Episodes

As you may recall, several months ago some members of the Continental Congress thought it was important to make one last effort to reconcile with Britain before things got worse. So they composed the Olive Branch Petition and sent it off to England. Transit times being what they were then, the petition took several weeks to get to its destination. In the meantime, things got worse. So when the Olive Branch Petition arrived, nobody really cared. But there were two other documents that made matt...

One thing that you can’t say about George Washington is that he was a slacker. He was constantly communicating with people, whether it was the orders of the day, making plans to organize his army, or writing letters. And Washington was absolutely prolific at writing letters. In this case, he’s writing to a Rhode Island merchant, thanking him for the advance notice of an incoming shipment, and reassuring him that the shipment will reach its destination safely, at least to the extent that he had ...

While today is perhaps the earliest documented instance of George Washington expressing concern for his captured troops, it certainly wouldn’t be the last. For years he worried about this, largely because the British didn’t always consider the Continental Army to be a genuine army, nor did they consider themselves to be “at war” with America; instead this was some kind of petty grievance that needed to be put down. As a result, Washington was in frequent communication with his counterparts on t...

It’s peculiar, sometimes, how we know a lot of stuff about famous people, but we don’t often know much about their relatives. Sometimes we don’t realize that they even existed, John Adams had two brothers, one of whom died on this day in 1775. He wasn’t famous, but he did have some involvement with the Siege of Boston until illness struck. Something like that must have made the loss just that much more worse for John, and the war effort that much more personal. The post August 10, 1775: John A...

This. This artwork right here is why I’m reluctant to use A.I. to generate cover art. But this one came out too hilarious for me not to use, am I right? George Washington worried about supplies for his troops pretty much throughout the Revolutionary War. Sometimes it was ammunition, as we discussed a couple of days ago, other times it was basic things like clothing and blankets. Fortunately, there were people who heard his concerns and took action on behalf of the soldiers who were working to ...

It was another net win for the Americans as the HMS Falcon, which had originally been assigned to the Colonies to enforce the Intolerable Acts, took a run at stealing livestock in order to provision the British who were stuck in Boston during the siege. Unfortunately for them, the Colonists were wise to their moves and took appropriate action…more than once. The post August 8, 1775: The Battle of Gloucester appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Once again, complacency wins the day. An American ship heads to Florida to raid the British ammunition stores there, and instead stumbles on a ship carrying literal tons of gunpowder. And it’s easily captured because the crew was asleep. Wasn’t anyone on watch? Apparently not, or they still managed to allow the American ship to get close enough that they could get on board. EIther way, American ships weren’t worth considering, and there wasn’t any American Navy…yet. But events over the next few...

I’m the first to admit that my math didn’t work out during yesterday’s episode. I have no excuse other than I’m on vacation this week and perhaps not as detail-oriented as usual. You may remember a couple of days ago when we mentioned that one of the things that broke in George Washington’s favor was the timely arrival of a company of riflemen. These were the men in question. Rifles have different barrels from the typical guns that Colonial forces used, and were therefore more accurate. In addi...

Meanwhile, three thousand miles away from the action… …the Spanish were exploring the West Coast and claiming a lot of territory in their name. It was largely exploration and planting flags, although there were some colonies established as well. But what’s interesting about the bit of exploration we’ll be looking at today is that, even though the Spanish had been up and down the coast for a couple of hundred years, it wasn’t until 1769 that they realized that the strait leading into San Franci...

One of the reasons (we think) that the Colonial forces were able to gain small advantages over the British forces is that the Colonial Army was relatively untrained, and sometimes succeeded through dumb luck. They attempted things that “everyone knows” wouldn’t work, and surprise! It did work because nobody thought they’d be dumb enough to try it. The Colonies also didn’t have a lot of Navy going on just yet, and it may have been because of this that they were able to succeed at sea, as well. B...

As noted, two days ago we told you about how George Washington got the bad news that he didn’t have nearly as much gunpowder and ammunition as he thought he did. It was on this day in history that he and his team of generals put their heads together and came up with some rather solutions. Some of them depended on deception while others depended on dumb luck. Fortunately things worked out quite well. The post August 3, 1775: The Ammunition Crisis, Part 2 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Since May 10, the Second Continental Congress had been working for six days a week. And on any given day, depending on the committee to which they were attached, they’d work from anywhere between eight and twelve hours. And remember: this was in the height of summer in Philadelphia, where the temperatures were in the 90s and chances are, so was the humidity most of the time. Now, as Mike will attest in today’s episode, they got a LOT of stuff done in those ten weeks. And considering how though...

For those of you who are coming here from Hamilton Radio for the first time: welcome to 250 and Counting! Each day we spend just a couple of minutes telling you about some event that took place exactly 250 years ago today, to give you an idea of some of the events leading up to, and then beyond, our nation’s 250th birthday next year. For those of you who aren’t new to the show, you may remember a couple of days ago, when the British tried to break out of the Siege of Boston by launching an att...

It’s not entirely Lord North’s fault that his proposal for securing peace took so long to get to the Colonies; messages took a long time to get across the ocean. It is his fault that he sent it to individual people across the Colonies, thinking he could demonstrate that the Colonies are divided and aren’t on board with the revolution. It’s also his fault for not counting on someone from the New Jersey delegation (in this case; it could have been any delegate) bringing the proposal to the Secon...

Boston had been under siege since Lexington and Concord. Of course the British felt that they needed to break out of it from time to time, and today was one of those attempts. Now, this was a success for the Continental Army, but the fact is, few people realized at that time just how close they were to losing that battle, and badly. But that’s for a couple of days from now, on August 1st. Coincidentally, August 1st is the day that this podcast begins airing on Hamilton Radio! Tune in to Hamil...

George Washington didn’t have a ton of military experience when he was named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. But it’s clear that he gave the position a great deal of thought as he made his way from Philadelphia to Boston. When he arrived, he clearly had a lot of ideas about what an army should look like. Furthermore, he had ideas regarding the overall structure of things and the institutions that should be in place. Shortly after officially taking the position, Washington began peti...

We told you a short time ago about a document sent to Canada by the Second Continental Congress. It outlined the reasons we got into a shooting match with Britain. It also made a point of noting that we’re not asking them to join us, but we wouldn’t complain too loudly if they did. The Canadians declined and they maintain a connection to Britain even as an independent nation. (As this is written, King Charles III is considered the King of Canada.) Some time later, Congress sent a similar letter...

The Continental Congress thought they had a strong candidate in Dr. Benjamin Church as their Surgeon General. And while Church was a generally good doctor as such, and a loyal member of the Sons of Liberty, he wasn’t especially good at leading others to do the same. This eventually turned into a big problem that came to a head in October, when George Washington needed to step in. The post July 27, 1775: The Army Hospital is Born appeared first on 250 and Counting.

When the US Postal Service first began, it couldn’t even be called that, since there wasn’t a US yet. There was, of course, a postal service, but it was the Crown Post and it was subject to interception and investigation, and we really couldn’t have that and a revolution, now could we? In fact, there were competing services to the Crown Post, but there were also gaps in that service and general inefficiencies. For instance, most services transported parcels at a lower rate than letters. So, peo...

First off, let me note that sometime this week we cracked the 1,000-download mark, and we have you to thank for that, especially inasmuch as 40% of that took place in the last 30 days or so. We’re grateful that you’re giving us this little slice of your life each day. We’re also happy to see that the number of daily downloads has grown, slowly but surely, so consider yourself ahead of the curve. You’ve got bragging rights, my friend. In yesterday’s episode, Mike teased the commandeering and re-...

Even when it’s Mike’s voice you hear on the episode, it’s Claude who takes the blame for the episode titles. It wasn’t a bad thing for members of the Continental Congress to disagree, but some level of decorum was still expected from those members. And almost certainly, one of the commandments was Thou Shalt Not Trash Talk Thy Fellow Delegate. (I may have softened the language a little bit, there.) Still, Adams had a right to express whatever frustration he had with John Dickinson, unfortunate...

John Adams wrote to his wife twice on this day in 1775. What did you do for your spouse that was such a big deal? In these letters, the sparks don’t fly the way they do in many others, but the affection he feels for her is still present nonetheless. That he took the time to write a second, more thoughtful letter after dashing off the first one is a nice measure of his esteem for her, and his ability to use her as a sounding board, even when she’s 300 miles and several days’ travel apart. The p...

Lord North gets kind of a bad rap for being the Prime Minister who “lost the colonies.” But the fact is, he mostly understood their concerns and was sympathetic to them. However, Parliament was itching for a fight and not making life easy for anyone involved. Lord North put forth a proposal to the Colonies that, to be honest, didn’t offer a lot of change from the status quo. But once again, the slowness with which messages moved from one place in the world to another doomed its delivery to a da...

We know: when an episode is a biography, we typically use a portrait of the person born on this day 250 years ago. But this time around is special: the artwork on today’s episode is a building that was erected by the subject of the episode. The McKim Free School is now the McKim Community Center, and it’s just around the corner from McKim Park. In fact, between the time recording this episode and writing this, I learned that the McKim Center was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and while the...