Independence 250

Its June 7th, 1776. American Independence is 27 days away.  In front of the gathered members of the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Richard Henry Lee has formally brought forth a set of resolutions that originated in his home colony of Virginia a month earlier. The resolution which Lee proposed that Congress adopt read as follows:    These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be...

It's March 5th, 1776. American independence is 121 days away.    As the sun rises over the Boston harbor, where British warships float and thousands of red coat soldiers continue to occupy the town, the morning light begins to reveal a sight so impossible that the British commander General William Howe is left stunned.    Looking down from the hill above the harbor known as Dorchester Heights, a r...

It's January 10th, 1776. American Independence is 176 days away.    In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the same city where the Second Continental Congress had been meeting since the previous summer, an anonymous pamphlet has begun circulating among the population of the city.    To say that this not exactly short, 20,000 word essay, was an immediate sensation would be an extreme understatement. Within...

***SEASON FINALE***   It's June 17th, 1775. American Independence is 383 days away. After working through the night to build fortifications that can withstand the full weight of a British counterattack, a group of a few hundred patriot defenders atop the small rise known as Breed's Hill look out through the morning light down to the Charles River below.   From their makeshift fortification, the me...

It's June 16th, 1775. American Independence is 384 days away. Under the cover of darkness a group of 1,000 Massachusetts provincial militiamen have marched across the Charlestown neck. In addition to the usual baggage of muskets and gunpowder, this small army of Patriots have brought with them unexpected supplies - dozens of shovels, pickaxes, small cages filled with rocks, and empty barrels.   Th...

It's May 10, 1775. American Independence is 421 days away.   In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sixty-five delegates have gathered to assemble into the political body known as the Second Continental Congress.   While many aspects of this body were unchanged from the congress that had met the previous fall, this Second Continental Congress had been thrust into the leadership of a divided continent alrea...

***Corrected Version***   It's April 19th 1775. American Independence is 441 days away.   On a clear Spring morning in the town of Lincoln, Massachusetts, which sat just to the west of the nearby town of Lexington, a local woman by the name of Mary Hartwell awoke to her small rural community facing something she never would have imagined only a few months earlier - the full-on invasion of her town...

Its April 14th, 1775 American Independence is 447 days away.    In the early morning hours a 20-gun British War ship called the HMS Nautilus appears in the waters outside of Boston. Its journey from England has taken an amazingly quick 33 days, and is all for the purpose of delivering a single document.    The dispatch in question is taken by a young British Army Captain named Oliver DeLancey and...

It's March 6th, 1775. American Independence is 486 days away.   On an unseasonably warm day in Boston that feels like an early dawn of spring, hundreds of citizens have crowded inside the Old South Meeting House, with thousands more gathering outside.   The crowd has come together to witness a set of orations to honor the anniversary and victims of the famous Boston Massacre, which happened five y...

It's February 9th, 1775. American Independence is 511 days away.   Back in London the new British Parliament has just passed their most definitive statement yet on the crisis in the Massachusetts Bay colony. After years of simmering resentment and escalating crisis, Parliament has removed all doubt about their view of the situation in America. Massachusetts is officially declared to be in a state...

It's December 8th, 1774. American Independence is 574 days away.    In the town of Providence, Rhode Island a local newspaper called the Providence Gazette has just published news of an order given by King George III to his Privy Council back on October 19th.   The intention of the order was clear: the British King was cutting off all imports of gunpowder, arms, and ammunition to America.    As ne...

It's December 25th, 1774. American Independence is 557 days away.   On Christmas Day in London, a man almost 70 years old and a woman nearly 20 years younger than him celebrate the holiday by sitting down to play a game of chess.   The woman is named Caroline Howe, and she is the sister of two of Britain's most famous politicians and military leaders, Richard and William Howe, while man across fro...

It's November 5th 1774. American Independence is 607 days away.    On the banks of the Ohio river, a weary but victorious group of Virginia Militia fighters have arrived back at a base camp set up weeks earlier called Fort Gower.   These colonial soldiers are on the road back home after securing a victory in a frontier war against the native tribes that had raged in the Ohio Territory since the pr...

It's October 20, 1774. American Independence is 623 days away.    As the First Continental Congress draws to a close in Philadelphia, 53 out of the 56 members of the Congress put their signature on a document that represents the culmination of two months worth of intense deliberation and debates.  The document they signed, known by history as the Articles of Association, would eventually be looked...

It's September 1st, 1774. American Independence is 672 days away.   While representatives from 12 of the 13 American colonies are about to convene in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress, urgent rumors have begun to spread across New England. Word has risen up that Boston is under attack, and before the next day is over, thousands of minutemen will take up their muskets and head off to...

It's August 1 st , 1774. American Independence is 703 days away.   In this month's episode we are going leave Boston and travel to the colony of Virginia, where members of the dissolved Virginia House of Burgesses have gathered in Williamsburg in defiance of their Royal Governor.   The convention was a chance for some of the most prominent political minds in the colony to express their own unique...

It's July 4th, 1774. American Independence is 731 Days away.   The first official episode in our series begins exactly two years before the American colonies will declare their independence from Great Britian. In the small New York village of Orangetown a group of concerned citizens gathered at the home of a local tavern keeper named Yoast Mabie.   These men gathered to express their opposition to...

It's July 3rd, 1754. American Independence is 8,037 .   For our second prelude episode we take a look at the war that shaped the destiny of the American Colonies more than other conflict – the French and Indian War. What begins as a series of disasters for British and Colonial forces eventually turns into a triumphant victory, but one that came at a cost nobody could foresee.    This is the 2 nd o...

It's September 22, 1761. American Independence is 5,399 days away.   For our final prelude episode, we are telling a breakup story. When King George III ascended to the throne of Great Britain, his reign began with a honeymoon period where he was adored by his subjects on both sides of the Atlantic.   But as storm clouds gathered on the horizon, the relationship between the King and his subjects i...

It's June 10th, 1688. American Independence is 32,165 days away.   Our series starts way back, almost 100 years before Independence way ever conceived of as an idea in the American colonies. In 1688 turmoil and religious tension set Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic in conflict with their Royal Government, and unknowingly planted the seeds of conflict with the king that would eventually gro...