2018/11/21 by Frank Cogliano · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #Race, History, and American Society #Colonialism, slavery, and trade
paper · doi:10.1093/ehr/cey375
openalex publication_date 2018/11/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
In September 1776, two young men crossed the narrow sound between their home province of Connecticut and British-occupied Long Island. The men were unknown to each other and made their journeys separately. Nonetheless, the trip across Long Island Sound led to the same outcome for both men: death by hanging. For Nathan Hale and Moses Dunbar the political choices they made in 1774 and 1775 led to their deaths during the American War of Independence. Their stories, parallel rather than intertwined, are the focus of this fine study by Virginia DeJohn Anderson. Anderson uses the lives and premature deaths of Hale and Dunbar to examine the origins and meaning of the American Revolution for people in Connecticut. The result is a nuanced study that combines the methodologies of microhistory and community studies in a sophisticated and compelling manner to make an original and important contribution to the historiography of the American Revolution.