hill and forced Washington to give ground. On 28 October 1776, General William Howe advanced on White Plains with about 13,000 British and Hessians. Washington had concentrated most of his army—about 14,000 present for duty—along a wide Westchester front behind the Bronx River. The decisive fighting was not along a 23-mile battle line but the struggle for Chatterton’s Hill on the American right. After an artillery pounding, Hessians under Rall and British under Leslie forded the swollen Bronx, broke the militia, and then pressed Alexander McDougall and John Haslet’s Delaware Regiment off the height. American losses are commonly put at 150–220; British and Hessian losses at 200–300 (one return gives 136 American and some 300 Crown casualties). Washington withdrew to stronger ground. Howe did not finish him. Both armies soon shifted south toward Fort Washington. #RevWar #History #AmRev #RevWarTales

The latest edition of the Yankee Doodle Spies blog profiles a character in my latest novel in the series, The South Spy. Francis Marion was one of my earliest boyhood #RevWar heroes. Meet the Swamp Fox... yankeedoodlespies.blogspot.c…