1775 - 1783

I am Ezekiel Reynolds, a citizen of Concord, Massachusetts Colony. My neighbors and I banded together to defend our families and farms and resist the taxation without representation in the British Parliament. We are called Minutemen for our speed in responding to an enemy attack. At Lexington and Concord we assembled and fired the "shot heard around the world" driving the British back to Boston in disgrace. Although they later gained Bunker and Breed's Hill outside Boston, they lost so many men they could not pursue and indeed were shaken to their very depths by our resistance. After Boston, I joined a Massachusetts Militia Regiment and fought in other places within the state. Like most of the militia, I was armed with only my hunting rifle and had no real military equipment or uniform. However, we were still able to defeat the greatest army in the world at Yorktown, Virginia. We now live in blessed freedom and owe nothing to a foreign king!

Listen up fellow Patriots....
I'm Corporal James Madison of the Continental Army; I was just a farm hand when war broke out on April 19, 1775. Because the blood of my New England brothers was spilled, I joined the army of colonists commanded by George Washington. As a Continental Army Soldier, I never imagined this war would be fought from locations in Canada all the way to Georgia over the course of 6 years. We were not well trained and were driven back from Massachusetts, New York, and across New Jersey into Pennsylvania by December 1776. We were feeling mighty low, but we crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day in terrible, icy weather and caught the British hirelings, the Hessians, napping at Trent. We whipped them badly there and Princeton a week later. When we won again in 1777 at Saratoga, New York, France became our ally providing better weapons and financial support. We spent the winter of 1777-78 in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, which was particularly harsh with little food and no warm clothing. In June of 1778, we proved our mettle in beating the British shot-for-shot and toe-to-toe at Monmouth, New Jersey. The British then shifted south and had some fearful successes. However, at Kings Mountain and Cowpens in South Carolina the boys down there gave the British forces all they could handle and chased them back to the coast. Washington marched us down to Yorktown, Virginia where we and French Army and Navy finally surrounded the whole of the British southern forces in October 1781. They gave up, but a formal peace treaty ending the war was not signed until 1783. I lost a lot of my friends fighting for liberty and freedom, but we all finally celebrate as a new nation - the United States of America!

Here are some other Militia and Continental Army uniforms worn during the war.

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