Revolution 250 Podcast

George and Martha Washington did not have children together, but they raised Martha's children from her first marriage and her grandchildren.  Cassandra A. Good, award-winning scholar and writer,  joins us to talk about this extended family, and the lives they led in the period after the Revolution.  She tells their stories in her book First Family:  George Washington's Heirs and the Mak...

Can a fashion doll from England find happiness and friendship in Colonial America?  Among the cargo carried to Boston on ships bringing "the detested tea," was a doll that has become known as the " Polly Sumner Doll " named for its original owner.   She was purchased by a young woman in Boston, Polly Sumner, and her younger sister named the doll for the purchaser.  For five gen...

We go on the road, for the first of our "Revolution 'Round the Corner" podcasts!  Today we visit the Edmund Fowle House in Watertown.  Built by cordwainer Edmund Fowle in 1772, it was still unfinished when the Massachusetts Provincial Congress leased it two years later to house the Provincial Council--with Boston occupied by British troops and the charter government suspended by Gen...

Nathanael Greene put aside his Quaker faith and successful business to lead Rhode Island troops in support of the people of Massachusetts.  From the Siege of Boston to the British evacuation, Greene was in the field--as the Revolution's best strategic thinker, and Washington's designated successor.    Janet Uhlar joins us to talk about the extraordinary and brief life of Nathanael Greene...

When the British surrendered at Yorktown, the war ended and American independence was secure.  Or was it?   The British still occupied Savannah, Charleston, and New York City, and the Congress was not able to pay the American army.  During the two years between Cornwallis's surrender and the final British evacuation, George Washington faced one of the gravest crises in American history--an at...

Adam Smith, born in 1723 and the father of modern economic theory, remains one of the most influential writers on markets development and state formation.  He is also the author of Theory of Moral Sentiments, an examination of how people relate to one another.  Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, prolific scholar of the life and...

New Jersey was the "Crossroads of the American Revolution."  Historian Todd Braisted's book  The Grand Forage 1778   gives us insight into the events in New Jersey as both armies sought provisions and advantage.  Todd Braisted also maintains the website Royal Provincial telling the stories of the New Jerseyans and others who fought for the Crown.  Tell us what you think! Send us a t...

While the American Revolution brought  independence to much of colonial America, the indigenous peoples of America, even those like the Oneida who supported the American cause, found themselves suffering in the new Republic.  Historian James Kirby Martin joins us to talk about  Forgotten Allies:  The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution.  Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!

For this 4th of July - Iconic words.  Life.  Liberty.  Pursuit of Happiness. Life and Liberty may be self explanatory, but what, to the minds of the Founders, was the Happiness to be Pursued? In his new book Pursuit of Happiness . President and CEO of the National Constitution Center chases down the meaning of happiness according to the men who wrote those immortal words. Tell us what you think! S...

Protests against British policy involved more than angry speeches--Amricans changed what they wore and how they bought their clothes.  Kimberly Alexander from the University of New Hampshire tells us about how Americans began fashioning their own clothing.  In addition to two books on fashion:  Treasures Afoot:  Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era, and Fashioning the New England Family, which grew...

Josiah Quincy, known as "Josiah the Patriot" was one of the brilliant lights of the Revolutionary cause in Boston.  He came from a well-known and well-respected family and as a young lawyer he worked with John Adams to defend Captain Thomas Preston in his trial for murder stemming from the Boston Massacre.  Learn more about this impressive young man who died in 1775, depriving a soon-to-...

Thomas Jefferson called the election of 1800 a "revolution," meaning a return to the principles of 1776.  For the next twenty-four years, he and his close allies James Madison and James Monroe, would hold the office of President.  How well did they do?  Did their administrations fulfill the promise of the Revolution?  We discuss the Jeffersonians with Kevin Gutzman, gutzman.com/ rofessor...

John Hancock, the most famous signer of the Declaration of Independence, was a man of contradictions.  He was a man born into privilege, and yet he became one of the most passionate voices for the rights of the common man. He was a wealthy man of business, but longed for military glory.  We talk with Brooke Barbier, author of King Hancock:  The Radicat Influence of a Moderate Founder, about this e...

Alexander Cain joins us to talk about the impact of the Revolution's first battles on the civilians in Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy.  Cain,  a former practicing lawyer, now maintains the Historical Nerdery blog, and has written two books: We stood Our Ground looks at Lexington in the first year of the war;  and I See Nothing but the Horrors of a Civil War looks at the position of loyalist...

George Wythe is one of the most interesting, important, and least known of the founders.  The second law professor in the English-speaking world (the first was William Blackstone), he taught the law to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and others.  He also was one of the few Virginia leaders to free the people he owned, and he taught at least one Latin, Greek, and the Law before being p...

Colin G. Calloway , the John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and a professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College has led the study of Indigenous Americans.  He has written more than a dozen books, including The American Revolution in Indian Country ( 1995) and The Chiefs Now in This City ( 2021) on Native Americans and early American urbanization.  His 2018 The Indian World of G...

The Oneida Nation supported the Americans in the War for Independence, an alliance that would have profound consequences for the Americans, the Oneida, and the Iroquois Confederation.  James Kirby Martin, one of the Revolutionary-era's leading scholars, joins us to give the background to the Oneida's decision, in the first of two parts of a conversation on the Forgotten Allies:  the Onei...

December 20, 1777, the kingdom of Morocco became the first to recognize the United States of America as an independent and sovereign nation.  We talk with Anouar Majid, Director of the University of New England's Center for Global Humanities, and the Tangier Global Forum, about the long connections between Morocco and the United States.  Did you know that the only American historical site out...

The institution of slavery impacted American foreign relations in significant ways from the Revolution to the Civil War.  Historian Steve Brady from the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences discusses these connections in his new book,  Chained to History:  Slavery and United States Foreign Relations to 1865 .  He sits down to discuss these many connections, from Article 7 of the Treaty of Pari...

What better way to commemorate Patriot's Day than the discuss with award-winning author Bob Gross his inspirational study of Concord on the eve of the American Revolution, The Minutemen and their World:   50th Anniversary Edition . First published in 1976 and long considered a touchstone in historical study, and now in a revised and expanded edition, Gross's changed how we understand the...

The publication of Thomas Hutchinson's secret letters to London politicos outraged Massachusetts citizens, as Hutchinson advised the British establishment on how to suppress colonial dissent and insulted those who disagreed with British policy.  Ultimately, when it was learned that Benjamin Franklin had leaked the letters, Franklin's reputation was ruined in England, and he became an und...

George Washington's greatness is undeniable.  He gave his all not only to secure the independence of the United States, but to unite them.  He could not have done this without the love and support of his beloved wife Martha Washington .  She joined him on his military campaigns, and kept Mount Vernon functioning during the eight years General Washington was away.  Join us for a conversation w...

Eugene Procknow has written a biography of William Hunter--son of a British sergeant who spent his childhood and teen years accompanying the British army, was taken as a prisoner of war, became a printer and returned to America in the 1790s to edit a series of newspapers in Pennsylvania and Kentucky defending freedom of the press before becoming a Jacksonian political figure.  At some point Hunter...

From  1776 through the end of the war, Anthony Wayne was   at the forefront of a defensive line, or in leading the rear guard staving off a British attack on American forces.  Intelligent, stubborn, argumentative, bold and daring, Wayne also was a womanizer with a fondness for drink who semed to have lost the trust of Washington when, in 1791, the President entrusted him with building an army to m...

Benjamin Franklin was one of America's most famous citizens.  He was a printer, scientist, philosopher, diplomat, inventor, postmaster and a self-proclaimed lover of women.  Nancy Rubin Stuart   tells us about some of the women Franklin loved, in three countries and two continents, including his wife Deborah, Madame Brillon and Madame Helvetius, Margaret Stevenson and her daughter Polly, and...