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Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Leutze, 1851 Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Special Report

America’s 250th Anniversary

To mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding on July 4, 1776, Smithsonian magazine is highlighting the people, places and events that shaped the United States’ fight for independence from Great Britain

David Drake’s 1857 ceramic jar is featured prominently in the museum’s redesigned 18th-century galleries ahead of its America at 250 celebration. 

Smart News

By Signing His Name to Massive Jars, This Enslaved Artist Defied Literacy Bans in the South. Now, His Masterpiece Is on View With a Famed Paul Revere Bowl

Born into slavery around 1800, David Drake was a skilled ceramicist. His work will be on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston as the institution marks America’s 250th birthday

Benitoite mineral from California

At the Smithsonian

What Natural History Objects Represent Your State? You Can Find Out in This New Exhibition of More Than 600 Specimens and Artifacts

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History celebrates America’s 250th anniversary by spotlighting fascinating items from across the nation

Archaeologists discovered musket balls thought to have been fired during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Smart News

In June 1775, the American Patriots Faced Off With the British at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Archaeologists Are Uncovering Evidence of the Fighting 251 Years Later

Researchers discovered gun parts, musket balls and other artifacts in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood

The capsule is cylinder-shaped to minimize edges, through which water could seep.

Smart News

For Its Birthday, the U.S. Will Give Americans of the Future a 900-Pound Time Capsule Filled With Art, Natural Treasures and a Clever Copy of the Declaration of Independence

The capsule was created and filled at the direction of Congress, through the America250 commission. It will be interred beneath an original sculpture on July 4

An aerial view of the Sesquicentennial International Exposition

History

America’s 150th Birthday Celebration Was Deemed the Nation’s ‘Greatest Flop.’ What Went Wrong With the Sesquicentennial?

Philadelphia politicians hoped to replicate the success of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Instead, the 1926 world’s fair lost millions of dollars, essentially bankrupting the city on the eve of the Great Depression

Eric Conrad donated the table to the Betsy Ross House on Flag Day.  

Smart News

You Can Now See Betsy Ross’ Sewing Table in Philadelphia, Thanks to a Flag Day Donation From Her Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson

The origins of the Stars and Stripes are murky, but generations of Americans have admired stories about Ross creating the first American flag

More From the Archives

Gordon S. Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2011. 

Smart News

Four Reasons You Should Know More About Gordon S. Wood, the Scholar of the American Revolution Who Died This Week at Age 92

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, who wrote of the “radicalism” of the country’s founding, was killed in a hit-and-run accident in a parking lot

Workers recovered this cannon from the Savannah River in 2022.

Smart News

Workers Dredging the Savannah River Stumbled Upon 19 Cannons That Had Been Underwater Since the Revolutionary War

The centuries-old artifacts emerged from the riverbed between 2021 and 2022. Experts spent several years carefully restoring 17 of them, which will make their public debut in a new exhibition

Liberty Lager is a brew inspired by Washington’s small beer recipe.

Smart News

George Washington Recorded a Recipe for Beer While Leading a Militia. Thanks to the New York Public Library, You Can Imbibe That History This Summer

To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, the library partnered with a brewery to produce the founding father’s beer — and an updated version more pleasing to modern palates

This painting, titled Excelsior, shows Liberty and Justice as allegorical figures. A new exhibition “moves past symbolism to center the real expertise and labor of women who navigated a world of blurred allegiances to help found the United States,” says Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New York Historical.

History

During the Revolution, American Women Fought for Freedom, Spied on the British, Cared for the Sick and Fell in Love. A New Exhibition Reveals Their Rich Wartime Stories

Now on view at the New York Historical, “Revolutionary Women” spotlights figures with connections to the state, including a Jewish chocolatier, a Mohawk leader and a woman who disguised herself as a man to enlist in the Continental Army

Founders and Unsung Heroes

A depiction of George Washington and his mother, Mary Ball Washington, attending a ball celebrating the surrender at Yorktown in 1781

History

The Reinvention of George Washington's Mother, From Paragon of Virtue to Greedy Shrew to Widow Striving for Independence

A new biography examines how 19th-century Americans remembered Mary Ball Washington, who raised the future president largely on her own after her husband’s death in 1743

William E. Leuchtenburg's new book spotlights (from left to right) George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams.

History

What the American Revolution Taught the United States' First Presidents

A new book by historian William E. Leuchtenburg examines how the first six commanders in chief embodied the revolutionary spirit and set precedents that shaped their successors' tenures

Sybil Ludington has been called the "female Paul Revere."

History

Did the Midnight Ride of Sibyl Ludington Ever Happen?

What to make of the alluring legend of the New York teen who warned that the Redcoats were coming

Detail of a copy of the Declaration printed by Goddard

History

Mary Katharine Goddard, the Woman Whose Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence

Likely the United States' first woman employee, this newspaper publisher was a key figure in promoting the ideas that fomented the Revolution

Catalysts for Revolution

This engraving by Paul Revere offered a specific argument about what happened that day in Boston.

History

A Fresh Look at the Boston Massacre, 250 Years After the Event That Jumpstarted the Revolution

The five deaths may have shook the colonies, but a new book examines the personal relationships forever changed by them too

The Bostonians’ “preferred outcome” was for the tea to be “peacefully sent back to London,” says historian Benjamin L. Carp. “It’s only when they find out … the governor is not going to let [that happen] that they say, ‘Well, we have no choice [but] to destroy [the tea].”

History

The Many Myths of the Boston Tea Party

Contrary to popular belief, the 1773 protest opposed a tax break, not a tax hike. And it didn't immediately unify the colonies against the British

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History

At a Bold Meeting 250 Years Ago, the Continental Congress Set America in Motion

While far less famous than the coalition that met in 1775, this group of founders found agreement in their disagreements and laid the groundwork for a revolution

“Here … we claim the first blow was struck in the war of independence,” wrote Salem historian Charles Moses Endicott in his account of Leslie's Retreat.

History

Was This Little-Known Standoff Between British Soldiers and Colonists the Real Start of the American Revolution?

On February 26, 1775, residents of Salem, Massachusetts, banded together to force the British to withdraw from their town during an oft-overlooked encounter known as Leslie's Retreat

The Revolutionary War

A romanticized 1975 depiction of Daniel Morgan's riflemen at the Battle of Bemis Heights in Saratoga, New York, on October 7, 1777

History

How a Relentless, 484-Mile March From Virginia to Massachusetts Fueled the Legend of the Dashing Frontier Rifleman

In the early months of the American Revolution, Daniel Morgan and his soldiers raced north to join the Continental Army during the so-called Beeline March

A replica of Benjamin West's <em>Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783 </em>appears in the background of this 1812 portrait of English judge John Eardley Wilmot.

History

Meet the Defiant Loyalists Who Paid Dearly for Choosing the Wrong Side in the American Revolution

American colonists who aligned with the British lost their lands, their reputations and sometimes even their lives

This John Trumbull painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill presents a romanticized version of Joseph Warren's death.

History

This Forgotten Founding Father Hoped to 'Die Up to My Knees in Blood' in the Fight for American Independence. He Got His Wish

Joseph Warren was a key leader of the American Revolution, mobilizing troops and managing a circle of spies. But he's mainly remembered for his death at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775

This painting by Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberghe, court painter of battles to France’s King Louis XVI, depicts the 1781 formal surrender of the British army at Yorktown, Virginia. The original is at the Palace of Versailles. This secondary version was created in 1786 for French General Comte de Rochambeau, the commander of the French forces at Yorktown

At the Smithsonian

The American Revolution Was Just One Battlefront in a Huge World War

A new Smithsonian exhibition examines the global context that bolstered the colonists’ fight for independence