250 and Counting

Category: American Revolution

  • Here Come The Privateers–March 23, 1776

    Cover art for March 23, 1776: "A View of His Majesty's Brigg Observer Engaging the American Privateer Ship Jack, by British artist Robert Dodd. Hand-colored aquatint, 1784. The battle itself took place two years earlier.

    When you first hear the word “Privateers” and its definition, your mind probably goes to your basic concept of a pirate: someone who attacks a ship and plunders its hold for anything valuable. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but there’s still a difference.

    A privateer is essentially a pirate who’s working on the right side of the law. Privateers are given commissions through a document called a Letter of Marque, which authorizes a vessel to engage with any ship they consider unfriendly. This wasn’t unique to America; privateering was done all over the world. But in our case, it was a response to the fact that America was sorely out-gunned by the British and needed whatever help they could get. And early privateers had a high success rate, until the British realized that privateers were in use at all.

    One of our most famous privateers is John Paul Jones, who volunteered his services and, rather than using his ship to raid British vessels near America, did most of his work near the English coast. He would raid towns, attack vessels and send the Congress their share of the spoils.

    So the bottom line when it comes to the difference: permission. Privateers and pirates did much the same thing, except privateers had consent.

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  • William Tryon Isn’t Popular–March 22, 1776

    Cover art for March 22, 1776: "Governor Tryon and the Regulators." Alexander Bobbett's 1877 line engraving based on an earlier illustration by the prominent American artist Felix Octavius Carr Darley (F.O.C. Darley) in 1876.

    To be perfectly clear, William Tryon was never popular on this side of the pond.

    When he was appointed Lieutenant Governor in North Carolina in 1764, he wasn’t able to move into the usual housing for a man of that title because the previous inhabitant refused to move out.

    When the Stamp Act was enacted in 1765, there was a great deal of opposition in North Carolina, so he refused to allow meetings of the Assembly in order to prevent them from voting for a resolution formally opposing it.

    When he was appointed Royal Governor, he made plans for an elaborate new Governor’s Mansion that cost twice the amount of money allotted for it. Then he hired laborers from Philadelphia to construct it, saying that North Carolinians didn’t have the necessary skills.

    The 1771 Regulator Uprising that Mike talks about in today’s episode was the last straw for William Tryon in North Carolina, and many historians view it as the first sign that a true revolution was coming. Within a month of that event, he left North Carolina and headed for New York, where things, as you’ll hear, didn’t go any better.

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  • Meet The New Boss–March 20, 1776

    Cover art for March 20, 1776: portrait of Nathaniel Greene "painted from memory" by John Trumbull, 1792. via Yale University Art Gallery.

    While preparing to depart Boston for New York, George Washington appointed Nathaniel Greene to run things for awhile until everything was back in order.

    Fortunately for both Greene and Washington, matters straightened out rather quickly, because Greene was called to join Washington just a few weeks later.

    Nathaniel Greene was tasked with fortifying Brooklyn while Washington prepared to defend Manhattan. As a military leader, Greene had a bit of a mixed record, but more often than not it appears that he was the victim of poor timing when things didn’t go well for him.

    Later on in the war, he took on the position of Quartermaster General, which on its surface looks like a demotion, but Washington still considered him “inner circle” and Greene would sit in on War Council meetings, even though he was considered a staff officer.

    Later on, when things started looking gloomy in South Carolina and Georgia, Nathaniel Greene was put in charge of the Southern Department of the Continental Army, where he embarked on a campaign of guerilla warfare rather than pitched battles. His unconventional approach wasn’t always successful, but if the British won a battle it was at a much greater cost than it should have been.

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  • Reviewing Boston–March 18, 1776

    Cover art for March 18, ,1776: Statue of Artemas Ward at Ward Circle in Washington, DC. Photo by Wikipedia user GarrisonLeMasters, 2008.

    In the aftermath of the siege of Boston, it was incumbent upon George Washington and his men to re-enter the city and take stock of its condition.

    Mike brings up Artemas Ward in today’s episode, and I’m pretty sure that was the first time his name has come up in the course of this podcast. Ward was a major general during the Revolutionary War, among others, and an effective political leader when he wasn’t being a soldier. It was Ward who sounded the alarm on Bunker Hill, and who took command of the New England area once Washington led most of the troops down to New York City. ‘

    The statue in today’s cover art can be found in the center of a traffic circle in Washington, DC, where Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues cross one another. Ward’s great-grandson donated four million dollars to Harvard on the condition that they build a statue of Artamis, and maintain his Shrewsbury home. Harvard apparently chose to purchase a statue but did not provide enough money to provide the general with a horse. Oddly enough, because it’s a traffic circle and therefore has no obvious way for a pedestrian to get to the center (i.e., no crosswalk), it’s quite difficult to get close enough to the pedestal to read the inscription:

    ARTEMAS WARD
    1727–1800
    SON OF MASSACHUSETTS
    GRADUATE OF HARVARD COLLEGE
    JUDGE AND LEGISLATOR
    DELEGATE 1780–1781 TO THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
    SOLDIER OF THREE WARS
    FIRST COMMANDER OF THE PATRIOT FORCES

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  • The Siege Ends–March 17, 1776

    Cover art for March 17, 1776: The first Congressional Gold Medal, given to George Washington in 1790 for his first victory of the war in Boston. 1776 Washington Before Boston Comitia Americana Second Restrike (Baker-48G) Image credit to Heritage Auctions

    It’s been 333 days since Lexington and Concord, when the British were forced to retreat to Boston and were bottled up there by Colonial forces.

    It’s been a week since the British said “enough” and decided to effect their departure from the city as soon as the weather cooperated.

    But today, the day finally came.

    It took about five hours to launch over a hundred ships, carrying thousands of soldiers, women and children from the city.

    It was Washington’s first major win and the last time the British did anything of importance in New England. The war began to move south, to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Virginia and the Carolinas also had their share of action, as we’ll see in the coming months.

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  • Georgia Gets In The Game–March 15, 1776

    Cover art for March 15, 1776: Archibald Bulloch circa 1775. Detail from painting by Henry Benbridge. via Wikimedia Commons.

    Georgia delegates to the Second Continental Congress numbered exactly one until around this time. That would be Dr. Lyman Hall, who didn’t believe it was ethical for him to represent the entire colony when he knew that feelings were largely divided back home.

    Then came the Battle of the Rice Boats, on March 2 and 3. After that, it seems, things moved very quickly for Georgians: the Royal Governor, who’d been in and out of custody, fled to a nearby warship, the Provincial Congress was left in charge, and they immediately began making plans to raise a more formal army than the militia that fought in the Battle of the Rice Boats, and Georgia delegates were sent to the Continental Congress with actual instructions.

    In addition, pieces were put in place to write a constitution for Georgia, a good first step toward the document that was created later in the year and adopted the following February.

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  • Congress Makes A Tough Call–March 14, 1776

    Cover art for March 14, 1776: Portrait of John Hancock (detail) by John Singleton Copley, ca. 1765.

    There’s a ninth season episode of The Simpsons called “Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming” in which Bart’s nemesis, Sideshow Bob, steals a nuclear bomb and threatens to detonate it unless the town disables all of its television broadcasts. He delivers this ultimatum via a Jumbotron screen. Before ending the transmission, he says, “By the way, I’m aware of the irony of appearing on TV in order to decry it…so don’t bother pointing that out.”

    And to a certain extent, that’s what happened today in 1776 as well. The Colonies were protesting British oppression, but in order to do that successfully, they had to briefly resort to British tactics.

    It’s an unfortunate truism that the “good” side often has to resort to the “bad” side’s means of doing things to achieve an objective. On the other hand, the difference between the “good” and the “bad” side is that the “good” side is willing to undo the thing they did.

    I cited The Simpsons above, but I’m sure you could come up with your own specific television episodes in which this is what happens. (I’m sure you can because another one just came to mind, but I’m not sharing it.)

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  • Preparing To Take Back Boston–March 13, 1776

    Cover art for March 13, 1776: George Washington's General Orders for this day. via Library of Congress/National Archives.

    First: let me apologize for the slight change in sound quality for today’s episode. I’m not in my usual recording space and I’m not especially happy with the equipment I brought. At worst you’ll have to put up with it just one more time.

    Next: George Washington was a gentleman through and through, so the fact that his general orders sometimes focused on the Continental soldier behavior shouldn’t be a surprise. In today’s episode he concerns himself specifically with that, but for two reasons. One is for the health and safety of the troops, but the other is because the Bostonians have been through enough, and he doesn’t want the Continental Army–the people supposedly on their side–to look like villains.

    In the meantime he’s already standing down a big chunk of soldiers and sending them to New York, where the next big battle is going to be, he thinks. (Again, he’s right, but he didn’t realize it at the time.)

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  • Baltimore Celebrates Women–March 12, 1776

    Cover art for March 12, 1776: "First Blow For Liberty," by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, 1858. I know it's a year later, but this image is meant to depict ordinary citizens as part of the battles at Lexington and Concord.

    Of course it’s coincidental, but it’s kind of cool that we’re able to bring you this episode during Women’s History Month and the same week as International Women’s Day.

    Believe it or not, Mike and I have struggled with the fact that there’s very little representation of anyone from this era who isn’t a white male. We’ve managed to touch on a few women and African-Americans from time to time, but after 435 episodes (including today) we’re probably still in the single-digit range.

    Mike doesn’t concentrate very much on the newspaper notice that appeared in Baltimore this day; he gives us a little perspective on some of the ripples created by events we’ve talked about so far. Sometimes the women’s history angle comes from the things that are mundane in print, but vital to the success of the war.

    It doesn’t make up for the lack of representation, but we hope it helps.

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  • Getting Ready To Move–March 11, 1776

    Cover art for March 11, 1776: "The Evacuation of Boston". Engraving by Frederick Stuart, based on a drawing by Lambert Hollis.

    The focus today up in Cambridge, while waiting for the British to hightail it out of Boston, was getting the men ready to move to New York, and putting together Washington’s personal guard.

    Washington didn’t really need a personal guard in Cambridge, at least not much of one, because he was in the driver’s seat while he was there. The British were bottled up, and he was the stopper. But to move to New York and then defend that territory? Well, that was another project entirely. New York had more access points, more deepwater harbor, and more territory overall to defend. This wasn’t like keeping the British locked up on the peninsula that was the entirety of Boston. And while Washington probably considered it a bit of vanity at first (that’s a guess on my part) to even have a group of men dedicated to being “Washington’s personal guard”, he likely began to understand the inevitability of needing the guard as the Continental Army’s Commander-in-Chief.

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