250 and Counting

In past episodes (quite recently, in fact) we’ve talked about the Colonists’ need to move caches of gunpowder and other weaponry when they got wind of an imminent British seizure. By the time April of 1775 rolled around, it wasn’t just the explosive weapons that the British were after; it was the press as well. And the more you hear about the specific things that the British impo...

Up until now, we’ve presented General Thomas Gage as rather a hard liner who was looking to subjugate the Colonies somehow. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, he like being a light-hearted guy, and when he became the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, he discovered exactly what kind of mess he’d stepped into. At that point, anything he did would only make matters worse...

The title kind of buries the bigger story, but we wanted to ensure that you understood what a big deal Elizabeth Gooking Greenleaf was. Elizabeth was dead by the time 1775 rolled around, but her family continued to run the apothecary shop for many years, and they were instrumental in ensuring that the Massachusetts Patriots were equipped with medical supplies should war break out. Today there is a...

In the play and film 1776, one of the delegates from New York says that in the state legislature, everybody talks very loud and very fast and never seems to get anywhere. This may or may not be true, but the fact is, they did have some specific instructions for their delegates to the Second Continental Congress. One of them was that New York would be expected to oppose independence for as long as...

Calvin Jones may have looked like an unassuming fellow, but that unassuming look concealed a very powerful mind and a strong moral compass. And today we’ve got Cake and Candles for him, since this day in 1775 was the date of his birth. Jones was a physician before his teenage years ended, and he began to design criteria that would separate good doctors from bad ones. He organized militias ev...

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Thomas Gage was kind of a weird bird. In our cover art he’s defending children who were using Boston Common for sledding and skating. This was just a couple of months before today’s events. But other times, he was a little on the lazy side, often looking for clues that aren’t there, and letting other peoples’ opinions...

Today’s episode marks the end of Women’s History Month. We’ve noted a few episodes since this adventure first started that involved women taking political action as groups, but Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most influential individual women to take a political stand in the Revolution era. She was self-educated, and married a man who was both enlightened and politically active...

In the past we’ve talked about the New England Restraining Act; today was the day that King George III actually put it into action. To mark that day, Mike takes you through some of the details of the act and its impact on the trade in the Colonies, and the political impact in Britain. The post March 30, 1775: King George III Restricts Trade appeared first on 250 and Counting .

There are plenty of scholarly books and articles out there regarding American History, but there are elements of British history that stick out, too. General Gage giving the order today that his troops begin to march on Roxbury. It was a relatively small gesture at the time, but many, many colonial events can be traced to that particular action. And as a result the Colonists determined that Britai...

One of the interesting things about many of the British officials who were around during the early days of the American Revolution is that most of them were actually pretty good at their job. It’s just that they were given rather thankless tasks to do which wound up backfiring on them. And then there’s John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore. History has not been especially kind to Lor...

We hate to say it, but Thomas Jefferson was kind of a nepo baby. Jefferson was part of the Second Virginia Convention, and no doubt he got there honestly, as a man who had lots of property and was well-regarded, even at the tender age of 32. But when Peyton Randolph needed someone to replace him in the Second Continental Congress, he called on Jefferson—who was his cousin. On the positive side, Je...

Never let it be said that we can’t find the less-obvious folks in American History. Thomas Bayly was definitely one of them. Bayly was a one-term congressman to the US House of Representatives as part of the 13 th Congress (as this is written, we’re in the 118 th ). By most accounts he wasn’t especially distinguished, but only serving for the one term didn’t mean that he wa...

George Washington was a frequent letter writer, something that the creators of the stage play 1776 would poke some fun at. But the documentation he kept plays an important part not only in the history of the American Revolution, but in the more mundane details of life during that time in American History. What’s more, we’re fortunate that so much of the correspondence both to and from...

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about events in Virginia lately, but that doesn’t mean that the folks in Massachusetts weren’t getting things done. It just means that they weren’t making a big deal about it. For the past several weeks, they’d been working on the down-low to make plans in case the British took any action that they might find too intrusive, from simpl...

This show isn’t just about the big moments in American history, though we’ve been giving you those. We also take the time to look at some of the smaller things, which may have an effect later on down the line. And today we can mark two of those events. First up is a wedding taking place in Southampton County in Virginia, across the bay from Williamsburg. The bride was an educated woman...

A quick note on the cover art: this may be the first time I (Claude) happened to match the side banner with the background of the webpage exactly . As we’ve noted in the past, Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke were good friends who worked together to come up with a solution that would get the Colonies and the Crown back into each others’ good graces. Now that we think about it, Frankl...

Benjamin Franklin was pretty good at diplomacy, but even when given several years to try, he was unable to bring about peace between England and the Thirteen Colonies. From December 1774 through February 1775, he and some of his British friends tried to put together a map to peace, but unfortunately both sides were too entrenched to even consider compromise. Franklin finally went home on this day...

The people in Virginia were getting pretty upset about what was going on between the Colonies and the British Parliament. They called a convention and, as we’ve noted over the past several days, each county sent delegates with specific instructions, many of which recommended that the colony commit itself to resisting the British and supporting any efforts made by other American entities in t...

The Watauga Purchase was one of several land purchases in the area of the Watauga River made around the same time. But this one was first, and we know this because it’s literally on Page One of the deed book, which still exists in the Archives of two different states (one is a copy, of course). Interestingly, while this territory is sometimes considered by historians to be a self-governing a...

Among the casualties of the early days of American History are all the friendships that were damaged by people being on opposite sides of the political fence. Good thing we’re all past that sort of petty nonsense nowadays, amirite? Sigh. We’ve talked in the past about John Adams and his former friend Daniel Leonard, who sparred in print under pen names and never quite repaired their re...

(Yeah, we couldn’t fit all that on the title card and have the artwork still visible.) Happy St. Patrick’s Day, if you’re the type to celebrate! We have a little Easter Egg (shamrock?) in this episode for you. Ninian Edwards was an interesting character in that he tried very hard to make the best choices for the people he represented, and while he succeeded in some respects, in o...

Over the last few days we’ve heard from several counties in Virginia sending delegates and instructions to the Second Virginia Convention, which would meet in another few days. Many of these counties published their instructions, called “Resolves,” in newspapers, so that anyone who was literate would know where the freeholders of those counties stood. And today it’s Augusta...

The New York colony gets a bad reputation for not having its act together when it came to American Independence, but the fact is, they were late to the party because they held on to their loyalty to the Crown until there was clearly no more reason to do so. Simply put, they were the last holdout. What makes this extra remarkable is that most of the residents of New York really had no reason to be...

John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore, or more commonly Lord Dunmore, came to the Colonies in 1770 to become the Royal Governor of New York, but fate intervened and he wound up as the Royal Governor of Virginia instead. He might have fared better in New York, but given the events of the Westminster Massacre you learned about yesterday, we’re not sure it would have made much difference. Dun...

The Westminster Massacre was a seminal event in the history of both the United States and the State of Vermont. At that time, Vermont was a disputed territory between New York, which was loaded with Loyalists, and New Hampshire, which had many Patriots. So when a group of five dozen New Yorkers showed up to break up a New Hampshire rally, there clearly wasn’t going to be a happy ending to th...