Creative History

  On July 5, 1777 Philadelphia’s most widely read daily broadsheet The Pennsylvania Evening Post described the previous day’s Independence Day celebrations in the city as, “A demonstration of joy and festivities.” In an outpouring of patriotic fervor according to the Pennsylvania Evening Post , ship’s in the harbor along the banks of the Delaware River were said to be, “Dressed in the gayest manner with the colors of the United States and red, white and blue streamers displayed.” It was reported that day, that as the fittingly decorated ships approached the city--America’s newly minted first capital city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that thirteen cannon shots were fired--one cannon blast for each former British colony that had only the year before turned newly independent state, part of the loose confederation now known as the United States of America. That night thirteen fireworks were set off in the large green spaces known as the city commons of both Philadelphia, the nasc...

            Around one in the morning on September 28, 1778 just a few miles across the border from New York in northern New Jersey six companies of British infantry stand in silence with bayonets fixed and at the ready. The redcoats wait in the pitch darkness without a sound.  A number of local Tory guides have led them to this spot on the side of a road in Bergen County.  The redcoats are under the command of Major Turner Staubenzie.  The Major has gained a reputation for brutality and he has ordered that his troops give no quarter and make no sound. Over the past three years no place in the whole of America has been more ravaged by the War for Independence than New Jersey.  British and American, patriot and loyalist alike, have fought a ceaseless struggle for supremacy and forage all across the Garden State from New York City to Philadelphia.  Both armies have laid waste to the land and occupied and vacated the same to...