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David Brown was a Revolutionary War veteran who received the harshest sentence ever handed down under the Sedition Act of 1798, all for helping raise a liberty pole in Dedham, Massachusetts. This episode traces how an ancient symbol of freedom became the evidence that cost him his own. We begin with the pileus cap carried on a spear after the assassination of Julius Caesar, follow the symbol throu...

Tippecanoe and Tyler Too helped elect a president in 1840, but the 1811 battle behind the slogan was chaotic, muddy and nearly disastrous. This episode traces the collision between Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison and the Shawnee spiritual leader Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet. We examine Harrison's land acquisitions, including the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne, and Tecumseh's ar...

King George III is often remembered in America as a cartoonish tyrant, but the historical record shows a science-minded, deeply moral and inflexible man who reigned for nearly 60 years. This episode takes a fresh look at the monarch who survived an assassination attempt at Drury Lane in 1800 and calmly stayed for the play. We follow George from his premature birth and sheltered education through h...

The Battles of Saratoga are widely considered the turning point of the American Revolution, and the man most responsible for the victory is honored on the battlefield by a monument to his boot that leaves out his name: Benedict Arnold. This episode examines how massive egos, logistical failures and new tactics trapped a British army in upstate New York. We cover the British plan to cut off New Eng...

The rockets' red glare in the Star-Spangled Banner came from Congreve rockets, some of the most erratic weapons ever fielded. This episode tells the story of the iron-cased rocket and the well-connected inventor, Sir William Congreve, who pushed it onto battlefields around the world. We start with the iron rockets of Tipu Sultan's Mysorean army, which inspired Congreve's designs, and follow how hi...

The Green Mountain Boys began as a tavern-based militia fighting New York over disputed land grants, then captured Fort Ticonderoga and helped create an independent republic that lasted 14 years. This episode explores how local economic survival drove one of the most unusual stories of the American Revolution. We look at the conflicting New Hampshire Grants, King George III's 1764 ruling for New Y...

Hercules Mulligan was an Irish-born New York tailor who outfitted British officers during the occupation of the city while secretly passing their secrets to the Continental Army. This episode strips away the pop culture version of Mulligan and looks at the documented record of how he built an intelligence operation in plain sight. We trace Mulligan's path from immigrant clerk to Sons of Liberty ra...

Fought on September 8, 1781, the Battle of Eutaw Springs was the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, and both sides claimed victory. This episode looks at how exhaustion, starvation and the brutal Southern environment shaped a battle decided as much by logistics as by tactics. We begin with Nathanael Greene's failed siege of Ninety Six and the punishing pursuit that br...

Pikes Peak carries the name of Zebulon Pike, but he never made it to the top. This episode reconstructs the messy, heavily mythologized life of the army officer whose expeditions blurred the line between frontier exploration and international espionage in the early 1800s. We follow Pike from his frontier upbringing and his unauthorized arrest of a French general, through his service under the sche...

Henry Laurens rose from a Charleston Huguenot merchant family to become president of the Continental Congress, yet his fortune was built on Austin and Laurens, the largest slave-trading house in North America. This episode examines how a cautious colonial conservative became a leading face of the American rebellion and one of history's most contradictory founders. We follow Laurens through his fai...

John Laurens was born in 1754 into one of the wealthiest slave-trading families in colonial America, yet he spent his short life pushing a radical plan to free and arm enslaved men to fight in the American Revolution. This episode is a narrative biography of a young idealist who fought on two fronts: against the British and against his own social class. We trace Laurens from his European education...

On September 10, 1813, a ragtag American fleet built in the Pennsylvania wilderness took on a British squadron on Lake Erie. This episode traces how Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry, short of healthy men and fighting lake fever, turned near-certain defeat into one of the most decisive naval victories of the War of 1812. We follow the story from the secret shipyard at Presque Isle, where shipw...

In 1793, French minister Edmond-Charles Genet landed in Charleston instead of Philadelphia and began commissioning privateers and raising volunteers against Britain and Spain on American soil. This episode traces the Versailles-born prodigy who read seven languages by age 12 and was expelled from Catherine the Great's Russia for his revolutionary views. We follow how Genet defied Washington's Neut...

Almost everything we learn in grade school about the origin of the American flag is shakier than it seems. This episode traces the flag from the Continental Union Flag, which echoed the British East India Company flag, through the vague Flag Resolution of 1777, to Francis Hopkinson, who designed an early version and billed Congress a quarter cask of public wine. We examine the Betsy Ross legend fi...

Washington Irving's Headless Horseman was a Hessian trooper, but the real German soldiers of the American Revolution were far more complicated than a ghost story. This episode explains why roughly 30,000 to 37,000 German troops, about a quarter of British land forces, fought in America, and why they were technically auxiliaries leased by their own states rather than mercenaries. We look at the ext...

Lydia Darragh was a Quaker pacifist, mother and Philadelphia midwife, and according to family accounts she was also a spy for the Continental Army. This episode explores how her eldest son Charles's enlistment divided her loyalties, and how a chance meeting with her cousin Captain William Barrington let her keep her home when British officers used it during the occupation of Philadelphia. We follo...

In 1905, an American ambassador unearthed a lead coffin in Paris holding a body preserved in alcohol: John Paul Jones, the father of the American Navy. This episode strips away the myth to follow the Scottish sailor who quit the slave trade, rose to command, and fled to Virginia after a flogged carpenter's death and a fatal stabbing in Tobago. We cover his botched raid on Whitehaven, the stolen Se...

Many Lincoln counties in the South honor not Abraham Lincoln but Benjamin Lincoln, a Massachusetts town clerk with no combat experience who became a major general in the Continental Army. This episode explores how his skill with logistics and administration earned George Washington's trust, and how he handled the defiant militia leader John Stark during the Saratoga campaign. We follow Lincoln thr...

The Declaration of Independence on the back of the two-dollar bill and Alexander Hamilton's face on the ten were both shaped by one artist, John Trumbull. This episode explores how the son of Connecticut's governor, who lost the use of one eye in a childhood accident, mapped British fortifications in Boston, served as an aide to George Washington, and then quit the army over the date on his commis...

Remembered in America as a villain and celebrated in Britain as a hero, cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton is a case study in how historical reputations are built. This episode follows the Liverpool merchant's son, whose family wealth was tied to the sugar and slave trades, from his purchased cornet's commission to merit-based promotions and the capture of General Charles Lee in his dressing gown....

The Battle of Bunker Hill was mostly fought on Breed's Hill, and its famous order, don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes, was probably never said. This episode cuts through the mythology of June 17, 1775, starting with the geography of besieged Boston and Colonel William Prescott's overnight decision to fortify the lower, more exposed hill. We examine the British command's arrogance in...

The bronze Minute Man statue in Concord shows a flawless farmer-soldier, but the real system took more than a century of failure to build. This episode traces the colonial militias from the slow, confused 1636 expedition during the Pequot War to the 1645 rule that designated 30 percent of the militia as short-notice groups with decentralized local command. We explore the snowshoes, alarm networks...

Thomas Jefferson held the quill, but Richard Henry Lee stood up in the Second Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, and moved that the colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. This episode explores how a Virginia aristocrat educated in England became a radical organizer through the Westmoreland Resolution and the committees of correspondence. We look at how illness forc...

In 2017, archaeologists at West Point discovered that the grave honoring Margaret Cochran Corbin, America's first recognized female combat veteran, held the remains of an unknown man. This episode traces the real story of the Pennsylvania frontier girl who lost both parents in a 1756 raid and later followed her husband John into the Continental Army as a camp follower. We explore what a matross di...

New Hampshire's license plates carry the most defiant state motto in the country, Live Free or Die, and the words trace back to General John Stark. This episode follows the stubborn frontiersman from his 1752 capture by Abenaki warriors, when he seized a stick and fought back while running the gauntlet, to his service with Rogers' Rangers and his refusal to join an attack on the village of St. Fra...