250 and Counting

There are a couple of things that it’s kind of important to remember about American history. First, by this point Independence was still NOT on the table for the Continental Congress. That’s not to say that there wasn’t talk about it, but little of it was in earnest. Americans were fighting the British because of all the business that was going on in Boston. If everybody just set...

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia was a frequent target of raids throughout the Revolution. Indeed, most of Nova Scotia was harassed from both land and sea by Americans. This had a huge impact on the maritime economy there. But all those attacks—mostly by American (and probably some French) privateers—inflicted lots of disruption on British supply lines the entire time. On the downside, all these attacks pret...

While the premise of today’s episode seems a little far-fetched, if you look closely at the map in today’s cover art, you’ll see it makes a lot of sense. In the mid-1700s, neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia had well-defined western borders. In fact, Virginia was occasionally thought to continue northward all the way to Lake Erie. Some maps even have a Pennsylvania boundary somewhe...

John Paul Jones was born in Scotland as John Paul and began his maritime career at 13 when he was hired as an apprentice. In 1770 he was involved in an incident wherein a crew member was flogged after a failed mutiny. The crew member later died, and it was clear that his reputation had taken a big hit. So John Paul left Scotland and took command of a British vessel. Again, however, he put down a m...

All of the men who were part of the Second Continental Congress were serious men who had businesses of their own back at home. So spending so much time in Philadelphia had to have been taxing on them, especially since the days were so long. Of course many of them were going to be homesick. Read the letters between John and Abigail Adams as an excellent example. And remember: to go home to, say, Bo...

The events at Lexington and Concord were only about a month in the rear-view mirror when it occurred to both the Americans and the British that the Canadian provinces were colonies, too, and that they might have some kind of interest in the activities going on further south. Quebec, being perhaps the largest city close to the border, was the natural target for everyone involved. So it was always i...

Back on November 14 we told you about the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, which was assembled following Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation. The proclamation offered freedom to slaves belonging to Patriot owners who chose to fight on the British side in the Revolution. Dunmore was putting together another band of soldiers at the same time, called “The Queen’s Own Loyal Virginia Regiment,” whic...

Thomas Jefferson wasn’t as prolific with the letters as John Adams was with his own wife (over ten thousand letters between them during the course of the Revolution!), nor as much as George Washington, but he was still a deep thinker and he did write well and with purpose. In today’s example he has to convey some unfortunate news to a political rival; specifically that the rival’...

The capture of the British brigantine Nancy wasn’t Captain John Manley’s first (it was perhaps his third), but it was probably one of his most significant, considering the cargo. It was also probably the first British ship of any real consequence to be captured by any American. Overall, Manley’s effectiveness as a Navy captain was rather variable. He was a big risk/big reward kin...

Happy Thanksgiving! Many people celebrate the day by watching the parade, or some football, or some special episodes of television shows, or Thanksgiving-themed movies. Personally I like a combination: I’ll watch the parade, then play an episode or two of The West Wing (there are two Thanksgiving episodes), and then get in a little football. I live in Baltimore and the Ravens are playing ton...

As we’ve mentioned a couple of times before, Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation offering freedom to Patriot-owned slaves who fought for the British created a stir that was felt in all thirteen colonies. Huge numbers of people showed up, not just men, but women and children as well. And of course, because most of them had escaped to join the British forces, that meant that the slave-hunting bu...

It’s hard to emphasize just how remote Point Shirley is compared to the Boston. Let me try anyway. On most maps of Boston, Point Shirley isn’t even on the map. It’s so far to the east that it’s nearly in the ocean. I’m not sure it’s even possible to see Boston from Point Shirley. And given Point Shirley’s location at a place between the bay and the ocean,...

Two days ago, Mike had a case of the Martian Flu or something, so I needed to record in his place. today he sounds as good as ever. Since I could never bounce back from anything affecting my voice that quickly, I think it’s necessary to hurl invective his way. But I won’t ’cause I’m classy. Where were we? Oh yeah. One of the interesting things about the American Revolution...

November 23, 1775 was at least the fifth time that a day of Thanksgiving was declared in North America. It might be the sixth, but the documentation for one of them is kind of thin, It might be the first Thanksgiving held on a Thursday, but again it’s tough to know for sure. It’s certainly the third held in New England. This is my first Thanksgiving in a few years in which I’m no...

The siege and battle at Ninety Six managed to end abruptly, largely because the leaders on both sides were convinced that something was about to happen the would benefit the other side. What a gentlemanly way to go out! For all that shooting, hardly anyone was seriously hurt. There was one death on each side, and most of the others who were injured had the ability to get treated right away. But fo...

While George Kremer is depicted in today’s artwork as a sophisticated “man of the people”, it’s thought that the artwork was meant to be sarcastic, since Kremer’s colleagues didn’t respect him very much, thinking he was a kind of bumpkin back-bencher. And indeed, George Kremer’s political legacy, at both the state and Congressional level, is fairly thin, w...

Robert Livingston now enters the picture in the broad tapestry of the American Revolution. Given that the cover art today comes from an image from twenty years after the war; we can assume that he was quite young during the war, plus he held up pretty well in the interim. At any rate, this isn’t the last we’ll hear from Robert Livingston; we’ll be back to visit him next month. Th...

The Siege of Ninety-Six is considered to be the first land battle of the Revolution in the South. And believe it or not, we might be talking about this town again in fairly short order. This past Saturday, Governor McMaster officially proclaimed today through Thursday the 250th Anniversary of the battle. And while this battle lasted three days before mutual cessation of hostilities, it was just th...

In retrospect, it appears that most of the action in the early days of the Revolution took place in Massachusetts and South Carolina. What was so important about South Carolina? New York wasn’t a big city yet, nor was it strategically important (yet). Baltimore was a small-time port at the time; so was Norfolk. Georgia was deeply divided. North Carolina and New Hampshire didn’t have an...

A Prize Court is a formal organization dedicated to the disposition of items captured from an enemy. Because the Colonies were more or less building it all from the ground up, much of what they adopted came directly from the British. As a result the Prize Court and its structure is a British institution that made its way over here. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world, though in th...

It’s a little bit unfair using this portrait to represent Henry Knox, because it was painted many years after his involvement in the Revolution, which began when Knox was 25 years old. As it turns out, this painting is from 1806, the year Knox died. Henry Knox ran a bookstore in Boston as a young man, and he was on-hand for the carnage of the Boston Massacre in 1770. So by the time the war o...

As noted during the episode, James Carnahan was the president of what was later known as Princeton University, the ninth man to hold that title since the school’s founding nearly 90 years earlier. Carnahan held that position for over 30 years, making him the longest tenured president of that school to that date, a record that remains to this day. Carnahan was buried in the University Preside...

Lord Dunmore issued his Proclamation just a week earlier, but the response was much stronger than anticipated, probably because—who knew!—people hate being slaves. While the Proclamation only applied to the Virginia colony, because Dunmore had no authority conferred upon him anywhere else, a huge number of slaves and otherwise indentured servants from throughout the thirteen colonies fled to the B...

Montgomery had done his thing at Fort St. Jean. Benedict Arnold had finally made it through the Maine (heh.) Now it was time to move in on Montreal. What the Canadians didn’t count on was the possibility that Americans weren’t moving on Quebec, but Montreal. Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time, though, so they moved on Montreal, taking the city, and moved on Quebec at the...

It should come as a surprise to nobody that America has a troubled relationship with its past when it comes to race relations. It may come as surprise to you that our Founding Fathers had a complex relationship with their present when it comes to race relations. Yes, many of them owned slaves, but a significant percentage of those men had committed to freeing them at some point. The problem was, t...