Revolution 250 Podcast

Before he was a "Founding Father," James Madison was a politician.  He shaped a political system to work when, as he said, "good and wise statesmen are not at the helm."  Join Professor Bob Allison (Chair, Suffolk University Department of History, Language & Global Culture) talking with Jay Cost , Gerald R. Ford Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,  Director of Grov...

How does our view of the Revolution change if we view it from the Gulf Coast or Mississippi River? Kathleen DuVal , Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, joins us to talk about her book, Independence Lost:  Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution .  We hear about Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana,  Alexander MacGillivray, the leader of the Creeks, as we...

Old North Church , officially Christ Church in Boston, is the city's oldest church--built in 1723--and is still a functioning parish.  It has one of the oldest church organs in the country, four seventeenth-century Belgian angels which were destined for a church in Quebec, and an eighteenth-century clock that still keeps time.  It is most known for two lanterns hung in the steeple on April 18...

Governor William Shirley  built an elegant estate in Roxbury while serving as Royal Governor of Massachusetts.  The fortunes of Shirley Place, now known as the Shirley-Eustis House, became tied up in the political upheaval of the Revolution, and ultimately the House became the home of William Eustis, a Revolutionary War surgeon who served as a member of Congress, Secretary of War, & as Ambassa...

The Mohawk River valley of New York was one of many "frontier" areas that saw constant raiding and skirmishing during the American Revolution.  We talk with Brian Mack, one of the volunteers bringing to life the Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park , about the Revolution along the Mohawk River and the impact it had on the indigenous peoples and European settlers who lived there.  We t...

The Massachusetts Archives were created after the Revolution to organize and preserve the public records of Massachusetts.  We talk with Michael Comeau, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Archives,  and John Hannigan, the Curator, about the millions of documents and artifacts which reveal the entire history of the Commonwealth, from 1629 to the present.  Muster rolls, inventories, letters fro...

We talk with William Martin, who has been called the "king of the historical thriller," about his novelistic biography of George Washington, Citizen Washington. What made Washington the indispensable man?  We plumb the character of Washington, his theatrical sense, and the Rules of Civility that shaped his life. We also discuss his "American Experience" episode, "George Wa...

Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American of his day.  But he became famous as a subject of the British Empire, and he believed in the Empire.  How did he become an American?  For our 100th episode, we talk with Gordon Wood , author of The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, ,  and many other books on the Revolutionary era, about this most fascinating and most elusive of the founders.  It i...

Privateering enjoys a somewhat spotty historical reputation, being considered little more than state-sponsored pirates.  But there is no denying the importance of privateers to the cause of Independence, providing military supplies, foodstuffs. cash,  and merchantable goods  Continental treasury.  Privateers such as John Manley, Jonathan Haraden and Luke Ryan some of the first American maritime he...

How did Americans in the generations following the Declaration of Independence translate its lofty ideals into practice?  A conversation with Richard D. Brown, author of Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War .   We talk about religious liberty,   Ephraim Wheeler,  the rights (or lack of rights) of women, and also about Richard Brown's first book Rev...

Prince Demah was an African-American artist or "limner," who created three known portraits--one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the other two in the  HIngham Historical Society .  These portraits, of Henry Barnes and his wife Christian Barnes, were damaged by a mob who attacked their home in Marlborough, before driving the loyalist Barnes's into exile.  Mrs. Barnes th...

The Boston of today is vastly different from that of 1775 so how can we find the 18th century landscape that the Sons of Liberty knew in the landscape of today?  Josiah George, Assistant Creative and Production Manager of the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum n a virtual ramble over the 18th-century Boston landscape, using the John Bonner Map (1722) as a guide.  We also discuss aspects of the Bo...

Did the American Revolution begin with the North Carolina Regulators?  Abby Chandler joins us to talk about this North Carolina political movement and some of the characters involved--Governor William Tryon, who was between the proverbial rock and hard place, the Legislature which ran afoul of back-country farmers and speculators,  "Regulators" like Herman Husband, and ambitious men on t...

In this provocative new biography of Eliza Harriot,  Mary Sarah Bilder looks to the 1780s—the Age of the Constitution—to investigate the rise of a radical new idea in the English-speaking world: Female Genius. . Bilder finds the perfect exemplar of this phenomenon in English-born Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor. This pathbreaking female educator delivered a a lecture at the University of Pennsylvani...

On September 5, 1778, Major General Charles Grey landed a column of 4,000 men at New Bedford, Massachusetts to suppress privateering. The column marched swiftly and destroyed all of the maritime trade in the harbor and many of the support facilities on shore. Unfortunately many houses and shops were destroyed in the conflagration. They marched on to Fairhaven looting and burning as they marched. J...

Long Island Sound was a battleground during the Revolution.  The British held New York City throughout the war, and Newport periodically, and Long Island was home to loyal Americans while Connecticut was a base for the rebellious Americans. Raiders from each side could easily traverse Long Island Sound to raid the other. The British attacked Fairfield, Danbury, New Haven, New London, and other Con...

History is written by the victors, but to understand history we need to take a more nuanced look.  What about the people who not only were skeptical about American Independence, but actively opposed it? Join this conversation about Loyalists with Eileen Ka-May Cheng, the Sarah Yates Exley Chair in Teaching Excellence at Sarah Lawrence College, author of  The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth,   and a...

Who were the privateers who helped win American independence--and what were their motives?   We talk with Kylie Hulbert from Hampden-Sydney College about her book, The Untold War At Sea:  America's Revolutionary Privateers.      Some 52,000 men served on between 1500 and two thousand privateering voyages, sailing after British vessels in the Caribbean, off the coast of Brazil, and in European...

The burning of the HMS Gaspee in June 1772 had a profound impact on the struggle for American Independence.  Was it an opportune act of defiance, or was it a carefully orchestrated statement against the growing power of the British crown?  Steven Park, author of The Burning of His Majesty's Schooner Gaspee:  An Attack on Crown Rule before the American Revolution ,  an event commemorated every...

New Jersey occupies a unique position in the American Revolution. We talk with Jim Gigantino, historian at the University of Arkansas, who has written and researched on the role of New Jersey in the Revolution, and the impact of the American Revolution on the Garden State, which became a battleground.  His first book,  Ragged Road to Abolitio n, on slavery and emancipation in New Jersey (where sla...

When the British captured Philadelphia, the seat of the American Congress, in September of 1777 General Howe delivered a decisive blow to American morale.  A month later, Howe tried to consolidate his gains with an attack on the American fortification on the Delaware River at Fort Mercer, now Red Bank, New Jersey ,  and across the river at  Fort Mifflin .  The Americans not only repulsed the attac...

As the Continental Army besieged Boston in 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress coordinated efforts with local towns to support the outflux of dislocated Bostonians while attempting to protect the countryside and the army from smallpox. Families, including aged, ill and infirm individuals, as well as mothers with small children, were removed and relocated to the Massachusetts countryside, e...

On April 19, 1894. Frederic T. Greenhalge (1842 - 1896), the British-born Governor of Massachusetts declared the day a state-wide holiday, calling it Patriot's Day.  The holiday replaced the centuries old "Fast Day" that had been the spring holiday throughout the Commonwealth.  Now in its 128th year, events of Patriots Day still enthralls the public. Join Professor Bob Allison (Suff...

Join us for a conversation about the moral, intellectual, and political world of the American founders, in a discussion  with C. Bradley Thompson , Professor of Political Science at Clemson University, and author of America's Revolutionary Mind:  The Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined it (2019). This major re-interpretation of the Revolution, looks at th...

Jane McRea is one of the most famous women of the Revolution.  Her story has been told in paintings, novels, and poems, and embellished by folklorists and historians.  , But we know very little about this 24-year old who died tragically in the summer of 1777.  We know that as General Burgoyne's army marched toward Albany she was killed, and though her betrothed was a Tory marching with Burgoy...