On December 20, 1740, Arthur Lee — Revolutionary Era diplomat, spy, and Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress — was born. He practiced law in London from 1770 to 1776, where he wrote polemics against slavery and in defense of the American colonies’ resistance to the Townshend acts and other tyrannical British policies.
He was brother to Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee.
On December 19, 1776, Tom Paine published one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis. Exactly one year later, George Washington’s Continental Army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
On December 19, 1828, Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828, a key moment in what became known as the Nullification Crisis.
Anders Chydenius, The National Gain (1765), §5.
[E]very individual spontaneously tries to find the place and the trade in which he can best increase National gain, if laws do not prevent him from doing so.
When will it all end? Paul Jacob’s diagnosis, prognosis, and ag(ony)gnosis on Townhall. Click on over, then come back here for the wrap up:
On December 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving, marking the then-recent October victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne [pictured, above] in the Battle of Saratoga.
Yes, it was not journalism’s finest hour. But, MacAllister often argued, it never had been.
Jack McDevitt, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 24.
Author and satirist Andrew Klavan has some words about Brian Williams and “fake news” and much, much more.
Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and I, that all will be right.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), chapter one.
On December 17, 1777, France formally recognized the United States of America.
The 17th of December, 1819, was the day Simon Bolivar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura.
To violate its own laws is a special privilege of absolute monarchy.
Edmond About, The Roman Question (1859), H. C. Coape, translator.