Liberty Boys of '76
Heroism, loyalty, and the fight for independence,
“The Liberty Boys of ‘76” was a long-running dime novel series that captivated young American readers in the early 20th century with tales of patriotic adventure set during the Revolutionary War.
Published as a weekly nickel magazine by Frank Tousey (and later Harry E. Wolff) from January 4, 1901, to May 22, 1925, the series was one of the era’s most prolific dime novel runs.1
The stories centered on a fictional band of brave young American patriots known as the Liberty Boys, led by Captain Dick Slater, who fought against British forces and Tories in various historical battles and skirmishes.
Drawing on real events from the American Revolution, the narratives emphasized themes of heroism, loyalty, and the fight for independence, with the publisher claiming they provided “a faithful account of the exciting adventures” of these youths willing to risk their lives for the cause.
Common plot elements included daring raids, narrow escapes, and confrontations with redcoats, often blending historical accuracy with thrilling fiction to educate and entertain. Most issues were written under the house pseudonym “Harry Moore,” a common practice in dime novel production where multiple ghostwriters contributed.
ALL THE TITLES!
All the titles and descriptions of the Liberty Boys series are available at:
This bibliography project aims to create a comprehensive online database of dime novels, story papers, reprint libraries and related materials. 2 Examples:
The Liberty Boys After the Redcoats; or, The Battle of Buck’s Head Neck
The Liberty Boys and Benedict Arnold; or, Hot Work with a Traitor
The bibliography is named for Edward T. LeBlanc editor of Dime Novel Round-Up from 1952 to 1994, who devoted many years of his life to compiling extensive lists of dime novels and related materials. With the permission of the LeBlanc family, Villanova University used his research as a foundation for the project.3
You can read digitized copies at Villanova online.
The Liberty Boys. University of South Florida Libraries. Digital commons.
This project is hosted and coordinated by Falvey Library at Villanova University. Several other institutions have shared raw data and/or contributed data entry labor to help build the site, including Northern Illinois University, the University of South Florida, Stanford University, Bowling Green State University, Oberlin College, and the Library of Congress.
Thank you Katheen McCook for sharing the history and some of the adventures of "Liberty Boys of '76". As one who spent a career in newspapers, this shapes for me just one more example for why as a nation we must save for generations to come the endless file draws of newspaper clippings and, from the mid 20th century forward the reels of microfilm holding decades of photo copies of America's community newspapers when vitually every town had at least one weekly and mid-size cities to major urban areas could claim two, three to more than a half-dozen dailies chronicling the sentiments, news, styles, prices and pulse of their day as a nation's history.
Whether or not our best days are ahead of or behind us we may never fully understand unless we remain diligent chroniclers and keepers of the record of those days as our living history and lessons.