American Political History

We return to the battlefield as England returns with four times the troops, this time coming for New York. 

The full text of the Declaration of Independence

We discuss the philosophical foundation of the declaration of independence. 

Congress debates if reconciliation or revolution is the path forward culminating in the Declaration of independence  

We discussed Henry Knox and his retravel of the artillery from fort Ticonderoga. The buildup of troops around Boston. And the release of the writings of Thomas Paine in "Common Sense" which galvanized Americans towards revolution 

We discuss the American Invasion of Canada in 1776, and the battle for Quebec on the Plains of Abraham  

The continental army is authorized, and the Continental Congress appoints Geroge Washington and his command staff. 

We discuss the triad of English generals, typical European armies, their tactics and then go into the first major battle of the revolutionary war, Bunker Hill   

Genera Gage makes a move to seize the armory at Concord. At Lexington, "the shot heard around the world" marks the first blood drawn in the American Revolution. 

As sentiments harden, King Geroge makes his opinion known and the path to civil war opens. 

Colonial America reacts to the intolerable acts by forming the first congenital congress. The congress agrees to an economic pact call "the association" and send their grievances to King Geroge III   

The Boston Tea party is responded to with a set of acts of parliament designed to bring Massachusetts to its knees, known in Colonial America as the Intolerable Acts.  

Parliament, dealing with the failing East India Company. Lower the duty on Tea into England and shipped the warehoused tea to the colonies. Unaware of the brewing storm around the last remaining Townshend Act tax.

English troops fire into a crowd of Bostonians killing five colonial Americans. This moment creates reflection and hopes to avert more violence.  

"I lament the want for wisdom" We explore the English from the Stamp act, right into the Townshend Act which though a slower reaction, created a much deeper crisis in colonial America then the Stamp Act Crisis.  

In Committe Parliament would grill the colonial agent Benjiman Franklin about the stamp act and repeal considerations.   

Parliament takes of the debate over the stamp act, decided if America is in rebellion or defending their property 

As the Stamp act passes, colonial American is engulfed in political violence by the Sons of Liberty who bad the start of 1766 had forced out every stamp collector in colonial America.  

As England exits the Seven Year War, it as a mounting debt and looks to alleviate their debt issues from Colonial America. issuing the Sugar Act and then the Stamp Act over the growing protest in Colonial America    

In preparation for discussing the stamp act, we will review the competing political views/reactions to the passage of the stamp act  

We set the stage of the area of discontent in the colonies. With a new King, came a new colonial policy but no one could see the course that was being set. Even Benjimin Franklin thought it an Impossibility that the colonies could unite against the mother country. 

Welcome to this season of American Political History, The Intolerable Acts. This season will cover the events/decade that leads up to the American Revolution.

In June 1752, a forty-six-year-old retired printer stood in a shed on the edge of Philadelphia and flew a silk kite into a thunderstorm — and when the spark jumped from the key to his knuckle, Benjamin Franklin proved that the lightning that had terrified humanity since the beginning of time was nothing but electricity, and could be tamed. This is the story of the curious Americans: the lawyers an...

In October 1740, a Connecticut farmer named Nathan Cole dropped his tools, threw his wife on a horse, and raced twelve miles in terror of arriving too late — to hear a traveling preacher named George Whitefield. He was one of thousands; whole counties emptied into the roads. This is the story of the First Great Awakening: Jonathan Edwards reading “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in a flat qu...

Nineteen of twenty colonists never lived in a city. They lived on the land — and not as peasants or tenants, but as freeholders, owning the ground they worked and answering to no master for it. This episode is a portrait of that agrarian world, from the bottom up: the New England farmer raising his hand in town meeting to tax himself and school his children; the freeholder whose ownership of land...