250 and Counting

When the US Postal Service first began, it couldn’t even be called that, since there wasn’t a US yet. There was, of course, a postal service, but it was the Crown Post and it was subject to interception and investigation, and we really couldn’t have that and a revolution, now could we? In fact, there were competing services to the Crown Post, but there were also gaps in that serv...

First off, let me note that sometime this week we cracked the 1,000-download mark, and we have you to thank for that, especially inasmuch as 40% of that took place in the last 30 days or so. We’re grateful that you’re giving us this little slice of your life each day. We’re also happy to see that the number of daily downloads has grown, slowly but surely, so consider yourself ahe...

Even when it’s Mike’s voice you hear on the episode, it’s Claude who takes the blame for the episode titles. It wasn’t a bad thing for members of the Continental Congress to disagree, but some level of decorum was still expected from those members. And almost certainly, one of the commandments was Thou Shalt Not Trash Talk Thy Fellow Delegate. (I may have softened the langu...

John Adams wrote to his wife twice on this day in 1775. What did you do for your spouse that was such a big deal? In these letters, the sparks don’t fly the way they do in many others, but the affection he feels for her is still present nonetheless. That he took the time to write a second, more thoughtful letter after dashing off the first one is a nice measure of his esteem for her, and his...

Lord North gets kind of a bad rap for being the Prime Minister who “lost the colonies.” But the fact is, he mostly understood their concerns and was sympathetic to them. However, Parliament was itching for a fight and not making life easy for anyone involved. Lord North put forth a proposal to the Colonies that, to be honest, didn’t offer a lot of change from the status quo. But...

We know: when an episode is a biography, we typically use a portrait of the person born on this day 250 years ago. But this time around is special: the artwork on today’s episode is a building that was erected by the subject of the episode. The McKim Free School is now the McKim Community Center , and it’s just around the corner from McKim Park. In fact, between the time recording this...

As long as we’ve had a Constitution, the United States has had a nominal separation between church and state. What that means is that Congress isn’t able to establish a state-sanctioned religion. For longer than we’ve had a Constitution, Congress has proclaimed days of prayer of some kind or another. For a long time, these days were announced not as a National Day of Prayer (the...

John Andrew Shulze was the sixth governor of Pennsylvania and a member of the Muhlenberg political clan. So this was a guy with some heavy firepower behind him, and he managed to use some of it in righteous ways. Shulze wasn’t completely successful with all of his endeavors, but even when he failed, he laid the groundwork for someone after him to succeed at it. After retiring from his job as...

Although Fort Johnston was originally a British fort, a few years into the Revolutionary War, the Colonies recognized that it could be a valuable place to have a fort, and in 1778 they appropriated the money to have it rebuilt. That fort was also destroyed and, although reconstruction began in 1794, it took many years to complete the project. Time and again Fort Johnston was destroyed or abandoned...

Given the fact that the existing government of Virginia was technically extra-legal, it’s a little amusing to think that they themselves felt the need to conduct extra-legal activities of their own. A more cynical mind would think that they were hedging their bets, so that if anything Revolutionary were to come up and the British started rounding up people, they could say, “That wasn&#...

As noted a couple of days ago, Abigail and John Adams wrote to each other quite frequently. Their relationship was not only deep with love, but with admiration for one another. If you get an opportunity, read David McCullough’s biography of John or, better yet, the Library of America’s volume of Abigail’s letters (not just to John but to many others). Their writing is florid with...

If you’re going to be in rebellion, you may as well do something rebellious. Thus was (presumably) the reasoning behind Ben Franklin putting forth a resolution that the Colonies would effectively ignore a ban on the importation of weapons and gunpowder to the Colonies. And while we’ve mentioned numerous times that the Congress doesn’t seem to do a lot more than form various Commi...

Lord John Wilkes was an interesting person who was always willing to run against popular opinion if he felt strongly that he was in the right. In 1769 he fought for the right of his voters – rather than the House of Commons – to determine their representatives. In 1761 he got Parliament to concede the right of publishers to print the content of Parliamentary debates. In 1776 he put forth a bill pr...

The Speech to the Six Nations is one of those documents that pretty much answers what was going on with the Native Americans during the Revolution. Athough to be fair, it largely addresses what happened with the Native Americans in Upstate New York. But that area, being a border with Canada, was pretty important to the Independence cause. Part of the reason that the tribes took the document seriou...

General Sir William Howe was already in Boston when his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, arrived. So, say what you will about Boston during the siege, but you can’t say there was a lack of no Howe. Hi-yooooooooooooooooo! I apologize. Richard’s biggest problem was that he was known to have been part of prior reconciliation efforts and therefore known to sympathize with the colonists. But...

Oof, that’s a mouthful of title. Oh well, what’s done is done. As noted in today’s episode, James Warren was not related to Joseph Warren. On the other hand, he is related to Mercy Otis Warren, because he’s her husband. James and John Adams had a few ideas in common; the hard part was convincing a few others that they were in the right. Meanwhile, did you know there’s...

Hey! We have a Navy now! Okay, it’s only one ship, but it’s a start. And to be clear, it’s Georgia’s navy, not the navy of the Continental forces. But we’re getting somewhere. And what’s more, on its first day it took on a British ship, with amazing results. Listen in and learn the story. The post July 10, 1775: The Georgian Navy appeared first on 250 and Counti...

Day Four of this thing and I’m still sounding kinda sexy. Or not, I have no idea. A look through George Washington’s orders of each day gives us an interesting peek into his mind. This was a guy who definitely had his finger on the pulse of what was going on with his troops. But if there was something he didn’t know about, he also recognized that there were things he didn’t...

N.B. While it’s Mike recording today, I write this part and I’m still a little under the weather, so I’ll be brief again. It’s Cake and Candles today for William Davies, born in Savannah on this day in 1775. Davies enjoyed careers in both the legal and political fields, and appeared to do well in both of them. Also, my brain might be addled by the drugs the doctor gave me,...

As you’ll hear today, I have a huge sinus infection and it took a lot of effort to get today’s episode recorded, so I hope you’ll excuse this part being rather brief. John and Abigail Adams was probably one of the best documented relationships of the Colonial Era, and it’s a ridiculously touching love story. It’s clear that they hated being apart, and you’d do w...

Note: I realized belatedly that the episode that dropped yesterday was titled July 7, as was the audio file itself, but if you’ve listened, you know that it was in fact the July 5 file and what we’ve got here are a couple of typos that have mostly been fixed. My apologies for the error and thanks for your forbearance. While the Olive Branch Petition was a step toward reconciliation, an...

When the Second Continental Congress convened in May, there was a large faction of delegates who thought that peace with England was still possible, and made a specific effort to draft a message of reconciliation with King George III. They finished their document and presented it to the whole body of Congress on this day in 1775, which approved it and it was subsequently prepared and sent to Great...

As mentioned yesterday, when George Washington came to Cambridge, he found a bit of a mess there: several disorganized groups of men, with more on the way, along with supplies still in transit. The first thing he needed to do was to get the fighting force organized, so he began a log book of his official orders. His first set, which came out on this day in 1775, took up about five pages of manuscr...

On June 15, 1775, George Washington was appointed Commander of the newly-formed Continental Army. On July 2, Washington finally arrived in Cambridge after a few stops in Trenton, New York and presumably a couple of other places. What he found was a huge mess. So on July 3, he officially took command and started the work of turning this ragtag crew into some kind of organized fighting force. The po...

As you listen to today’s episode, it’ll become clear that Mike had way too much fun writing and recording this one. But then again, I wrote the title, so. There are plenty of jobs out there that are kind of obscure, in the sense that it’s a job that somebody has, but you never really thought about. For instance, did you know that with some high-end perfumes, the labels are put on...