250 and Counting

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...

Henry Eckford was born in Scotland on this day in 1775 and died in Constantinople in 1832. In between he spent a great deal of time in the Thirteen Colonies and then the United States, primarily in New York. Eckford also dabbled in politics, serving in the state legislature and as a delegate to the Electoral College, before moving to the Ottoman Empire to assist with rebuilding the fleet there. He...

The Botetourt Resolutions was a document prepared by the freeholders of Botetourt County in Virginia that sent instructions to its representatives in the Second Virginia Convention. Botetourt doesn’t get a lot of attention nowadays, largely because the Fincastle Resolutions arrived first and laid down nearly identical sentiments. But as we’ll see in the next few days, these two countie...

Because of popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s, Daniel Boone is probably one of the more colorful figures in American history. He was born in Pennsylvania, but it was in the frontier territory. He had little formal education, but he could read and write, even if his spelling was unorthodox. (In fact, oftentimes when he went on hunting or exploring expeditions, he was the only literate man in th...

We’ve talked about the New England Restraining Acts in the past, but now they’re being put to actual votes by Parliament. And on this day in 1775, they take another step forward when the House of Commons passes the measure. With still more economic pressure placed on the Colonies (and the Act itself, by the way, not yet in full force), is it any wonder that the tensions escalated into...

It was on this day that an essay appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal advocating for the abolition of slavery. The content wasn’t a huge surprise for Pennsylvania, but the interesting thing is: the essay is known for being written under a pen name, and for a long time, people were pretty sure they knew who that person was. They’re still not 100% positive. The post March 8, 1775 appeare...

[NOTE: our apologies for those who came early and got the wrong file. We hope at least that you enjoyed the re-run. The correct file is now in place. –CC] Topsfield, Massachusetts wanted to be prepared when the British came. What’s more, they wanted to ensure that their militiamen were drilled and fully outfitted should the need arise. To that end, they offered some of the best wages f...

Prince Hall, who appears in today’s artwork in an undated and unattributed picture, became interested in becoming a Mason but was turned down because of his race. The British Masons, however, were perfectly willing to accept Blacks into their ranks…so long as they fought on the British side of the Revolution. It wasn’t long before the Americans caught on to the scheme and reverse...

Joseph Warren’s life as a Patriot was rather brief (in fact his life overall was relatively short), but it was quite important to the cause. Warren was part of the committee that investigated the Boston Massacre, he sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride (just go with it for now), he wrote a song called “Free America,” which was based on a British melody called “The British...

The Powell Family was a prominent one in the Loudoun County, Virginia area. It’s about due west of Washington, DC. If you’ve ever been anywhere between Leesburg and the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, you’ve been to Loudoun County. The Powells were among the first to fight for Virginia during the American Revolution, and as the Thirteen Colonies broke away and became the Unite...

The Gunpowder Incident was an event that took place on April 21, 1775, so there won’t be much about it today. But that was the event that pushed Virginia deeply into the movement toward independence, and allowed the Continental Congress to finally consider seriously the idea of formally breaking away from England. But it was an event that took place on this day— that barely got any notice at...

As we noted yesterday, there were all kinds of abuses of tea going on in the Colonies. It (mostly) started with the Boston Tea Party, but also spread to other areas as well. The Boston Tea Party was notable for being a literal destruction of unsold tea, removing it from the market. Other tea parties and actions largely involved tea that had already been purchased in the Colonies, either in the for...

When it comes to tea-related protests, the Boston Tea Party seems to get all the press, even though there was also wanton destruction of tea in Charleston, and then there was the Edenton Tea Party . But Boston was the first, and abusing tea in one way or another became a popular way to demonstrate your patriotism. (Some modern-day Brits would argue that we never quite stopped abusing tea.) Today w...

Today we meet yet another prominent citizen who thought he had the solution for putting an end to the tension between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain. It’s important to note at this point, we think, that these people weren’t delusional; they were genuinely interested in maintaining a good relationship and therefore invested in repairing the damage that had been done. They liked...

And once again, we have someone (two someones, really) who manage to come up with a plan that will put all this unpleasantness between the Thirteen Colonies and the British Empire to rest, and once again the physical distance between the two threatens the success of those plans. What’s more, it turns out that the more popular of the two plans has an almost-hidden ulterior motive… The p...

It’s one thing to hear someone hollering “The British are coming!” and quite another to actually see them arriving in your port. And that’s especially true when they’re also seen confiscating the cannons that you’d hidden upriver. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but there was something different about the Colonists’ respo...

Today we review two different pieces of correspondence—one local, the other trans-Atlantic—in which the letter writers are clearly coming to the conclusion that things are not going well between the British and the Colonies, and that preparing for war is probably inevitable at this point. And that’s interesting on its own, but we also wanted to call your attention to the cover art for today&...

The interesting thing about surveillance in the 18 th century is that, when you’re dealing with trans-Atlantic distances, the information moves slowly, and errors can be costly. We told you not long ago about someone who’d heard about the Minutemen, but had their numbers wrong by a factor of thousands. Fortunately in that case, it was just casual gossip rather than actual spycraft. But...

Alexander Hamilton isn’t really considered one of the Founding Fathers, largely because he’d only arrived in America from Scotland around the same time that things started getting ugly between the Colonies and the Crown. But he quickly took up the cause, and it’s clear from his writing that he was of a similar mind as Jefferson, Franklin and the rest. When he joined the Continent...

Back when Mike and Claude were kids, February 22 was celebrated as a national holiday, the 22nd being recognized as George Washington’s birthday. Lincoln’s Birthday was February 12, so we had two Federal holidays close together. (To be fair, Lincoln’s was always un officially recognized.) Until, that is, 1968, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act came along, and many holidays were...

Of all the indignities we laid upon Claudius Herrick in this episode (okay, there weren’t that many), the worst is that we misspelled his name in the cover art. The post February 21, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting .

Until Israel Gregg came along, steamboat commerce on the Ohio river was considered impractical, largely because the currents were so strong. But Gregg had an interesting approach to demonstrate that it was, in fact, possible. In some portions of the river, there was a confluence with another river, which meant that there were multiple currents in the river for some distance. This is what made it h...

When I (Claude) was younger, I read a Star Trek novel titled The Final Reflection by John M. Ford. Trek novels weren’t considered canon, and later events in the films and subsequent series kind of wiped out some of the concepts put forth in the book, but what I found fascinating was that it was told entirely from the Klingons’ point of view. (It also provided an interesting explanation...

Maryland has a peculiar place in most of America’s major events. During the Revolution, the Continental Congress hid out there for a while. During the Civil War, the state mostly sat out the war because it was a “Southern” state occupied by the Union throughout. But the War of 1812? Well, that was Maryland’s time to shine, and today we meet one of the military men who fough...

We’ve mentioned in the past that the intent of most of the Intolerable Acts and the Coercive Acts were designed to punish the Massachusetts Province, but it had some effect on the other colonies as well. What’s more, there was a growing worry that, if Parliament could do things like this to Massachusetts, what’s going to stop them from doing it to us? To that end, the city of Alb...