250 and Counting

Category: US History

  • Considering North Carolina–November 24, 1775

    Cover art for November 24, 1775: Crop of a map by Henry Mouzon of the northeastern portion of North Carolina in 1775. via Library of Congress Maps website.

    Two days ago, Mike had a case of the Martian Flu or something, so I needed to record in his place. today he sounds as good as ever. Since I could never bounce back from anything affecting my voice that quickly, I think it’s necessary to hurl invective his way. But I won’t ’cause I’m classy.

    Where were we? Oh yeah. One of the interesting things about the American Revolution is that even though there were major, busy ports up and down the coast, only a few of them captured Britain’s attention. Boston MA and Portsmouth NH caught a lot of grief. New York wasn’t much of a shipping powerhouse yet. New Jersey, ditto. And most of the Jersey coast wasn’t conducive to shipping anyway. But Delaware and Maryland had some deep-water ports but were largely overlooked during the war. Virginia caught a little bit, Georgia was ignored, South Carolina…well, we’ve already talked about that quite a bit, haven’t we?

    But North Carolina, which had bays and sounds protected by barrier islands, had a great deal of attractive waterways, but it seemed like nobody really thought about it, until today. That’s when the Second Continental Congress decided that there were too many governments replacing the British one originally there, and therefore everyone needed to get their boats steered in the same direction, you should excuse the expression.

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  • A Day of Thanksgiving–November 23, 1775

    Cover art for November 23, 1775: detail of the proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving as published in the New-England Chronicle (Cambridge, Massachusetts) on November 16, 1775.

    November 23, 1775 was at least the fifth time that a day of Thanksgiving was declared in North America. It might be the sixth, but the documentation for one of them is kind of thin,

    It might be the first Thanksgiving held on a Thursday, but again it’s tough to know for sure. It’s certainly the third held in New England.

    This is my first Thanksgiving in a few years in which I’m not the person cooking the meal, so I’m a little bit at loose ends this weekend; usually I’m already in pre-game mode. But I get to do Christmas, so I’ll save Family Madness Preparation for that week instead.

    If you’re the one preparing for Thanksgiving, don’t forget to take a moment now and then to relax a bit and take in the day.

    And the parade, of course. Watch the parade. And a couple of episodes of The West Wing (you know the ones, if you’re a fan like Mike and I are).

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  • George Kremer–November 21, 1775

    Cover art for November 21, 1775: a hand-colored engraving depicting George Kremer reading a journal headlined "Reform". It's thought to be a sarcastic image. Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives, accession number 2012.052.001

    While George Kremer is depicted in today’s artwork as a sophisticated “man of the people”, it’s thought that the artwork was meant to be sarcastic, since Kremer’s colleagues didn’t respect him very much, thinking he was a kind of bumpkin back-bencher.

    And indeed, George Kremer’s political legacy, at both the state and Congressional level, is fairly thin, with the exception of the allegations he made against Henry Clay. At that time, if there was no clear majority winner of the presidential election, the House of Representatives chose the winner. Clay backed John Quincy Adams, who came in second to Andrew Jackson in the vote count. When Adams won and Clay became Secretary of State, that got a few people suspicious.

    It’s actually not unlike what was thought to have happened in the 1970s when Richard Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford became President and then pardoned Nixon. When Ford became Vice President, the Watergate scandal was already brewing, so it was thought that perhaps Ford cut a deal with Nixon: “appoint me VP, and if you resign I’ll pardon you.” This probably didn’t happen, however, since Congressional leaders gave Nixon almost no choice in the matter.

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  • The 1st Canadian Regiment–November 20, 2025

    Cover art for November 20, 1775: Portrait of James Livingston by Archibald Robertson, c. 1795.

    Robert Livingston now enters the picture in the broad tapestry of the American Revolution.

    Given that the cover art today comes from an image from twenty years after the war; we can assume that he was quite young during the war, plus he held up pretty well in the interim.

    At any rate, this isn’t the last we’ll hear from Robert Livingston; we’ll be back to visit him next month.

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  • The Siege of Ninety Six–November 19, 1775

    Cover art for November 19, 1775: memorial plaque commemorating the Siege of Ninety-Six.

    The Siege of Ninety-Six is considered to be the first land battle of the Revolution in the South. And believe it or not, we might be talking about this town again in fairly short order.

    This past Saturday, Governor McMaster officially proclaimed today through Thursday the 250th Anniversary of the battle. And while this battle lasted three days before mutual cessation of hostilities, it was just the beginning of a series of skirmishes between the two factions for for about six years.

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  • SC Troops Get Organized–November 18, 1775

    Cover art for November 18, 1775: the 2nd Couth Carolina Regiment.

    In retrospect, it appears that most of the action in the early days of the Revolution took place in Massachusetts and South Carolina.

    What was so important about South Carolina? New York wasn’t a big city yet, nor was it strategically important (yet). Baltimore was a small-time port at the time; so was Norfolk. Georgia was deeply divided. North Carolina and New Hampshire didn’t have any strategic advantage. Pennsylvania was inland. Neither Delaware nor New Jersey nor Connecticut were especially important yet. Rhode Island saw some action but not as much as the others.

    But Charleston was a huge port city, as was Boston. The Charleston Bay was ideal for moving materials in and out of the area, which made it fiscally and strategically important.

    The South Carolina Provincial Congress figured this out, and also realized that they had about thirteen militia groups moving in about thirteen different directions. It was time to get everyone moving in the same direction.

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  • The Prize Court Committee–November 17, 1775

    Cover art for November 17, 1775: a British prize court from World War I. From The Times History of The War (1914). Artist unknown.

    A Prize Court is a formal organization dedicated to the disposition of items captured from an enemy.

    Because the Colonies were more or less building it all from the ground up, much of what they adopted came directly from the British. As a result the Prize Court and its structure is a British institution that made its way over here. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world, though in the early 20th Century an International Prize Court was proposed and established, but it was never ratified or implemented.

    So it’s still just the British, which maintains a formal court, and the United States, which largely followed the original committee recommendation by largely leaving it up to the individual states.

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  • Mister Knox Goes to Ticonderoga–November 16, 1775

    Cover art for November 16, 1775: Portrait of Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart, 1806

    It’s a little bit unfair using this portrait to represent Henry Knox, because it was painted many years after his involvement in the Revolution, which began when Knox was 25 years old. As it turns out, this painting is from 1806, the year Knox died.

    Henry Knox ran a bookstore in Boston as a young man, and he was on-hand for the carnage of the Boston Massacre in 1770. So by the time the war officially broke out, Knox was fully radicalized and ready for action. Because of his actions at Ticonderoga, he rose quickly through the ranks and became the Chief Artillery Officer of the Continental Army, and later the Secretary of War under George Washington, though at that point he was mostly dealing with Indian affairs.

    Fort Knox in Kentucky is named after him, but we’re talking about the military installation, not the national depository which is practically next door.

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  • Dr. James Carnahan–November 15, 1775

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    Cover art for November 15, 1775: Undated photo of Rev. James Carnahan, via findagrave.com.

    As noted during the episode, James Carnahan was the president of what was later known as Princeton University, the ninth man to hold that title since the school’s founding nearly 90 years earlier.

    Carnahan held that position for over 30 years, making him the longest tenured president of that school to that date, a record that remains to this day.

    Carnahan was buried in the University President’s Plot at Princeton Cemetery. Curiously, he specified in his will that none of his lectures, manuscripts or other writings be published, even though he was held in high esteem as a writer. This may account for his relative obscurity despite his enormous tenure.

  • The Birth of the Black Loyalists–November 14, 1775

    Cover art for November 14, 1775: art depicting a member of Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. Original artist is unknown but this image is frequently used to represent those soldiers.

    Lord Dunmore issued his Proclamation just a week earlier, but the response was much stronger than anticipated, probably because—who knew!—people hate being slaves.

    While the Proclamation only applied to the Virginia colony, because Dunmore had no authority conferred upon him anywhere else, a huge number of slaves and otherwise indentured servants from throughout the thirteen colonies fled to the British side of the lines.

    (We have to say “throughout” because slavery was a thing in the north at this point; it just wasn’t nearly as common as in the south.)

    This led to thousands of “American” blacks living ex-patriate lives throughout the British Empire after the Revolution.

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