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Tag: American Revolution

  • September 13, 1775: A Flag Makes Its Debut

    Cover art for September 13, 1775: Image of the South Carolina flag with the blue field extended to fit the canvas parameters. retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_South_Carolina#/media/File:Flag_of_South_Carolina.svg

    Let’s talk state vexillology.

    Believe it or not, there are people who are very passionate about state flags. (Not me, he said, about to go into a mini-rant.)

    Most states have a very utilitarian purpose. They kind of lean in, announce themselves, and lean out again.

    Some flags are weirdly cluttered (New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Delaware).

    Some flags are rather boring (Alabama, Minnesota).

    Some have heavy symbolism but it’s lost on most viewers (Arkansas, Utah)

    I’ve lived in Maryland almost 25 years and I don’t think I’ve seen a people more obsessed with their state flag:

    Maryland Flag

    Colorado’s flag is all over that state so they must be kind of obsessed, too:

    Colorado Flag

    South Carolina’s flag has symbolism and simplicity going for it, and I have to agree with people who put it in the top tier of state flags.

    Here’s the story of the South Carolina flag and how it got that way.

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  • September 12, 1775: Another Washington Enters the Fray

    Cover art for September 12, 1775: Portrait of William Washington in 1795, by Rembrandt Peale. via Wikimedia Commons.

    We mentioned a while back that John Adams had siblings, as did George Washington. This wasn’t one of them, and as far as anyone can tell, it’s more of a cousin-type relationship.

    William Washington essentially won a bet with his brothers, and his prize was the ability to join the militia in Virginia to fight for independence. From this day in 1775 until 1781 he was engaged in multiple battles against the British in Virginia and the Carolinas. It was in 1781 that his horse was shot out from under him. The fallen animal pinned him down. He was bayoneted and captured, and spent the rest of the war under house arrest in Charleston, SC.

    After the war he remained in South Carolina where he spent some time in the state legislature, but declined to run for governor because, as the story goes, he wasn’t a native Carolinian.

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  • September 11, 1775: One Siege Begins, Another Continues

    Cover art for September 11, 1775: "Siege of Boston" wood engraving (detail), created 1879, artist not cited. via the New York Public Library digital collection.

    As the winter of 1775 approached, George Washington had to think about the state of the siege of Boston. In short, housing and clothing thousands of men in a New England winter is a very different proposition than doing it in the summer.

    So Washington convened his War Council to discuss the possibility of breaking the siege by attacking the city from a different direction.

    Meanwhile up in Canada, General Philip Schuyler takes another run at Fort St. Jean.

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  • September 7, 1775: Submarine Warfare is Revolutionary

    Cover art for September 7, 1775: the full-size cutaway model of the American Turtle at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, UK

    The Turtle, or the American Turtle as it’s often called, was invented by a man who thought it should be possible to stealthily attach a bomb to a ship and then detonate it shortly thereafter, by approaching the ship from under the waterline.

    The Turtle was a brilliant idea in concept, if not in execution. There were just too many things that had to go exactly right for the turtle to successfully execute its design purpose, and when it was first tried in genuine combat on this day in 1775, unfortunately it was not successful.

    But every failure is one step closer to success, right?

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  • September 6, 1775: Washington Appeals Directly to Canadians

    Cover art for September 6, 2025: the first page of Washington's letter to the Canadians. from Library of Congress.

    The Second Continental Congress tried appealing to the Canadian leadership in order to get support for the Independence cause, but they apparently weren’t biting.

    So George Washington tried a different tack: write to the Canadian people themselves. He reasoned that the folks in charge were mostly wealthy landowners who were doing all right financially under British rule. Maybe, he thought, the ordinary Canadian folks weren’t quite so happy with the King.

    He was not, unfortunately, correct in that assessment and nobody was swayed by his argument.

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  • September 5, 1775: Setback in Canada

    Cover art for September 5, 1775: Painting of the Schooner Hannah by John F. Leavitt, date unknown

    American forces began to move on Fort St. Jean in Canada. Unfortunately they ran into a couple of unexpected obstacles on the way, so they had to adjust their approach. This led to a six-week siege of the fort.

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  • September 4, 1775: The Offensive in Canada Grows

    An invasion of Canada seems a little absurd on its face, but when you think about it in the context of the Revolution, it actually starts to make sense.

    After all, Canada was also a few British colonies in the North American continent, but they were a little more obedient to the whims of Parliament and they had Loyalist leanings. So the Patriots had a choice between bringing them over ideologically toward Independence, or ignoring them. Neither of these were likely to work, so they set about on the next best thing.

    Invade and then occupy Canada.

    But as we’ll learn in upcoming episodes, it’s not as easy as you’d think.

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  • September 3, 1775: The British Move To Break the Siege

    Cover art for September 3, 1775: Early map of Boston showing the neck. From the collection of Historic New England. The blue line shows present-day Washington Street.

    Anyone who’s been to Boston in the modern day has a hard time recognizing that the city of Boston was just the segment in the top center of the map. The area called Boston Neck is clearly marked at the bottom left, and wasn’t part of the city. The Continental Army’s line ran about where the blue line ends. (The blue line is modern-day Washington Street.)

    It was the city having that kind of geography that made the Siege of Boston relatively easy for the Patriots. Unfortunately for them, the British were still able to use the surrounding waterways.

    This made the siege not the battle of attrition that it could have been, since supplies were able to get in via water. Consequently it was an ongoing battle of wits, as we learn today.

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  • August 31, 1775: The Liberty Tree Dies

    The cover art for today’s episode may be one of the most famous art pieces depicting an event of the American Revolution, and it happened under the Liberty Tree, which is clearly marked here.

    This event, the tarring and feathering of Loyalist John Malcolm, took place about 18 months earlier and shows Malcolm already tarred and feathered, and now he’s having (also marked) tea poured into his mouth. The Stamp Act is nailed to the tree, upside down. Really, there’s a lot to unpack in this picture. So it makes sense that people were upset that the tree had been cut down.

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  • August 30, 1775: Your Cows or Your Life

    Cover art for August 30, 1775: Replica HMS Rose under sail off Massachusetts in 1971 on her way from Newport to Boston, photo taken by the late General William Lanagan (USMC), not copyrighted. Via Wikimedia.

    The HMS Rose was a 20-gun ship of the Royal Navy, built in 1757. When hostilities broke out between the Colonies and the Crown, the Rose was tasked with preventing smuggling off the coast of Connecticut and (especially) Rhode Island.

    She spent the first few years of the Revolution in Narragansett Bay, in the Long Island Sound, in the Hudson River and down to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

    The Rose’s last action as a British naval ship was in Savannah, Georgia. She was no longer fit for battle not was she seaworthy, so she was scuttled in a channel of the Savannah River, essentially blocking it off and preventing other naval forces from reaching the city. This meant that Savannah remained in British hands until the war ended.

    In 1971 a replica was built (see the cover art), originally as a “dockside attraction.” Eventually she was purchased by Fox Studios and redressed for the film Master and Commander. Afterward she was renamed the Surprise and regained her status as a dockside attraction in San Diego, if you’re inclined to visit.

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