Latest news with #SevenYears'War
Fox News
19-04-2025
- General
- Fox News
Archaeologists uncover remnants of Florida's short-lived British past in St. Augustine: 'Always fascinating'
Archaeologists in the oldest city in the United States recently excavated part of an historic district — unearthing remnants of its short-lived British past. Fox News Digital spoke with Andrea White, a city archaeologist in St. Augustine, Florida, about the excavation. The project took place in the city's Lincolnville neighborhood and wrapped up in February. (See the video at the top of this article.) Archaeologists were digging at the site as they made way for construction and discovered the dried-up moat of a British redoubt, or small outpost. "We knew there were a series of British redoubts," White said. "In St. Augustine, everyone thinks about the Spanish period, but we actually had a 20-year period where the British were in control of both East and West Florida." St. Augustine was primarily a Spanish military town in the first 200 years of its history, beginning in 1565. Florida came under British control when Spain traded it for Havana, Cuba, which had been captured by the British. In 1763, through the Treaty of Paris, the British gained control of Florida and the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) ended. But the British inhabitants of St. Augustine still worried about attacks by the Spanish — hence the fortifications, according to numerous historical accounts. At the end of the American Revolution, the Spanish crown was given back control of Florida in exchange for some of their assistance to the British. The Sunshine State didn't become U.S. territory until 1821. "The Spanish actually attacked both [the port of] Mobile and Pensacola," White said. "So there was a great fear that there could be an attack on St. Augustine." "A series of these small redoubts were constructed sort of surrounding the historic town with plans to actually connect them by a series of walls and defensive moats," White added. "But that kind of never came to fruition because the American Revolution ended, and so did the threat to the British at the time." One of the most surprising parts of the excavation, first reported by The Associated Press, was not what the archaeologists found, but what they didn't find. "We know there's at least six additional [redoubts] out there." White told Fox News Digital the artifacts they uncovered were few and far between. "In [an] urban context, we're used to finding tons of artifacts because people have lived here for over 4,000 years, but in this case, it was really the lack of artifacts that surprised us," the historian said. "So we might've found a few pieces of pottery, a couple of pieces of [shotgun pellets], little pieces of lead that would've been used to fire out of a gun," she said. But while many people may think archaeology is just about digging up artifacts, White encouraged a broader perspective about the field. "Everyone associates archaeology with finding things, and it's really the information that we're after as archaeologists," White said. She added, "[It's] not what you find, but what you'd find out." One of the most interesting takeaways was the amount of seeds in the moat, which had survived thanks to the environmental conditions. "They were really well-preserved because it's kind of in the water table at this point in time. The water table has risen over the last few centuries," she noted. "So we've just started working with an ethnobotanist … and she's been starting to help us study these plant remains, these seeds. We're hoping to learn a lot more." White also said the redoubts were some of the only British-constructed fortifications in the city. When they took control of the territory, the British inhabitants usually reused Spanish infrastructure instead of building their own. "Everything else was either already here and the Spanish built it, and the British might've modified it a little — but this was something that was uniquely British," she said. "We know there's at least six additional [redoubts] out there." White added that she hopes the group finds "evidence … now that we sort of know what to look for, especially since there's not a lot of artifacts associated with them." St. Augustine's city archeology program conducts over 60 projects a year, with archaeologists constantly learning more about the city's past. At a time when many fascinating excavations are taking place across the world, from Europe to the Middle East, White emphasized the amount the U.S. has to offer in terms of archaeology. "I think sometimes we're surprised: 'Wait, there's archaeology in America, in our own backyard?'" she said. "Yes, there is archaeology everywhere." "It may not be as old as some people want to think, but there's stuff everywhere. [Archaeology is] always fascinating … and it's a great way to learn about ourselves today, too." Fox News Digital's Brooke Curto, as well as The Associated Press, contributed reporting.
Boston Globe
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Native Americans helped spark the Revolution
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Advertisement There are few years in US history more misunderstood than those following the Seven Years' War. It was fought across the globe — from Havana to Manila — and its origins lay deep in the American interior, near what is today Pittsburgh. Fighting began in the summer of 1754 near the Ohio River, after French officials established Fort Duquesne to prevent English traders from usurping interior trade between French settlers and their Algonquian-speaking indigenous allies. This first battle ended, ironically, on July 4, 1754, when Colonel George Washington surrendered to French forces and retreated to Virginia after failing even to assault Duquesne. Advertisement Eventually, British forces, commanded by Jeffrey Amherst, the governor general of British North America, conquered New France, more than doubling the North American territories held by the king. The British triumphs that Amherst led can still be read on the eastern side of an obelisk he designed that sits on the site of his former manor in Kent, England: Louisbourg surrendered And Six French Battalions Prisoners of War, 26th July 1758 Fort du Quesne taken possession of 24th Nov. 1758 Niagara surrendered 25th July 1759 Ticonderoga taken possession of 26th July 1759 Crown Point taken possession of 4th August 1759 Quebec capitulated 18th Sept. 1759 The western side of the monument displays an homage to Amherst: 'Dedicated to that most able Statesman during whose administration Cape Breton & Canada were conquered and from whose influence the British arms derived a degree of Lustre unparallel'd in past Ages.' Nowhere else are the concluding stages of this struggle for North America so clearly commemorated. James A. West's "Point Of View" sculpture in Pittsburgh depicts a 1770 meeting between the Seneca leader Guyasuta and George few ever glean insight into one enduring imprint of the war: Its aftermath formed the crucible of the nation's Indian affairs — and it did so in ways that fueled colonists' grievances. Immediately after the Treaty of Paris, in June 1763, a constellation of Native nations known as Pontiac's Confederacy formed a multitribal confederation across the Great Lakes. They sacked nearly all the Great Lakes forts the British had inherited from the French, drawing English forces deeper into the continent. This conflict, known as Pontiac's War, continued for two years and grew increasingly costly for the Crown, compelling generals like Amherst to pursue diplomacy instead of more warfare. Advertisement In an initial step, in October 1763, a 'Royal Proclamation Line' decreed that interior Colonial settlements would be abandoned and that the lands of the Ohio River Valley were to be 'reserved for the Indians,' as many maps thereafter detailed. Colonists considered such recognition treacherous. They vilified Indians and British officials who supported them. Even as much of this violent history of the indigenous origins of the American Revolution has become more widely known, continued work is needed to explore these difficult and determinative years: While conflicts with Native nations across the interior of eastern North America erupted throughout the Revolution, other Native communities — particularly in New England — fought alongside Colonial forces, even at Lexington and Concord. A diversity of Native warriors from across the Northeast fought and died in the Revolution because they had lived for generations within Colonial society and, like the colonists, held many grievances of their own against the Crown. Many had adopted Christianity and worked within the Colonial economy: Wampanoag and Wappinger, Pequot and Brothertown, Narragansett and Mohegan, Stockbridge and Oneida, among others. Their lives and participation remain rarely acknowledged in the national memory. As these Native warriors joined Colonial forces, interior Native nations attempted to remain either neutral or allies of the Crown, which had spent many years recognizing their autonomy. Samson Occom, painted circa 1950 by Nathaniel Smibert. Bowdoin College Museum of Art Participants on both sides of the Revolution, Native nations continued to suffer during the Revolution's aftermath. As the venerable Mohegan Preacher Samson Occom relayed, the Revolution 'has been the most Destructive to poor Indians of any wars that ever happened.' Among the most well-traveled and prolific writers of his generation, Occom had seen the once familiar place of Native peoples within the Colonial world transformed by the Revolution and its emerging racial hierarchies. Such changes — and racialization — became written into state constitutions, Revolutionary texts, and even the Declaration of Independence, which concludes its list of grievances with claims that the King of England 'has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our frontier, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, Is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.' Advertisement As the Founding Fathers began a new nation, they envisioned the taking of Indian lands as a natural right of their emerging sovereignty. Indeed, a growing discourse of 'natural rights' formed the intellectual oxygen around them, especially when they looked to European philosophical traditions that championed reason and Enlightenment ideals. Within such emergent philosophies, 'savages' by definition lacked reason and remained unfit for inclusion in democracy and civilization. Ever-stronger forms of exclusion characterized the experiences of Native Americans after 1776.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Knapsack's Worth of Courage
It is a blessing for this troubled country that the semiquincentennial of its struggle for independence is upon it. Indeed, some notable anniversaries have already slipped by: In September 1774, delegates from Suffolk County, Massachusetts, approved a set of resolves rejecting Parliament's authority, which were then endorsed by the first Continental Congress. In November of that year, the provincial Congress of Massachusetts authorized the enlistment of 12,000 troops. Others lie just ahead: In a month, Americans will observe the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The semiquincentennial offers not just a diversion from current politics or an opportunity to reassert American unity at a time of disharmony, but also a moment to reflect on the character of the men and women who made the United States out of a collection of fractious colonies. That thought occurred to me recently as I attended my final meeting of the Board of Trustees of Fort Ticonderoga, of which I have been part for nearly a decade. Fort Ti, for those who do not know it, sits on the spit of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain in upstate New York. The small fort is a gem, surrounded by mountains, lovingly restored and preserved as a private institution. Its leadership has grown its museum to now include the finest collection of 18th-century militaria in the United States, if not the world. Tens of thousands visit every year. [Read: The United States of fear] Built by the French in 1755 as a base of operations against the British colonies, Fort Ticonderoga witnessed sieges, skirmishes, raids, and ambushes, first in the Seven Years' War and then in the American war for independence. Since then, presidents have visited repeatedly. Writers too: Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a famous essay about his visits there with a recently graduated, brilliant young engineer, who may have been none other than Robert E. Lee: 'The young West Pointer, with his lectures on ravelins, counterscarps, angles, and covered ways, made it an affair of brick and mortar and hewn stone, arranged on certain regular principles, having a good deal to do with mathematics but nothing at all with poetry.' My favorite artifact in the museum is a modest thing—a knapsack that belonged to a soldier named Benjamin Warner. He attached a note to it: This Napsack I caryd Through the War of the Revolution to achieve the American Independence. I Transmit it to my olest sone Benjamin Warner Jr. with directions to keep it and transmit it to his oldest sone and so on to the latest posterity and whilst one shred of it shall remain never surrender you libertys to a foren envador or an aspiring demegog. Benjamin Warner Ticonderoga March 27, 1837. Warner's orthography may have been uncertain, but his values were not, and I often think of that warning—about foreign invaders, yes, but also aspiring demagogues. Plenty of people kept their heads down during the Revolution. John Adams famously said that he thought a third of Americans at the time were in favor, a third opposed, and a third neutral. Those percentages may be off: That middle group—hoping, like most people, simply to get on—may have been larger. And then there were those who had second thoughts—Benedict Arnold most notably, but many others as well, from statesmen such as Joseph Galloway to more ordinary souls caught in the middle. But the tone was set by those like John Morton, a signer of the Declaration who accepted that 'this is putting the Halter about our Necks, & we may as well die by the Sword as be hang'd like Rebels.' In particular, the gentry leadership of the Revolution knew, from the record of how Britain had dealt with rebels in Ireland and Scotland, that they could face loss of their home, their freedom, and possibly their life. When Thomas Jefferson ended the Declaration with the words 'we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,' he was not kidding. Benjamin Warner was not of the gentry, though; he was a mere farmer. He led a long life, from 1757 to 1846. His tombstone, in a cemetery in Crown Point, New York, has a simple epitaph: 'A revolutionary soldier & a friend to the Slave.' One may only suppose what that last phrase meant, given that New York was on the Underground Railroad. Warner was one of those soldiers who served repeatedly from 1775 to 1780, joining one regiment and then another, marching to Quebec, fighting in the Battle of Long Island and in New Jersey. In between campaigns, presumably, he took care of the farm. Beyond that, and his knapsack, we do not know much, other than that he saw his duty, did it, went home, and did it again. There does not seem much flash about him, but he knew what he was fighting for, and what he would willingly fight against. [Tom Nichols: Reclaiming real American patriotism] He has something to teach us. Americans see before them the unedifying spectacle of their representatives being too fearful to convene town halls where they might either be criticized or, worse, be compelled to defend a president who they know is damaging the country every day. We have senators who knowingly confirmed untrustworthy and unqualified individuals to the most important national-security jobs in the country because they feared the wrath of President Donald Trump's base. We see intellectuals talking about fleeing the country or actually doing so not because they have been persecuted in any way, but because of a foreboding atmosphere. We have formerly great law firms such as Paul Weiss groveling to an administration that has threatened them, and offering up tens of millions of dollars of free services in support of its beliefs rather than stand in defense of the right of unpopular people to be represented in a court of law. There is a name for this: cowardice. It is not an uncommon failing, to be sure, but so far, at any rate, it seems unaccompanied by shame, although regret may eventually come. Cowardice is, at any event, a quality that one suspects the figures who won us independence would have despised in their descendants, who have had a comparatively easy lot in life. Perhaps the series of 250th anniversaries will cause some of us, at least, to get beyond the historical clichés and think of the farewells to families, the dysentery and smallpox, the brutal killing and maiming on 18th-century battlefields, and the bloody footprints in the snow. Above all, we should take away from the commemorations before us a celebration less of heroism than of unassuming courage. Now, and for some years to come, we will need a lot less Paul Weiss, and a lot more Benjamin Warner. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
A Knapsack's Worth of Courage
It is a blessing for this troubled country that the semiquincentennial of its struggle for independence is upon it. Indeed, some notable anniversaries have already slipped by: In September 1774, delegates from Suffolk County, Massachusetts, approved a set of resolves rejecting Parliament's authority, which were then endorsed by the first Continental Congress. In November of that year, the provincial Congress of Massachusetts authorized the enlistment of 12,000 troops. Others lie just ahead: In a month, Americans will observe the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The semiquincentennial offers not just a diversion from current politics or an opportunity to reassert American unity at a time of disharmony, but also a moment to reflect on the character of the men and women who made the United States out of a collection of fractious colonies. That thought occurred to me recently as I attended my final meeting of the Board of Trustees of Fort Ticonderoga, of which I have been part for nearly a decade. Fort Ti, for those who do not know it, sits on the spit of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain in upstate New York. The small fort is a gem, surrounded by mountains, lovingly restored and preserved as a private institution. Its leadership has grown its museum to now include the finest collection of 18th-century militaria in the United States, if not the world. Tens of thousands visit every year. Built by the French in 1755 as a base of operations against the British colonies, Fort Ticonderoga witnessed sieges, skirmishes, raids, and ambushes, first in the Seven Years' War and then in the American war for independence. Since then, presidents have visited repeatedly. Writers too: Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a famous essay about his visits there with a recently graduated, brilliant young engineer, who may have been none other than Robert E. Lee: 'The young West Pointer, with his lectures on ravelins, counterscarps, angles, and covered ways, made it an affair of brick and mortar and hewn stone, arranged on certain regular principles, having a good deal to do with mathematics but nothing at all with poetry.' My favorite artifact in the museum is a modest thing—a knapsack that belonged to a soldier named Benjamin Warner. He attached a note to it: This Napsack I caryd Through the War of the Revolution to achieve the American Independence. I Transmit it to my olest sone Benjamin Warner Jr. with directions to keep it and transmit it to his oldest sone and so on to the latest posterity and whilst one shred of it shall remain never surrender you libertys to a foren envador or an aspiring demegog. Benjamin Warner Ticonderoga March 27, 1837. Warner's orthography may have been uncertain, but his values were not, and I often think of that warning—about foreign invaders, yes, but also aspiring demagogues. Plenty of people kept their heads down during the Revolution. John Adams famously said that he thought a third of Americans at the time were in favor, a third opposed, and a third neutral. Those percentages may be off: That middle group—hoping, like most people, simply to get on—may have been larger. And then there were those who had second thoughts—Benedict Arnold most notably, but many others as well, from statesmen such as Joseph Galloway to more ordinary souls caught in the middle. But the tone was set by those like John Morton, a signer of the Declaration who accepted that 'this is putting the Halter about our Necks, & we may as well die by the Sword as be hang'd like Rebels.' In particular, the gentry leadership of the Revolution knew, from the record of how Britain had dealt with rebels in Ireland and Scotland, that they could face loss of their home, their freedom, and possibly their life. When Thomas Jefferson ended the Declaration with the words 'we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,' he was not kidding. Benjamin Warner was not of the gentry, though; he was a mere farmer. He led a long life, from 1757 to 1846. His tombstone, in a cemetery in Crown Point, New York, has a simple epitaph: 'A revolutionary soldier & a friend to the Slave.' One may only suppose what that last phrase meant, given that New York was on the Underground Railroad. Warner was one of those soldiers who served repeatedly from 1775 to 1780, joining one regiment and then another, marching to Quebec, fighting in the Battle of Long Island and in New Jersey. In between campaigns, presumably, he took care of the farm. Beyond that, and his knapsack, we do not know much, other than that he saw his duty, did it, went home, and did it again. There does not seem much flash about him, but he knew what he was fighting for, and what he would willingly fight against. Tom Nichols: Reclaiming real American patriotism He has something to teach us. Americans see before them the unedifying spectacle of their representatives being too fearful to convene town halls where they might either be criticized or, worse, be compelled to defend a president who they know is damaging the country every day. We have senators who knowingly confirmed untrustworthy and unqualified individuals to the most important national-security jobs in the country because they feared the wrath of President Donald Trump's base. We see intellectuals talking about fleeing the country or actually doing so not because they have been persecuted in any way, but because of a foreboding atmosphere. We have formerly great law firms such as Paul Weiss groveling to an administration that has threatened them, and offering up tens of millions of dollars of free services in support of its beliefs rather than stand in defense of the right of unpopular people to be represented in a court of law. There is a name for this: cowardice. It is not an uncommon failing, to be sure, but so far, at any rate, it seems unaccompanied by shame, although regret may eventually come. Cowardice is, at any event, a quality that one suspects the figures who won us independence would have despised in their descendants, who have had a comparatively easy lot in life. Perhaps the series of 250th anniversaries will cause some of us, at least, to get beyond the historical clichés and think of the farewells to families, the dysentery and smallpox, the brutal killing and maiming on 18th-century battlefields, and the bloody footprints in the snow. Above all, we should take away from the commemorations before us a celebration less of heroism than of unassuming courage. Now, and for some years to come, we will need a lot less Paul Weiss, and a lot more Benjamin Warner.
CBC
19-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Why a statue by a Haida artist is featured in Quebec City's Plains of Abraham
The historic Plains of Abraham is where one of the most pivotal battles in the Seven Years' War was fought, that ultimately led to the formation of Canada as we know it. Now, a statue called Three Watchmen by Haida artist James Hart stands there. Hart and James Robert, the chair of the National Battlefields Commission, explained the statue's significance and how it came to be installed.
