Revolution 250 Podcast

Though he didn't arrive in America until 1780, Major General Francois-Jean de Chastellux had a profound impact on the war's outcome and on the French-American relationship.  He also enjoyed a close personal friendship with George Washington, and as a French philosophe  was elected a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Iris De...

We talk with Joel Bohy , Director of Historic Arms & Miltaria at Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers , and a regular appraiser on Antiques Roadshow , about the weapons and equipment used on April 19, 1775.  Muskets, powderhorns, and the stories of the people who carried them.  Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!

Smallpox--the most devastating disease in human history--struck the American colonies in 1773.    Andrew Wehrman (Central Michigan University) joins us to talk about the political responses to the disease, in Marblehead and Salem, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia, and what Americans learned about the contagion and how to combat it, as he discusses in his new book, Contagion of Liberty: The Pol...

We talk with James Madison, President, Secretary of State, Congressman, architect of the Constitution, and political player in a wide-ranging conversation about politics, religion, slavery, Dolley Madison, and some of the people he knew.  Our discussion was facilitated by Kyle Jenks , and we are grateful to  @madisonportrayer  for this opportunity to talk with the "Great Little Madison."...

Every year on Election Day the new Massachusetts Assembly would take their seats, and would mark the occasion with a sermon delivered by one of the clergy.  Jeffrey Griffith has analyzed the Election Sermons from 1763 to 1793, and the themes and messages clergy delivered during this time of Revolution and change.  Among his other interests are the career of John Hancock--whose grandfather delivere...

Historians owe their livelihoods to the archives of historical material spread throughout the world.  However, archives were not established as mere repositories of historical memory, but rather as tools of statecraft and empire!  We talk with Asheesh Kapur Siddique, (from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, about archives and empire, and his path-breaking scholarship  into 18th-century hi...

The John Carter Brown Library is one of the premier research libraries in America, with collections on the entire hemisphere.  We talk with https://kariKarin Wulf, the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director of the John Carter Brown Library about their extraordinary holdings, as well as her pioneering work in early American history, and her forthcoming work on genealogy and on the historic...

The American privateer Marlborough set out in 1777-1778 to disrupt British trade and enrich its crew and owners by capturing British merchantmen.  The Marlborough  focused on Britain's slave trade, attacking the slave-trading port at the Isle de Los off today's Guinea. This successful raid, and other attacks by American privateers on British slavers, had repercussions for the Trans-Atlan...

What did the French hope to gain by siding with the Americans in the Revolution?  We talk with Norman Desmarais, Professor emeritus  from Providence College, about his book America's First Ally:  France in the Revolutionary War, and we hear other stories of this fraught alliance.  Norm Desmarais has also translated the Gazette Francois, a newspaper the French forces published in Newport, and...

Merchant, smuggler & patriot, William Molineux if forgotten now, but was a leading voice among the Boston Sons of Liberty. His hands were in many if not most of the protests that occurred in Boston between the 1765 Stamp Act and the protests of 1774, when he died suddenly, some think by his own hand. One historian who has not forgotten Molineux is J. L. Bell, creator of the Boston 1775 blog an...

Shays's Rebellion--or the Regulators of Massachusetts--tested many of the precepts for which the American Revolution was fought.  We talk with author Daniel Bullen , about his book, Daniel Shays' Honorable Rebellion , which tells the story of regular people banding together and keeping the peace during five months of protests, protecting their liberty and property from the speculators an...

Following the evacuation of Boston in March of 1776, London authorities knew that Britain's small British alone could not possibly conquer the American continent.  King George III, also the Elector of Hanover, reached out to his German relations and other allied provinces to provide auxiliary forces to send to America.  Arriving first at New York in 1776, about 30,000 German soldiers would se...

American colonial leaders in the 1760's and 1770's insisted that they were just asserting their rights as free-born subjects of British empire.  They believed that English Constitution was the greatest source of freedom on Earth and their forefathers who came to America did not intend to separate themselves from that Constitution.  In time, of course, they sought a different path.  Guy C...

In "Ten Crucial Days" between December 25, 1776, and January 3, 1777, George Washington and his small force saved the Revolution.  Roger S. Williams joins us to talk about these ten crucial days, and the programs he sponsors at Washington's Crossing Park, the Trenton Battlefield, and in Princeton. Find out about the tours and events in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the musical, &...

On this day, 251 years ago, we would find ourselves in the middle of a trial of 8 British Soldiers on trial for murder over the events that occurred on the night of March 5, 1770, known as the Boston Massacre.  During that night, British soldiers fired into a crowd of Bostonians who had gathered on King Street and were threatening a British sentry.  The resulting skirmish left 4 Bostonians killed...

In museums and historical societies all across the nation there are artifacts related to the American Revolution and the cause of American Independence.  J.L. Bell, who maintains a terrific blog on Boston in the Revolution, tells us about vials of tea found in museums throughout New England.  Did they come off the ships in December 1773?  J.L. Bell is also the author of  The Road To Concord: , on...

The Boston Town Meeting issued a report on the state of their liberties, and other towns responded, establishing Committees of Correspondence to communicate with one another.  This revolutionary step brought the towns of Massachusetts together in a common cause.  All this happened 250 years ago this fall, in October and November of 1772.  Professor Robert Allison (Chair, Suffolk University Departm...

The Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) was an event wreathed in secrecy.  John Adams said he never knew any person who was involved in the destruction of the East India Company tea.  Yet as time passed and the American Republic seemed secure, participants claimed, were identified or admitted to being part of the tea's destruction.  In preparation for the 250th Anniversary in December 2023, ...

The 1691 Massachusetts Charter established the office of Royal Governor.  The office lasted 85, until 1776, when Governor Thomas Gage left with the British forces on March 17.  While Gage was the last of the Royal Governors, the actions of his two predecessors, Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson did much to make the bring down the royal governorship. Roberta DeCenzo on the Last Royal Governors...

The American Revolution disrupted the trans-Atlantic ties between American and British Protestants.  Imperial Protestantism had helped helped to drive support for the British Empire, and the Empire seemed to Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic to be a way to propagate the faith.  But the Revolution  forced a recalibration of the role of religion in the lives of 18th-century citizens across t...

African Founders:  How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals , the latest work by award-winning author David Hackett Fischer, examines the interactions and intertwinings of Africans and their culture as it integrated into the European base culture that the American colonists brought from there.  This majestic work illustrates how enslaved Africans and their descendants enlarged American ideas o...

Ian Ruskin, author, actor, and activist joins us to talk about his one man-show, " To Begin the World Over Again:  The Life of Thomas Paine," which he will be performing at the Boston Public Library on November 1, 2, and 3!  We sit down to talk about the extraordinary life of Thomas Paine, the most radical of the founding generation, who still speaks to us today.  Tell us what you think!...

General Nathanael Greene is one of the most important officers of Washington's inner circle from the American Revolutionary War.  Rising rapidly from the officer commanding Rhode Island troops at the siege of Boston to the officer responsible for supplying the nascent American army, Greene solidified his reputation as one of Washington's most dependenable general officers during his camp...

Professor Robert Allison (Chair, Suffolk University Department of History, Language & Global Culture) discusses the June 1772 King's Bench decision by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield in the case of Somerset v. Stewart, long heralded as the first shot fired in the long history of anti-slavery jurisprudence.    Who was James Somerset?  What impact did this decision have on him, on the institut...

From the dark and cold winter encampment of Valley Forge, Washington launched one of the War's riskiest campaigns:  to feed and clothe his army, and prevent its soldiers from starving, dispersing, or deserting.  Ricardo A. Herrera, Visiting Professor of History at the Army War College, tells us about his book, Feeding Washington's Army:  Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778.  We hea...