250 and Counting

Author: Claude Call

  • Virginia Is Open For Business–October 7, 1776

    Cover art for October 7, 1776: an 1845 engraving by Henry Howe, based on prior drawings by an unknown artist, of the second Capitol building at Williamsburg, VA.

    Before I tell you a little bit about the First Virginia General Assembly of 1776 (which I do have to differentiate with a date, so it’s not confused with the First Virginia General Assembly of 1619), I wanted to spend a moment on the show’s cover artwork.

    For some reason it was in putting today’s art together that I noticed the strong similarity between today’s artwork and yesterday’s. Perhaps it’s because they’re both buildings, even though today’s structure is much larger then yesterday’s. That, of course, is because I size it to fit the frame,

    But it had me looking back on other artwork I’ve used (and, in two cases, created somehow) in the past, and of course there’s a lot of similarity among cover art pieces, largely because so many of them are portraits, and there’s a similarity in the way that people posed, and dressed, and so on. I’m sure another part of it is that I’ve done all of them, and so it’s my aesthetic that’s going into the cover art.

    In 645 episodes to date, I’ve only repeated images a few times, and I’m rather proud of that track record. In one case it’s because there really was only one useable image available. There have been maps, and photographs, and stamps, and historical markers, and buttons, and official seals or flags, and documents, and once I used AI just for the laughs, and another time, just a few weeks ago, I did a little photoshop chicanery, again to amuse myself. Each time I tried to note the source of the artwork in the alt text, and the one time I didn’t, I was (rightly) called out for it by the guy who took the photo. He and I had a very pleasant exchange about it and I think it ended positively.

    My point (I do have one, thanks for asking) is that even though this podcast doesn’t have a gigantic following, I do put some thought into stuff like this, and I hope that the efforts that Mike and I put into the show overall are evident.

    I promised to spend some time talking about the First Virginia General Assembly of 1776, so here goes: during the episode I mentioned four big moves that they made in the relatively short period that they were convened. It’s worth noting that at least two of them were heavily influenced, or drafted by Thomas Jefferson. First was the abolition of entail. Entail was a rule that went back to the English feudal rules, which basically prevented the aristocracy from breaking up or selling off estates. Abolishing this rule helped to unravel the foundation of a landed aristocracy.

    The other big one attributed to Jefferson was the Committee of Revisors, of which Jefferson was a member. It was recognized that the old Colonial Codes were based on royal laws which were outdated (like entail), and someone had to go through the entire legal code to redraft it into something that would work for a (small-r) republican system of government. It took them several years to get the job done, but the work began right away.

    It’s possible that the assembly’s abolition of taxes for non-Anglican churches was also Jefferson’s work, and his later “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” was first introduced at this time, but that wasn’t enacted for several years. The other action related to freedom of religion during this period was the suspension of salaries for Anglican ministers, which did major damage to the state-based church system. (Remember, compulsory separation of church and state was still several years in the future.)

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  • Deane Gets Busy–October 6, 1776

    Cover art for October 6, 1776: Silas Deane House in Wethersfield, Connecticut. via Library of Congress.

    We’ve talked so much about Silas Deane that I don’t have much new to share in this space, so I’ll tell you a little about his house.

    The house in today’s cover art was completed in 1769. It’s located in Wethersfield, Connecticut. The facade is asymmetrical because there was a porch at one time.

    Deane designed the house specifically to impress people and to project an image of power. It has two parlors: one for entertaining and one for family dining, and the kitchen is oversized specifically to allow for preparation of larger meals when there were guests.

    Elizabeth Deane entertained important people when Silas was away for one reason or another, whether it was performing his Congressional duties or engaging in diplomatic missions overseas, as he was during this episode. Among those VIPs would be John Adams and George Washington, on separate occasions. Elizabeth died in 1777, while Silas was still in Paris.

    After Deane’s death overseas in 1789, house and possessions were sold to satisfy his creditors. It passed through many different owners until 1874, when the Fenn family took it over. Then in 1938 they bequeathed the house to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and it’s been a historic site for visitors since then.

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  • A Fort Is Abandoned–October 5, 1776

    Cover art for October 5, 1776: Historical Marker denoting the former site of Bergen Neck Fort/Fort Delancey. Via Historical Marker Database.

    The cover art for today’s episode is the historical marker for Bergen Neck Fort, in Bayonne, New Jersey.

    As someone who was born and raised on the other side of the East River, it’s supposed to be my duty to bust on New Jersey and say something like “there’s nothing interesting going on in Bayonne” and I’d mostly be right, but I will note that Mercer Park, just a hair under a mile from this spot, is rather nice.

    I did spend a few years living in northern New Jersey, just a stone’s throw from what was then called The Meadowlands (and still is, if you’re a die-hard), and it’s really not a bad place to live. I had a decent sight-line to the Manhattan skyline, but my neighborhood had a very suburban feel to it. The town I lived in was practically Whoville during Christmas season.

    Bergen County was also home to many people who lost their lives to the attacks on the World Trade Center, since it was just across the Hudson River, so there are numerous memorials in the area. Lyndhurst, NJ (for example), which is mostly famous for a bunch of exterior scenes from The Sopranos, has one that’s made from stones reclaimed from the rubble. I moved away from the area just a couple of weeks before September 11, but I kept in touch and many people in the area were deeply affected.

    And now that I think about it, Bayonne—which is literally within sight of the former WTC buildings and the Statue of Liberty— has a truly moving memorial commonly called “The Teardrop”, which was a gift to the United States by a Russian sculptor named Zurab Tserteli. At 100 feet high, it can actually be seen from the other side of the river as well. So don’t go to Bayonne to see Bergen Neck Fort, since there’s nothing there. But if you do go, head to Harbor View Park.

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    And please don’t tell anyone I have a soft spot for northern New Jersey; I could lose my NY cred for that.

  • Brother, Can You Spare $5 Million?–October 4, 1776

    Cover art for October 4, 1776: Continental Currency Dollar Coin, 1776. via Professional Coin Grading Service.

    War bonds have been a thing since literally the beginning of the country.

    In this particular case, Britain had spent a few years taking as much hard currency (that is, gold and silver) from America as they could, which left us in a pretty bad state when it came to having something to back our money.

    The coin used for today’s cover art was actually a Continental Dollar, which was designed by Ben Franklin. Coin dies at that time were hand-punched, which means that because the dies only had so much lifespan to them, a limited number (a few thousand) could be made but the next run would be slightly different from the previous one. There are records of some coins being misspelled, such as this one. Another die has “currency” misspelled as “currencey”.

    The Continental Dollar coin also had a little bit of a rebus pun on it. The word “FUGIO” is Latin for “I fly”, referring to the sun and the sundial. Then underneath the sundial is the English phrase “MIND YOUR BUSINESS”. Put it all together and you get, “Time flies, so mind your business.”

    Most coins at that time were made of pewter; only about a hundred survive to this day, even though thousands were made. The prevailing theory for this is that most of them were melted down because of wartime demands for the metal.

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  • The New Jersey Seal–October 3, 1776

    Cover art for October 3, 1776: The original Great Seal of New Jersey, Illustration created in 1876 by Henry Mitchell for the book State Arms of the Union.

    The New Jersey Seal looks like a complicated and maybe convoluted project on its surface, but when you take a closer look, it becomes clear that in fact a lot of thought went into it and many of the individual pieces do tie together.

    New Jersey statutes are pretty specific about the Great Seal. Title 52, §2-1 reads:

    The great seal of this state shall be engraved on silver, which shall be round, of two and a half inches in diameter and three-eighths of an inch thick; the arms shall be three ploughs in an escutcheon, azure; supporters, Liberty and Ceres. The Goddess Liberty to carry in her dexter hand a pole, proper, surmounted by a cap gules, with band azure at the bottom, displaying on the band six stars, argent; tresses falling on shoulders, proper; head bearing over all a chaplet of laurel leaves, vert; overdress, tenne; underskirt, argent; feet sandaled, standing on scroll. Ceres: Same as Liberty, save overdress, gules; holding in left hand a cornucopia, or, bearing apples, plums and grapes surrounded by leaves, all proper; head bearing over all a chaplet of wheat spears, vert. Shield surmounted by sovereign’s helmet, six bars, or; wreath and mantling, argent and azure. Crest: A horse’s head, proper. Underneath the shield and supporting the goddesses, a scroll azure, bordered with tenne, in three waves or folds; on the upper folds the words “Liberty and Prosperity”; on the under fold in Arabic numerals, the figures “1776”. These words to be engraved round the arms, viz., “The Great Seal of the State of New Jersey”.

    That actually gives us the modern-day (that is, the 1928 design) version of the New Jersey Seal, which can be seen at right here. The lines have been simplified and the colors made more vibrant. In 1965 the colors were specifically defined by law using the Cable color system, with the blue as Cable Number 70087 and the buff as Cable Number 65015, and their hexidecimal equivalents being #2484C6 and #E1B584, respectively.

    That there’s a disembodied horse’s head in the New Jersey Seal makes it way too easy for me to do a cheap joke, so I’m going to lampshade the whole thing by making a point of not doing one, and telling you about it here.

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  • Jefferson Goes Home–October 2, 1776

    Cover art for October 2, 1776: "Thomas Jefferson, 1776" by Charles Willson Peale. via Independence National Historical Park.

    Thomas Jefferson, after many months in Philadelphia, finally got to return home today.

    One of the things that puzzled me early on in this podcasting project was the relative fluidity of the membership of the Continental Congress. People came in, people went out, and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. There didn’t appear to be a set schedule to it, and there were often periods in which a colony had nine delegates and other times when it had none. (Or that time when Georgia had only one delegate, and he wouldn’t vote because his views didn’t necessarily reflect those of his constituents. Or that other time when New York’s delegates abstained from anything involving Independence because they’d been directed not to vote in favor.)

    But as time went on it began to dawn on me that these weren’t elected officials in the sense that we think of them; they were appointed by their governments to serve, and at heart they were citizens who were performing a duty, and then returned to whatever they ordinarily did. In fact, this is one of the reasons why many states today impose term limits: politics wasn’t a career for these people; they’d go in, do their thing and then go home and do something else, and let another person take their place.

    And yes, many of the members of Congress, such as Thomas Jefferson, moved on to other political positions but many others returned to their previous profession (e.g., law) but perhaps at a higher level because they’d been in Congress.

    In retrospect, it wasn’t a terrible system, nor was it a bad philosophy.

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  • Re-Mastering the Army–October 1, 1776

    Cover art for October 1, 1776: Portrait of Thomas Mifflin by Charles Willson Peale, ca. 1783-4. via Independence Hational Historical Park.

    Thomas Mifflin was the Continental Army’s first Quartermaster General, and he was replaced by someone who just couldn’t get the job done, so he was asked to return to the position. He was good at the Quartermaster duties, but he really preferred to be on the front lines.

    Oddly enough, though, when the soldiers at Valley Forge went through all their hardships, it was Mifflin who got the blame for it, and Congress had to appropriate a lot of money to settle the complaints. He still managed to keep the position, but the writing was on the wall and he resigned his commission a few months later.

    Mifflin wasn’t done with public service, though. He became a delegate to the Congress and even spent some time as its President. And once Pennsylvania revamped its Constitution to include a genuine Governor position, as the last President of Pennsylvania he became the state’s first Governor, from 1790 to December 1799. He returned to the State Legislature but died a few weeks later.

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  • Washington’s Thoughts of Home–September 30, 1776

    Cover art for September 30, 1776: "West Front of Mount Vernon," created circa 1787–1792 and attributed to artist Edward Savage. via Mount Vernon Ladies' Organization.

    Mount Vernon, the mansion along the Potomac River in which George Washington lived, was originally built by his father when George was two years old. At that time, however, it was a rather modest house.

    Washington’s half-brother Lance lived in the house until his death in 1752. After a year or two, George leased out the property, but he did not own it outright until 1761. He did, however, expand the house during the 1750s. In 1774 he made more additions, until it looked like the building we can see and visit today.

    Washington’s original intent was that the exterior of the building be symmetrical along its center line, which was a classical look for buildings.

    (Fun Fact: the college I attended for my undergrad coursework, Adelphi University, was also initially designed to have symmetrical buildings. In fact, the builders added a nonfunctioning chimney to the gymnasium building to ensure symmetry. They’ve since added to the building so the symmetry is gone, but the twin stacks remain.)

    At any rate, the building is not symmetrical because of design choices on the inside, so a couple of windows are “out of place” and the main entry door isn’t aligned with the cupola. Clearly Washington was a pragmatic guy when it came to these things. Symmetry is nice, but not strictly necessary.

    Nowadays the property is run by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, who bought the house from John Augustine Washington III for the sum of $200,000 in 1858, along with about 200 acres of the surrounding land. Over the years they’ve done lots of restoration work but other than the addition of electricity in 1917, they’ve made no significant changes to the house.

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  • John Adams, Correspondent–September 29, 1776

    Cover art for September 29, 1776: portrait of John Adams by John Trumbull, 1793. via White House Historical Association.

    When you only have two minutes to get the point across, you sometimes lose some of the nuances. This is a rundown of the second letter discussed today:

    Abigail Adams penned a poignant letter to her husband, John Adams, who was still serving in the Continental Congress but hoping to get home as soon as his replacement arrived.

    This correspondence highlights the immense psychological and economic strain experienced by those on the home front during the American Revolutionary War.


    Abigail’s primary anxiety centered on the military situation in New York. She expressed deep frustration over conflicting reports regarding casualties and prisoners, troubled by rumors of colonial regiments refusing orders or behaving poorly under pressure. This operational uncertainty coupled with the immediate hardships in Massachusetts painted a grim picture of the war effort.

    Furthermore, Abigail criticized a growing “venal spirit” within the local communities. She observed that patriotism alone was no longer enough to motivate enlistment; instead, towns were forced to offer increasingly high bounties to secure short-term military commitments. The relentless military drafts heavily strained Massachusetts towns as they struggled to meet their quotas, forcing citizens to pay exorbitant costs to hire replacement soldiers.

    On a domestic front, Abigail balanced these structural societal collapses with immediate family pressures. Rumors of an enemy fleet in the bay magnified her isolation as she managed the family household and farm entirely on her own. This letter serves as a vital historical record of the domestic sacrifices that sustained the revolution, an account that John Adams later acknowledged receiving in his response on October 8, 1776 (which we’re not likely to discuss then).

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  • Pennsylvania Ratifies A New Constitution–September 28, 1776

    Cover art for September 28, 1776: first page of the original Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.

    As I mentioned a few days ago, when Pennsylvania drafted its constitution and then voted on it, not everybody involved was on board with the idea.

    In June 1776, The Pennsylvania Provincial Conference resolved “that the present Assembly of the Colony is ‘not competent to the exigencies of affairs’ and that a Provincial Convention ought to be called for inaugurating a form of Colonial government, in compliance with the recommendation of Congress”. In short, We gotta move on this, since Independence is around the corner.

    So a state convention was called, which met for the first time on July 15, 1776. They determined that whatever government they came up with would supersede whatever was in place at the time of ratification. Then they established a Council of Safety which would handle things in the interim. So the Council of Safety was designed specifically to be obsolete once a Constitution was in place. The change of government, was, however, opposed by many of the commonwealth’s citizens: John Dickinson, James Wilson, Robert Morris, and Frederick Muhlenberg, among others.

    The Constitutional Convention elected Benjamin Franklin as their president, along with Colonel George Ross, vice-president, John Morris, secretary, and Jacob Garrigues, assistant-secretary. Given this particular group of men, it’s no surprise that the new Constitution borrowed pretty heavily from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, with an underlying fear of an aristocracy and words such as “liberty” and “the people’s government.” Giving so much power to a lower class and limiting the power of the upper reaches of government clearly reflects this fear.

    This constitution was in use until 1790, when another convention refined a few items and instituted a bicameral legislature. There have been a few more updates, but the Pennsylvania Constititution has essentially been the same since 1968.

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