250 and Counting

Historic US Marine Corps portrait of Samuel Nicholas, their first Commandant. Artist and date of creation unknown. Although he held the title “Captain of Marines” at this point, Samuel Nicholas was the first officer commissioned to the Continental Marines (later the US Marine Corps), and by tradition is therefore considered to be the first Commandant of the Marines. Hey, are YOU going...

A 1913 painting of the Continental Congress in session, by John Ward Dunsmore. This is supposed to be the moment that John Adams recommends George Washington to lead the Continental Army. I couldn’t find any images of Lord Drummond, at least not the correct Lord Drummond. It was called “A Plan of Accommodation,” and it had been in the works for most of the previous year before Lo...

The Mount Riga Ironworks Furnace in Salisbury, CT. There was more than one furnace at this location; this is the surviving one. It’s on the National Register of Historic Locations and a lovely place to visit if you’re in the northwest corner of the state. The Mount Riga Iron Furnace isn’t an especially unique artifact on the east coast of the US. In fact, as someone who lives in...

“Incident in the Burning of Norfolk,” engraving, artist unknown. Originally appeared as an illustration in Cassell’s History of the United States in the late 1870s. Happy New Year to you! The burning of Norfolk was the follow-up to the Battle of Great Bridge and the Patriot occupation of that town. Colonel Howe probably overplayed his hand with this one, and the consequences were...

The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec (detail), by John Trumbull, 1786. Montgomery was struck in the head by grapeshot, so it probably wasn’t nearly as tidy as this. While hindsight is very much a 20/20 vision, it’s still worth exploring why the Battle of Quebec went so poorly for the American side: While General Montgomery was clever enough to attack during a storm,...

Back on October 8 , the Continental Army determined that Blacks were no longer to be permitted to enlist, and that existing soldiers would not be allowed to re-enlist. But on this date, George Washington changed his mind. Was he suddenly an abolitionist? Not a chance. He owned slaves until the day he died. This was a more pragmatic decision. It was borne of the fact that he and his staff suddenly...

The Pine Tree Flag, which was the ensign of the Massachusetts State Navy. There are a few variations of this, because the original was destroyed by the British. While the Massachusetts Naval Militia was pretty much wiped out in 1779 ( oops, spoiler alert ), it wasn’t the end of a state-based Navy for Massachusetts. Massachusetts began to rebuild, but in 1780 a new state constitution was adop...

The plaque in Carpenters Hall, commemorating the table where the Secret Committee met with Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir. You’ll remember I mentioned Samuel Adams in this space a couple of days ago, as a member of the Continental Congress, and as a member of several committees, most of them related to defense. He was almost certainly at the heart of the events of today that took plac...

Yeah, I cheated and used the same image from last week. While he didn’t use a rattlesnake, Benjamin Franklin was the guy who came up with the original “Join or Die” snake image [ right ]back in 1754. (At least most people give him credit for it.) It was based in a superstition that if you cut up a snake into pieces and then reassembled those pieces before sunset, the snake could...

Portrait of Samuel Adams, 1772. by John Singleton Copley – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Wikimedia Commons Most of us have a pop culture view of the American Revolution period, and some of us go so far as to have some idea of what happened via the 1970 film 1776 . Oddly enough, that movie has both a ton of accuracy with its facts (but not necessarily in the right order), and a ton of dram...

Cover art for December 25, 1775: A portrait of Major General Howe, artist unknown. From the book A brief history of the North Carolina troops on the Continental establishment, by: Charles Lukens Davis & Henry Hobart Bellas, published 1896. The Battle of Great Bridge may be over, but its effects linger on. Lord Dunmore, the former Royal Governor of South Carolina, communicated to General Robert...

Joseph Warren conferring with Israel Putnam before the battle at Bunker Hill, at which Warren was killed. Mike’s pretty much covered the story of the capture of a British ship in the episode, so I’m going to tell you a little bit about Joseph Warren, who (you may recall) was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. Warren became a doctor early in his career, and he also became a Patriot be...

A 1775 map of Charleston and surrounding areas, owned by Henry Laurens. Charleston is the small dark patch above the first ‘a’ in “Campaign”. As important as some of the action in the southern colonies was—and make no mistake, Colonel Richard Richardson’s campaign to sniff out the Loyalist leaders in the western part of the state wound up being very important—other ev...

Historical marker placed at the site of the Battle of Great Cane Brake , explaining where another historical marker is located. The Battle of Great Cane Brake took place near modern-day Simpsonville, South Carolina. That’s a few miles southeast of Greenville. A “Brake of Canes” is pretty much what it sounds like. The cane stalks in question are a kind of bamboo that grows in the...

Undated portrait of Richard Richardson, attributed to Jeremiah Theus. General Richard Richardson was a delegate to the Provincial Congresses in South Carolina in 1775 and 1776, and he served in both the South Carolina Militia and the Continental Army during the Revolution. He was instrumental in the Americans winning the Battle of Charleston in 1776, but doesn’t get much else attention, perh...

One variation of the flag. Some of them have an apostrophe in “DONT”, some use a non-serifed font, some don’t have any greenery under the snake. A few have the snake facing right. It’s arguably the most recognizable and popular symbol of the Revolutionary Era, and its debut turns 250 years old today. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s the Gadsden Flag. The concept of the snak...

The Fry-Jefferson Map of the Chesapeake Bay area, commissioned in 1750 and completed in 1753. This was also one of the first maps of the area that had the “North is Up” orientation. The Great Chesapeake Bay, which is protected by the Delmarva Peninsula (DELaware, MARyland, VirginiA, get it?) is a watershed area that is hugely important for these three states, plus New York, Pennsylvani...

A hand-colored printed halftone of a 19th-century illustration of George Washington writing at his desk. Military Intelligence is a peculiar thing, if only because you never know where it’s going to come from, and/or what it’s going to affect. And that’s where today’s episode comes in, because Congress received a letter written today which detailed some plans for British mi...

One of many, MANY images mistakenly showing the Ticonderoga artillery being transported on ox-drawn sleds. Author unknown, National Archive Collection number 111-SC-100815. Colonel Henry Knox was just about ready to begin moving the Noble Train of Artillery (a phrase he coined, incidentally). He’d have everything he needed to move by the 20th or 21st of December, and then just seventeen days...

Historical Marker on Ohio Highway 93, just south of US 36, commemorating Chief White Eyes’ founding of a Delaware Tribe-based town not far from this place. Image via remarkableohio.org. I rather dislike using historical markers back-to-back for the cover art, but there are no images of Chief White Eyes, and I’d about run out of images of Great Bridge yesterday, so here we are. Also—and...

Historical marker commemorating the Battle of Great Bridge. We’ve done several episodes about the Battle of Great Bridge, and there’s a reason for that. Bunker Hill gets all the press, but remember we LOST that battle. Great Bridge was the first real Patriot victory, it was the first major battle in Virginia, and therefore it poked the Virginia Convention into adopting the first public...

Engraving of Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald. Original painting by James Ramsay, engraving by John Cook, published 1866. Thomas Cochrane had quite the colorful, storied life, and it’s too bad that we can only cram so much into a twenty-minute podcast episode. For instance, it’s entirely possible that he was involved in a stock fraud scheme based on false rumors of Napoleon’s deat...

This image depicts the Battle of Nassau, one of the first major battles won by the Continental Navy in March of 1776.  Oil painting on canvas by V. Zveg. If you’re going to build a navy, you’ve got to get serious about it. Congress established the need for a Navy back in October, but they were kind of sloppy about executing the plan. For the last several weeks, the Congress has been pu...

Ben Franklin and Gabriel de Borbón had corresponded with one another previously, so while the letter that is the subject of today’s episode has a very specific (and relevant) ask in it, it was also just another in a chain of correspondence between the two. For his part, Prince Gabriel was probably receptive to Franklin’s suggestions, but he wasn’t likely to be in a position to ac...

Most of the portraits we see of Martha Washington were made when she was older, so we have (I think) this image of her as a bit of a crabby old frump. And maybe she was, by the time her husband got to be President. She didn’t really love the life of the public spouse and charming party hostess. But it turned out she was good at it, and if it made her crabby, nobody who mattered knew about it...