250 and Counting

Category: American Revolution

  • March 5, 1775

    Cover art for March 5, 1775: Portrait of Joseph Warren by John Singleton Copley, 1765

    Joseph Warren’s life as a Patriot was rather brief (in fact his life overall was relatively short), but it was quite important to the cause. Warren was part of the committee that investigated the Boston Massacre, he sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride (just go with it for now), he wrote a song called “Free America,” which was based on a British melody called “The British Grenadiers”, he fought at Lexington and Concord, and he died at Bunker Hill.

    And he was one of only two men who was asked to speak more than once on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. And this second time was the one that really sold the crowd.

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  • March 4, 1775

    Cover art for March 4, 1775: Photograph of Cuthbert Powell

    The Powell Family was a prominent one in the Loudoun County, Virginia area. It’s about due west of Washington, DC. If you’ve ever been anywhere between Leesburg and the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, you’ve been to Loudoun County.

    The Powells were among the first to fight for Virginia during the American Revolution, and as the Thirteen Colonies broke away and became the United States, they found themselves with a sense of noblesse oblige and took to representing their area in the political arena. Today we celebrate one of that family, a man born on this day in 1775.

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  • March 3, 1775

    Cover art for March 3, 1775: A schooner said to be very similar to the Magdalen.

    The Gunpowder Incident was an event that took place on April 21, 1775, so there won’t be much about it today. But that was the event that pushed Virginia deeply into the movement toward independence, and allowed the Continental Congress to finally consider seriously the idea of formally breaking away from England.

    But it was an event that took place on this day— that barely got any notice at the time—which ultimately led to the Gunpowder Incident.

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  • March 2, 1775

    Cover art for March 2, 1775: a historical marker commemmorating the destruction of tea in Providence, RI

    As we noted yesterday, there were all kinds of abuses of tea going on in the Colonies. It (mostly) started with the Boston Tea Party, but also spread to other areas as well. The Boston Tea Party was notable for being a literal destruction of unsold tea, removing it from the market.

    Other tea parties and actions largely involved tea that had already been purchased in the Colonies, either in the form of boycotts (as in the Edenton Tea Party), or in the form of destroying tea from one’s own pantry as a form of protest, as was the case in today’s episode. As noted during yesterday’s show, the Thirteen Colonies didn’t have enough economic clout to make a meaningful impact; they were meant to be symbolic in nature. But the British took these things seriously enough that their actions demonstrated they were looking for a fight rather than trying to avoid it.

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  • February 28, 1775

    Cover art for February 28, 1775: Drawing of Joseph Galloway.

    Today we meet yet another prominent citizen who thought he had the solution for putting an end to the tension between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain.

    It’s important to note at this point, we think, that these people weren’t delusional; they were genuinely interested in maintaining a good relationship and therefore invested in repairing the damage that had been done. They liked being British citizens, even though a minority percentage of them had emigrated from England (many were born here; others came from different nations). And it’s also worth noting that when it came to separating from the British Empire…well, that sort of thing had never been done before. Never. So creating an entirely new nation was practically inconceivable for some people.

    Unfortunately in the end, while Joseph Galloway’s plan was seriously considered by the Continental Congress, it was turned down, and there was an unfortunate series of events that forced him to leave America forever.

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  • February 27, 1775

    Cover art for February 27, 1775: Portrait of Frederick North, Lord North, by Nathaniel Dance-Holland, ca. 1773-4

    And once again, we have someone (two someones, really) who manage to come up with a plan that will put all this unpleasantness between the Thirteen Colonies and the British Empire to rest, and once again the physical distance between the two threatens the success of those plans.

    What’s more, it turns out that the more popular of the two plans has an almost-hidden ulterior motive…

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  • February 26, 1775

    Cover art for February 26, 1775: "A 38-gun frigate, about 1770" by William Frederick Mitchell

    It’s one thing to hear someone hollering “The British are coming!” and quite another to actually see them arriving in your port. And that’s especially true when they’re also seen confiscating the cannons that you’d hidden upriver.

    This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but there was something different about the Colonists’ response—and it almost touched off the war nearly two months before it actually did.

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  • February 24, 1775

    Cover art for February 24, 1775: "Stand Your Ground," painting by Don Troiani

    The interesting thing about surveillance in the 18th century is that, when you’re dealing with trans-Atlantic distances, the information moves slowly, and errors can be costly.

    We told you not long ago about someone who’d heard about the Minutemen, but had their numbers wrong by a factor of thousands. Fortunately in that case, it was just casual gossip rather than actual spycraft. But today in history, a bit of information about Colonial artillery that was reported to the Provincial Congress in Massachusetts leaked to the British, along with information about the Minutemen’s numbers and level of preparedness. But as we’ll discover in the next couple of days, the British were already taking precautions.

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  • February 17, 1775

    Cover art for February 17, 1775: a map of Albany and the surrounding area in the late 1700s.

    We’ve mentioned in the past that the intent of most of the Intolerable Acts and the Coercive Acts were designed to punish the Massachusetts Province, but it had some effect on the other colonies as well. What’s more, there was a growing worry that, if Parliament could do things like this to Massachusetts, what’s going to stop them from doing it to us?

    To that end, the city of Albany, NY, began making plans just in case war broke out. It was against the law, but their reasoning was that it was better to have a militia and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

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  • February 15, 1775

    Cover art for February 15, 1775: Portrait of Lord Horace Walpole

    Only a few people had figured it out, and it’s not clear whether they were just guessing, but by this point in time both England and the Colonies were locked into a path that would lead inevitably to a shooting war.

    To that end, Parliament approved sending over four thousand soldiers and sailors to the Colonies to help keep them in line. But it wasn’t as simple as that; there were still some people protesting the action, not that anyone listened to them.

    Today we also peek in on someone who’s watching the action and has some thoughts.

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