His majesty's regiments of foot reasserted their control over the Boston Common today with an encampment and a successful battle against rebel colonists. The encampment continues on Sunday.

Boston 1775 begins the saga of Revolutionary War skirmishes over Boston Light, the lighthouse that basically controlled nighttime navigation into Boston Harbor.

J.L. Bell fills us in on the goings on in the Adams household whilst John was off in Europe.

Like sci-fi fans who delight in finding continuity errors in Star Trek episodes, history buffs are enjoying themselves tremendously picking apart HBO's John Adams mini-series, including a sequence involving smallpox, which forced J.L. Bell to admit:

I must confess that I don't know my pus that well.

J.L. Bell compares the Boston Massacre trial on the John Adams mini-series with the historical record, concluding with the possibility that the screenwriters got confused between Oliver Wendell, who had a slave who testified, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the monicker of two rather more famous Bostonians (one of whom I can thank for the name of this site), neither of whom were even alive during the Revolution.

J.L. Bell concludes his recounting of Evacuation Day:

... Immediately upon the fleet's sailing the Select Men set off, through the lines, to Roxbury to acquaint General [George] Washington of the evacuation of the town. After sending a message Major [Joseph] Ward aid to General [Artemas] Ward, came to us at the lines and soon after the General himself, who received us in the most polite and affectionate manner, and permitted us to pass to Watertown to acquaint the Council of this happy event. ...

J.L. Bell reports on British preparations on March 15, 1776 to evacuate Boston:

... The General told us the Troops would embark this day and was told by General [James] Robertson it would be by three oclock. The Regiments all mustered, some of them marched down the wharf. Guards and Chevaux De Freze, were placed in the main streets and wharves in order to secure the retreat of Out Centinels. Several of the principle streets through which they were to pass were filled with Hhds. [hogsheads] filled with Horse-dung, large limbs of trees from the Mall [a tree-lined walk on Boston Common] to prevent a pursuit of the Continental Army. They manifestly appeared to be fearful of an attack. ...

Mark posts a copy of a Boston newspaper ad from Sept. 25, 1777 offering a reward for the return of a slave who escaped from her master in Jamaica Plain.

J.L. Bell reports that while the upcoming HBO mini-series on our own John Adams might be riveting, possibly the most riveting scene of all never happened: A royal customs agent was not tarred and feathered here by a mob acting on the orders of John Hancock (although there was an actual tarring and feathering a year later; Adams represented a defendant in that case, which involved a ship that had been seized from Hancock).

J.L. Bell recounts how Boston Harbor almost became the site of the first submarine attack in history.