Episodes

Historic US Marine Corps portrait of Samuel Nicholas, their first Commandant. Artist and date of creation unknown. Although he held the title “Captain of Marines” at this point, Samuel Nicholas was the first officer commissioned to the Continental Marines (later the US Marine Corps), and by tradition is therefore considered to be the first Commandant of the Marines. Hey, are YOU going to argue with the USMC? I didn’t think so. Not me, either. Nicholas was commissioned on November 28, 1775, and...

A 1913 painting of the Continental Congress in session, by John Ward Dunsmore. This is supposed to be the moment that John Adams recommends George Washington to lead the Continental Army. I couldn’t find any images of Lord Drummond, at least not the correct Lord Drummond. It was called “A Plan of Accommodation,” and it had been in the works for most of the previous year before Lord Drummond tried to present it to the Second Continental Congress. Taxation was the big ticket item originally, but ...

The Mount Riga Ironworks Furnace in Salisbury, CT. There was more than one furnace at this location; this is the surviving one. It’s on the National Register of Historic Locations and a lovely place to visit if you’re in the northwest corner of the state. The Mount Riga Iron Furnace isn’t an especially unique artifact on the east coast of the US. In fact, as someone who lives in Baltimore, I get to see one of them regularly when I visit my mother-in-law, who lives about a half-hour’s drive away ...

“Incident in the Burning of Norfolk,” engraving, artist unknown. Originally appeared as an illustration in Cassell’s History of the United States in the late 1870s. Happy New Year to you! The burning of Norfolk was the follow-up to the Battle of Great Bridge and the Patriot occupation of that town. Colonel Howe probably overplayed his hand with this one, and the consequences were catastrophic for the town. The Declaration of Independence is just a few months away, now, and (spoiler alert) the ...

The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec (detail), by John Trumbull, 1786. Montgomery was struck in the head by grapeshot, so it probably wasn’t nearly as tidy as this. While hindsight is very much a 20/20 vision, it’s still worth exploring why the Battle of Quebec went so poorly for the American side: While General Montgomery was clever enough to attack during a storm, he didn’t necessarily expect Nor’easter blizzard conditions, which made it tough for his men to see where they ...

Back on October 8, the Continental Army determined that Blacks were no longer to be permitted to enlist, and that existing soldiers would not be allowed to re-enlist. But on this date, George Washington changed his mind. Was he suddenly an abolitionist? Not a chance. He owned slaves until the day he died. This was a more pragmatic decision. It was borne of the fact that he and his staff suddenly realized that a lot of soldiers were going to end their enlistment come January. That October decisi...

The Pine Tree Flag, which was the ensign of the Massachusetts State Navy. There are a few variations of this, because the original was destroyed by the British. While the Massachusetts Naval Militia was pretty much wiped out in 1779 (oops, spoiler alert), it wasn’t the end of a state-based Navy for Massachusetts. Massachusetts began to rebuild, but in 1780 a new state constitution was adopted, and just as the navy was delayed in its original inception by bureaucracy, the Massachusetts State Nav...

The plaque in Carpenters Hall, commemorating the table where the Secret Committee met with Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir. You’ll remember I mentioned Samuel Adams in this space a couple of days ago, as a member of the Continental Congress, and as a member of several committees, most of them related to defense. He was almost certainly at the heart of the events of today that took place in Congress which Mike describes in our episode, even though he isn’t named directly in conjunction with...

Yeah, I cheated and used the same image from last week. While he didn’t use a rattlesnake, Benjamin Franklin was the guy who came up with the original “Join or Die” snake image [right]back in 1754. (At least most people give him credit for it.) It was based in a superstition that if you cut up a snake into pieces and then reassembled those pieces before sunset, the snake could be resurrected. In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Delaware was part of Pennsylvania and New England’s four co...

Portrait of Samuel Adams, 1772. by John Singleton Copley – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Wikimedia Commons Most of us have a pop culture view of the American Revolution period, and some of us go so far as to have some idea of what happened via the 1970 film 1776. Oddly enough, that movie has both a ton of accuracy with its facts (but not necessarily in the right order), and a ton of dramatic license. One thing the film gets right is that John Adams was a bit of a nudge, constantly pushing th...

Cover art for December 25, 1775: A portrait of Major General Howe, artist unknown. From the book A brief history of the North Carolina troops on the Continental establishment, by: Charles Lukens Davis & Henry Hobart Bellas, published 1896. The Battle of Great Bridge may be over, but its effects linger on. Lord Dunmore, the former Royal Governor of South Carolina, communicated to General Robert Howe that he’d like to effect a prisoner exchange. It’s not clear whether Howe was playing hard-to-ge...

Joseph Warren conferring with Israel Putnam before the battle at Bunker Hill, at which Warren was killed. Mike’s pretty much covered the story of the capture of a British ship in the episode, so I’m going to tell you a little bit about Joseph Warren, who (you may recall) was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. Warren became a doctor early in his career, and he also became a Patriot before it was fashionable. He was a powerful speaker, and for several years in a row he would deliver a speech co...

A 1775 map of Charleston and surrounding areas, owned by Henry Laurens. Charleston is the small dark patch above the first ‘a’ in “Campaign”. As important as some of the action in the southern colonies was—and make no mistake, Colonel Richard Richardson’s campaign to sniff out the Loyalist leaders in the western part of the state wound up being very important—other events were important in different ways. One such event would be the Snow Campaign. There came a point where Richardson decided tha...

Historical marker placed at the site of the Battle of Great Cane Brake, explaining where another historical marker is located. The Battle of Great Cane Brake took place near modern-day Simpsonville, South Carolina. That’s a few miles southeast of Greenville. A “Brake of Canes” is pretty much what it sounds like. The cane stalks in question are a kind of bamboo that grows in the area, and a “Cane Brake” is a large thicket of these stalks. It would probably be a good place to hide, if the Loyalis...

Undated portrait of Richard Richardson, attributed to Jeremiah Theus. General Richard Richardson was a delegate to the Provincial Congresses in South Carolina in 1775 and 1776, and he served in both the South Carolina Militia and the Continental Army during the Revolution. He was instrumental in the Americans winning the Battle of Charleston in 1776, but doesn’t get much else attention, perhaps because he was captured a few years later and then sent home, essentially to die. But the fact that h...

One variation of the flag. Some of them have an apostrophe in “DONT”, some use a non-serifed font, some don’t have any greenery under the snake. A few have the snake facing right. It’s arguably the most recognizable and popular symbol of the Revolutionary Era, and its debut turns 250 years old today. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s the Gadsden Flag. The concept of the snake image representing the Colonies is a little older than this by about twenty years, with the “JOIN OR DIE” image of the snake br...

The Fry-Jefferson Map of the Chesapeake Bay area, commissioned in 1750 and completed in 1753. This was also one of the first maps of the area that had the “North is Up” orientation. The Great Chesapeake Bay, which is protected by the Delmarva Peninsula (DELaware, MARyland, VirginiA, get it?) is a watershed area that is hugely important for these three states, plus New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Because of its importance, there are sensor buoys all over the place, measuring water tempera...

A hand-colored printed halftone of a 19th-century illustration of George Washington writing at his desk. Military Intelligence is a peculiar thing, if only because you never know where it’s going to come from, and/or what it’s going to affect. And that’s where today’s episode comes in, because Congress received a letter written today which detailed some plans for British military activity in Virginia. What’s surprising is that the intelligence came from…George Washington, in Cambridge, Massachu...

One of many, MANY images mistakenly showing the Ticonderoga artillery being transported on ox-drawn sleds. Author unknown, National Archive Collection number 111-SC-100815. Colonel Henry Knox was just about ready to begin moving the Noble Train of Artillery (a phrase he coined, incidentally). He’d have everything he needed to move by the 20th or 21st of December, and then just seventeen days later, he’d be marching into Cambridge. As we all know, he was wrong about how long it would take. But t...

Historical Marker on Ohio Highway 93, just south of US 36, commemorating Chief White Eyes’ founding of a Delaware Tribe-based town not far from this place. Image via remarkableohio.org. I rather dislike using historical markers back-to-back for the cover art, but there are no images of Chief White Eyes, and I’d about run out of images of Great Bridge yesterday, so here we are. Also—and I admit I only know this because there’s a town not far from where I grew up with this name—I’m pretty sure th...

Historical marker commemorating the Battle of Great Bridge. We’ve done several episodes about the Battle of Great Bridge, and there’s a reason for that. Bunker Hill gets all the press, but remember we LOST that battle. Great Bridge was the first real Patriot victory, it was the first major battle in Virginia, and therefore it poked the Virginia Convention into adopting the first public declaration expressing a spirit of independence. Also of note is that, according to the Great Bridge Battlefi...

Engraving of Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald. Original painting by James Ramsay, engraving by John Cook, published 1866. Thomas Cochrane had quite the colorful, storied life, and it’s too bad that we can only cram so much into a twenty-minute podcast episode. For instance, it’s entirely possible that he was involved in a stock fraud scheme based on false rumors of Napoleon’s death. Fortunately for him, he was elected back into the House of Commons about a month after his conviction. Even today,...

This image depicts the Battle of Nassau, one of the first major battles won by the Continental Navy in March of 1776. Oil painting on canvas by V. Zveg. If you’re going to build a navy, you’ve got to get serious about it. Congress established the need for a Navy back in October, but they were kind of sloppy about executing the plan. For the last several weeks, the Congress has been purchasing existing ships and retrofitting them to make them battle-worthy. That’s great if you’re maintaining sta...

Ben Franklin and Gabriel de Borbón had corresponded with one another previously, so while the letter that is the subject of today’s episode has a very specific (and relevant) ask in it, it was also just another in a chain of correspondence between the two. For his part, Prince Gabriel was probably receptive to Franklin’s suggestions, but he wasn’t likely to be in a position to act on them in the way that Franklin hoped. As the fourth son of Charles III, the throne was a long way off, though he ...