Search Results: Benjamin Franklin

Oil on slate painting by Benjamin West, c.1816. From the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Captain Benjamin Hornigold was a British pirate active in the Caribbean and North Atlantic from 1716 to 1717. Hornigold’s greatest claim to fame (or infamy) is that he taught the pirating ropes to Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard (d. 1718). Giving...

The involvement of France in the American War of Independence (1775-1783) was not only significant in the progress of the war itself but also as a critical moment for France. Whereas French intervention in the war would help turn the tide...

The Declaration of Independence is the foundational document of the United States of America. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, it explains why the Thirteen Colonies decided to separate from Great Britain during the American Revolution...

The Second Continental Congress was the body of delegates that governed the Thirteen Colonies and, later, the United States during the American Revolutionary War. Between its first session in May 1775 and its disbandment in March 1781, the...

Patrick Lyster as the English pirate Captain Benjamin Hornigold (d. 1719) in the TV series Black Sails. © 2014 Starz

Portrait of Benjamin Lincoln, a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (no relation to Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president). Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, October 1784. Independence National Historical...

"Colonel Benjamin Church" by an unknown artist, c. 1675 CE. Collection of the New York Public Library.

Colonel Tye (c. 1753-1780) was an African-American Loyalist leader who commanded one of the most effective guerilla forces of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Born into slavery, he escaped in 1775 and joined the British cause...

An unfinished oil sketch depicting the Treaty of Paris of 1783, by Benjamin West, c. 1783. The American commissioners depicted from left to right are John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin...