250 and Counting

Category: Revolutionary War Strategy

  • April 15, 1775: The Short Life of Fort Pownall

    Cover art for April 15, 1775: from "History of the city of Belfast in the state of Maine, From its first settlement in 1770 to 1875." by Joseph Williamson, 1913.

    In retrospect, we feel like we may be picking on this historic site a little bit. In fact, the park surrounding the ruins of Fort Pownall are quite nice for hiking, biking, picnics and, as we mentioned, there are historical markers all over the place so you do get a sense of how important this particular site was.

    At any rate, on April 5 we told you about a detachment sent to the fort to disarm the place; today was the day that they arrived and succeeded, because even if spies knew about it (and they almost certainly did), word was not going to get to the fort in time to prevent what was going to happen.

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    N.B. for those of you who download the episodes as they come out, apparently the audio didn’t attach to this post correctly. Our apologies. It should be in your feed now.

  • 250 and Counting: January 6, 1775

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    Cover art for January 6, 1775: A map of the New York area from that year

    The impression that most people have of John Adams, it seems, comes from one of two places. It’s either William Daniels’ portrayal of him in the play and film 1776 (and we’re big fans of that particular bit of cinema), or it’s Paul Giamatti’s portrayal in the seven-part miniseries on cable TV. Both stories had their charms, and both took some liberties with the facts. (Oddly, both of them showed Benjamin Franklin being carried in to the Second Continental Congress, but that didn’t happen until the Constitutional Conventions eleven years later.) The bottom line is that Adams was a complex man and a very smart one who had the ability to see the bigger picture, as they say.

    George Washington was also a well-rounded person, as you no doubt discovered in the January 1 episode. Early in 1775 Washington wore multiple hats. He was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, he was responsible for training militiamen in Virginia, and he was unofficially the Commander-in-Chief of the army, except there wasn’t one quite yet.

    Today we’re looking at some correspondence from Adams to Washington, and we’ll learn in a future episode just how seriously Washington took his warnings.