250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • The Delaware Who Came To Congress–December 16, 1775

    Cover art for December 16, 1775: Historical Marker on Ohio Highway 93, just south of US 36, commemorating Chief White Eyes' founding of a Delaware Tribe-based town not far from this place. Image via remarkableohio.org.
    Historical Marker on Ohio Highway 93, just south of US 36, commemorating Chief White Eyes’ founding of a Delaware Tribe-based town not far from this place. Image via remarkableohio.org.

    I rather dislike using historical markers back-to-back for the cover art, but there are no images of Chief White Eyes, and I’d about run out of images of Great Bridge yesterday, so here we are.

    Also—and I admit I only know this because there’s a town not far from where I grew up with this name—I’m pretty sure that Mike mispronounced the word “Sachem,” though I suppose it’s possible that there’s a West Coast variant. But he’s a nice guy so we’re letting it slide. Especially since I made him re-record when he mispronounced “Narragansett” the other day.

    Yes, I am in a mood. Why do you ask?

    Koquethagechton was the given name of Chief White Eyes. and you may see it spelled differently elsewhere. The Lenape did not have a standardized written language, so everyone was making do with the Roman alphabet and doing their best to transliterate.

    As Mike notes during the episode, he later became a guide for an expedition in the Ohio Territory. He died during that trip, reportedly from smallpox, but questions have been raised regarding whether this actually happened. After his death, the Americans had no interest in a territory under Lenape control, and whatever deal he’d worked out completely unraveled.

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  • Colonel Woodford’s View–December 15, 1775

    Cover art for December 15, 1775: Historical marker commemorating the Battle of Great Bridge.
    Historical marker commemorating the Battle of Great Bridge.

    We’ve done several episodes about the Battle of Great Bridge, and there’s a reason for that. Bunker Hill gets all the press, but remember we LOST that battle.

    Great Bridge was the first real Patriot victory, it was the first major battle in Virginia, and therefore it poked the Virginia Convention into adopting the first public declaration expressing a spirit of independence.

    Also of note is that, according to the Great Bridge Battlefield Museum, the last Patriot to retreat before the battle began in earnest was named Billy Flora, a free black man. He came under heavy fire but he managed to remove a plank from near the end of the bridge, thus slowing the British advance.

    The shorter version of all this is that Great Bridge gave us the possibility of actually winning this thing. And oddly enough, Independence still really wasn’t on the table.

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  • Credit Where Credit Is Due

    This is a peek behind the curtain, as the expression goes.

    Mike Messner and I (Claude Call) share the duties of putting this podcast together. Mike did a lot of the calendar research (in fact, he did nearly all of it). I got a bunch of the technical stuff in place before the show launched.

    For the episodes themselves, he and I usually take turns researching, writing and recording the episodes. At that point, everything goes into my hands.

    I edit the episode if necessary (rare), check it for any weird glitches, and run it through some software to even the volume out across the episode. I also write all the show notes and put together the artwork that appears alongside each episode.

    More often than not, the artwork is materials that can be found in the public domain, which is pretty easy when you’re looking for images from 250 years ago. But for our July 2nd episode, I failed to do that.

    The cover art for that episode (assuming you didn’t click the link and look) was a closeup photo of a button created by Aaron M. Peasley. The photo came from a web-based article about the creation of the emblem that appears on the US Marine Corps’ uniform buttons written by 2nd Lt. Kevin Rosentreter, and if you think it’s a niche topic…well, you’re correct in that respect.

    On the other hand, if you think it’s a boring topic, you’d be sorely mistaken. Lt. Rosentreter has woven a fascinating tale which is also comprehensively sourced. What’s more, he took several of the photos of the buttons seen in the article, including the one I used.

    When he called it to our attention through a comment at our sister webpage (Acroasismedia.org), I did reply to him that I was the person to blame, plus I corrected the original post to give him credit. I’m also apologizing to him here publicly and I’ll be sending him an email shortly after I post this, just in case he’s written us off entirely.

    As I said to Lt. Rosentreter at the Acroasis site, the rule in the military is that you can delegate authority but you can’t delegate responsiblity. The responsibility for this lies entirely with me, and I hope you’ll see better effort in the future to credit materials appropriately.

  • Thomas Cochrane–December 14, 1775

    Engraving of Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald. Original painting by James Ramsay, engraving by John Cook, published 1866.

    Thomas Cochrane had quite the colorful, storied life, and it’s too bad that we can only cram so much into a twenty-minute podcast episode.

    For instance, it’s entirely possible that he was involved in a stock fraud scheme based on false rumors of Napoleon’s death. Fortunately for him, he was elected back into the House of Commons about a month after his conviction. Even today, his guilt is in question by historians.

    Cochrane also spent several years serving in the Chilean Navy and spent time as that nation’s first Vice Admiral, reorganizing the structure and assisting with the independence of Peru.

    At any rate, if you dig naval history, take a look at Thomas Cochrane’s career.

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  • Time To Buy A Navy–December 13, 1775

    This image depicts the Battle of Nassau, one of the first major battles won by the Continental Navy in March of 1776.  Oil painting on canvas by V. Zveg.

    If you’re going to build a navy, you’ve got to get serious about it. Congress established the need for a Navy back in October, but they were kind of sloppy about executing the plan.

    For the last several weeks, the Congress has been purchasing existing ships and retrofitting them to make them battle-worthy. That’s great if you’re maintaining status quo, but if you’re trying to overthrow the government, you’re going to need some new hardware.

    So the Congress agreed to build thirteen ships from the ground up, each with sufficient firepower to do some real damage. And they want all thirteen of them by March.

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  • Ben Franklin Wants A Friend–December 12, 1775

    Cover art for December 12, 1775: Portrait of the Infante Gabriel of Spain by Anton Raphael Mengs, 1767.

    Ben Franklin and Gabriel de Borbón had corresponded with one another previously, so while the letter that is the subject of today’s episode has a very specific (and relevant) ask in it, it was also just another in a chain of correspondence between the two.

    For his part, Prince Gabriel was probably receptive to Franklin’s suggestions, but he wasn’t likely to be in a position to act on them in the way that Franklin hoped. As the fourth son of Charles III, the throne was a long way off, though he was considered the heir apparent for some time.

    When Spain provided assistance the following year, they did so because Spain and France were allies and France was providing assistance to the Americans; furthermore they had their own bone to pick with the British, so Two Birds and all that. So they sent over lots of assistance, mostly in the form of money so that the Continental Army could purchase cannons, mortars, gun carriages and other ordinance.

    It’s possible that Prince Gabriel had some influence on his father, but more likely is that Charles III was simply maintaining existing alliances.

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  • Martha Comes to Cambridge–December 11, 1775

    Cover art for December 11, 1775: Portrait of Martha Dandridge Custis, 1757 by John Wollaston. This was the year her first husband died.

    Most of the portraits we see of Martha Washington were made when she was older, so we have (I think) this image of her as a bit of a crabby old frump.

    And maybe she was, by the time her husband got to be President. She didn’t really love the life of the public spouse and charming party hostess. But it turned out she was good at it, and if it made her crabby, nobody who mattered knew about it on a firsthand basis.

    In fact, Martha Washington was known to be fashionable, calm, outgoing and easy to get along with. And because Boston was rather straitlaced compared to Virginia, she gave off a bit of an exotic air during her time in Cambridge.

    Frump, indeed.

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  • Raid on Conanicut–December 10, 1775

    Cover art for December 10, 1775: Portrait of Admiral Richard Graves by Sir WIlliam Beechey, dated to the 19th century.

    Conanicut Island isn’t much of an island to look at, but they had supplies of some kind, and the British were looking.

    Admiral Graves had the task of finding supplies for the British who were under siege in Boston, and he decided to move beyond the local waters, and went into Narragansett Bay. In some towns (such as Newport, which was Loyalist) he was able to just buy supplies. But if the locals resisted, that’s when he broke out the guns.

    Conanicut Island looked like a vulnerable place to get supplies. He was able to get some of what he needed, but it wasn’t the cake walk he thought it would be.

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  • The Battle of Great Bridge–December 9, 1775

    Cover art for December 9, 1775: Sketch of the Battle of Great Bridge by Lord Rawdon. Title: A view of the Great Bridge near Norfolk in Virginia where the action happened between a detachment of the 14th Regt: & a body of the rebels. Key: A. A stockade fort thrown up by the regulars before the action. B. Entrenchments of the rebels. C. A narrow causeway by which the regulars were forced to advance to the attack. D. The church occupied by the rebels. Once again, the map has North toward the bottom.
    Note once again that the map is drawn with North on the bottom. Hover to get the guide to the markers.

    The Battle of Great Bridge is a little bit overlooked these days, and more’s the pity. It was the first battle in Virginia, it was a big victory for Patriot troops, the Royal Governor and his crowd got pushed out altogether, and nobody died on the Patriot side.

    On the British side, about 100 soldiers were dead. The last time the British lost a substantial number of troops, it was at Bunker Hill, which they won. (The vocabulary word you seek is “Pyrrhic Victory.”)

    Best of all, it fueled Virginia’s moves toward independence.

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  • The Siege of Quebec–December 8, 1775

    Cover art for December 8, 1775: Benedict Arnold's forces moving in on Quebec. from a painting by F. C. Yohn, date unknown.

    The siege of Quebec was an event that was months in the making, and it was still just the penultimate act of the play.

    Benedict Arnold and his troops thought they could get to the American side of the St. Lawrence River within 21 days; instead it took several weeks. Along the way they lost about a third of their troop strength. Some of the men died of illness en route, but most of them finally gave up altogether and headed home.

    When they finally arrived they realized they didn’t have nearly what they needed to effect a decent attack on the city, so they had to hunker down and wait for supports to arrive. They were able to institute a couple of blockades, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

    Finally General Montgomery showed up, and after an attempt at getting the city to surrender, they began the shooting. Unfortunately that didn’t do a lot of good, so the Continental Army had to settle for placing the city under siege. At this point, however, the clock was ticking because a big chunk of the Colonial soldiers were due to have their enlistments end on December 31. Something had to give, and soon.

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