The North Jersey Revolutionary War Round Table announces its return for the 2021-2022 season.

Membership renewals are now due.  Please send your check for $50 to NJARRT, PO Box 1473, Morristown NJ 07962.  Note that this is a new mailing address for us.

We will continue to use zoom for our monthly meetings until such time as the auditorium at the museum, Morristown National Historical Park is available for use. 

The first meeting of the new season takes place on Thursday, September 9 at 7:00pm.  (Meetings are regularly on the second Thursday of the month).  Members will receive an email with the link to the zoom meeting.  Guests may request the link by sending an email to [email protected]

Our first speaker will be J.L. Bell.  He maintains the Boston1775.net website, offering daily postings of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the American Revolution. He is the author of “The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War,” and numerous articles. John has spoken at historic sites from Mount Vernon to Old North Church, and this is his second talk to our Round Table.

His topic is:

 “How Americans Fought the Stamp Act with Memes.” 

The word “meme” is a modern coinage expressing how ideas replicate, spread, and mutate like genes, but we can see memes at work way back in the Revolutionary era.

When news of the Stamp Act arrived in North America in the spring of 1765, it produced an unprecedented wave of protests. Colonial politicians and printers promoted opposition with slogans like “Sons of Liberty,” repurposed images such as the “Join, Or Die” snake, and a radical new form of outdoor political protest that edged into riots, all carefully detailed in newspapers.

We can watch those activities spread from colony to colony, creating the first continental resistance to British policy, and see how the groundwork was laid for the next imperial dispute.

Please mark your calendar also for October 14 when Eric Schnitzer will talk about “Hessians” in the American Revolution.