Episodes

(Note: it’s in the alt text for the image, but in the interest of broader accuracy and general transparency, we know that this artwork isn’t the symbol for an American abolitionist society but rather a British one. But this is one of those cases where the story works better than the truth, and we found it to be a powerful image that underlines the intent of the tale. In short, let it go this once, OK? –CC) It might come as a surprise to you that societies dedicated to the elimination of slavery...

It seems fitting that groups like this changed names and designations quickly, given that events in the Colonies were also moving quickly. In two events this week, we’ve told you stories of armies that were raised to defend individual colonies but quickly became part of the Continental Army. The Light Dragoons of North Carolina would be one of those groups. Likewise, the rest of this episode is a throwback to TWO earlier episodes, as the activities are formally recorded in the Virginia Gazette....

First off: apologies for the late posting. I had a very rough night last night, and there was no element of today that was my own. We’ve all had days like that, I think, and I thank you for your forbearance. A lot of people get their American History from the play 1776, and it’s mostly accurate with the facts, if not necessarily with the people involved or the specific dates. And that’s also why it gets cited here as often as it does: we hope that the common cultural touchstone provided by the ...

When the HMS Somerset first reached Boston, she was an old, leaky, weathered mess. Admiral Graves asked for permission to repair it, and while the work was slow at first, the sailors actually managed to get the important parts of the work completed. By this day in 1775, the ship was considered seaworthy and capable of doing more from its perch in the harbor, so Graves moved it into the place of two other ships, largely to demonstrate that he could do it, and safely. Had the lookouts been more a...

This isn’t the first time you’ll see a statement like this, but the bottom line is: the history books aren’t 100% correct. Sure, the Shot Heard Round The World was at Lexington and Concord. But that’s not where the fighting started. Nearly two weeks before Concord, there were small battles going on in Assonet, Massachusetts, near the Rhode Island border. The post April 10, 1775: Skirmishes in Assonet, MA appeared first on 250 and Counting.

In January of 1775 someone took the time to write a 1400-word account of a riot that took place in Annapolis, Maryland just a few days earlier. The pseudonymous author alleged that a shipload of tea was burned in the harbor as an alternative to destroying the tea and tar-and-feathering the ship’s owner. But word got back to the folks in Annapolis, of course, and they countered with a resolution involving a reprinting of that article, plus a refutation of the allegations made. The basic thrust? ...

Well…it’s official. It was on this day in 1775 that our assorted collection of irregular militiamen turned into a genuine army. The Provincial Congress in Massachusetts proposed, and adopted, a resolution that provided for a genuine army dedicated to protecting our shores against the British. That was the New England Army, but the name didn’t last long. Tune in to find out their other name. The post April 8, 1775: The New England Army appeared first on 250 and Counting.

It’s cake and candles today for Francis Cabot Lowell, a manufacturer who helped modernize the textile industry in the United States, largely through industrial espionage: in the middle of a trade war with Europe, Lowell visited England and memorized the processes they were using so that he could bring them back to this side of the pond, helping us to break the hold on imported goods from Europe by innovating the cradle-to-grave manufacturing process for fabrics. Yet, despite his prominence in t...

In past episodes (quite recently, in fact) we’ve talked about the Colonists’ need to move caches of gunpowder and other weaponry when they got wind of an imminent British seizure. By the time April of 1775 rolled around, it wasn’t just the explosive weapons that the British were after; it was the press as well. And the more you hear about the specific things that the British imposed on the Colonies as events moved closer to all-out war, the more obvious their need to appear in the Bill of Right...

Up until now, we’ve presented General Thomas Gage as rather a hard liner who was looking to subjugate the Colonies somehow. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, he like being a light-hearted guy, and when he became the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, he discovered exactly what kind of mess he’d stepped into. At that point, anything he did would only make matters worse. The post April 5, 1775: The British Gear Up For War appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The title kind of buries the bigger story, but we wanted to ensure that you understood what a big deal Elizabeth Gooking Greenleaf was. Elizabeth was dead by the time 1775 rolled around, but her family continued to run the apothecary shop for many years, and they were instrumental in ensuring that the Massachusetts Patriots were equipped with medical supplies should war break out. Today there is a chain of pharmacies in the midwest called GreenLeaf Apothecary, but there’s no connection we coul...

In the play and film 1776, one of the delegates from New York says that in the state legislature, everybody talks very loud and very fast and never seems to get anywhere. This may or may not be true, but the fact is, they did have some specific instructions for their delegates to the Second Continental Congress. One of them was that New York would be expected to oppose independence for as long as possible. That was probably because they were looking at Vermont as a model and preparing to declare...

Calvin Jones may have looked like an unassuming fellow, but that unassuming look concealed a very powerful mind and a strong moral compass. And today we’ve got Cake and Candles for him, since this day in 1775 was the date of his birth. Jones was a physician before his teenage years ended, and he began to design criteria that would separate good doctors from bad ones. He organized militias even though he was under no orders to do so. And then when the War of 1812 broke out, he became a major gen...

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Thomas Gage was kind of a weird bird. In our cover art he’s defending children who were using Boston Common for sledding and skating. This was just a couple of months before today’s events. But other times, he was a little on the lazy side, often looking for clues that aren’t there, and letting other peoples’ opinions get the better of him. It’s entirely possible that the best idea Gage ever had was whatever he’d been told most recently. His decision...

Today’s episode marks the end of Women’s History Month. We’ve noted a few episodes since this adventure first started that involved women taking political action as groups, but Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most influential individual women to take a political stand in the Revolution era. She was self-educated, and married a man who was both enlightened and politically active himself, and she used her position as her husband’s hostess to develop and maintain connections of her own. She was a...

In the past we’ve talked about the New England Restraining Act; today was the day that King George III actually put it into action. To mark that day, Mike takes you through some of the details of the act and its impact on the trade in the Colonies, and the political impact in Britain. The post March 30, 1775: King George III Restricts Trade appeared first on 250 and Counting.

There are plenty of scholarly books and articles out there regarding American History, but there are elements of British history that stick out, too. General Gage giving the order today that his troops begin to march on Roxbury. It was a relatively small gesture at the time, but many, many colonial events can be traced to that particular action. And as a result the Colonists determined that Britain can’t move numbers of men like that again without bumping into a few flintlocks along the way. T...

One of the interesting things about many of the British officials who were around during the early days of the American Revolution is that most of them were actually pretty good at their job. It’s just that they were given rather thankless tasks to do which wound up backfiring on them. And then there’s John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore. History has not been especially kind to Lord Dunmore, not should it be. He often acted rashly and without consulting some of the people he should have con...

We hate to say it, but Thomas Jefferson was kind of a nepo baby. Jefferson was part of the Second Virginia Convention, and no doubt he got there honestly, as a man who had lots of property and was well-regarded, even at the tender age of 32. But when Peyton Randolph needed someone to replace him in the Second Continental Congress, he called on Jefferson—who was his cousin. On the positive side, Jefferson acquitted himself well in both the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he represented Albem...

Never let it be said that we can’t find the less-obvious folks in American History. Thomas Bayly was definitely one of them. Bayly was a one-term congressman to the US House of Representatives as part of the 13th Congress (as this is written, we’re in the 118th). By most accounts he wasn’t especially distinguished, but only serving for the one term didn’t mean that he was politically finished. A few years after he left Congress, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was part...

George Washington was a frequent letter writer, something that the creators of the stage play 1776 would poke some fun at. But the documentation he kept plays an important part not only in the history of the American Revolution, but in the more mundane details of life during that time in American History. What’s more, we’re fortunate that so much of the correspondence both to and from Washington remains extant to this day. (Not all of it, as you’ll hear today, but it appears that most of it does...

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about events in Virginia lately, but that doesn’t mean that the folks in Massachusetts weren’t getting things done. It just means that they weren’t making a big deal about it. For the past several weeks, they’d been working on the down-low to make plans in case the British took any action that they might find too intrusive, from simple confiscations to an all-out shooting offense. (Of course that was still on the table; nobody had forgotten the Boston Massacre....

This show isn’t just about the big moments in American history, though we’ve been giving you those. We also take the time to look at some of the smaller things, which may have an effect later on down the line. And today we can mark two of those events. First up is a wedding taking place in Southampton County in Virginia, across the bay from Williamsburg. The bride was an educated woman who carried on that tradition afterward, and the groom was a future mayor of Richmond, the city’s first, in fa...

A quick note on the cover art: this may be the first time I (Claude) happened to match the side banner with the background of the webpage exactly. As we’ve noted in the past, Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke were good friends who worked together to come up with a solution that would get the Colonies and the Crown back into each others’ good graces. Now that we think about it, Franklin was good friends with many people on both sides of the Atlantic, and now we’re wondering if he was just one ...