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Tag: American Revolution

  • March 20, 1775: The Second Virginia Convention

    Cover art for March 20, 1775: portrait of Peyton Randolph by John Wollaston, circa early 1770s

    The people in Virginia were getting pretty upset about what was going on between the Colonies and the British Parliament. They called a convention and, as we’ve noted over the past several days, each county sent delegates with specific instructions, many of which recommended that the colony commit itself to resisting the British and supporting any efforts made by other American entities in that respect.

    The Second Virginia Convention finally met on this day in 1775, and they elected Peyton Randolph as its president. This was no surprise to anyone, as Randolph had been the president of the First Virginia Convention, and of the First Continental Congress.

    Randolph was also briefly the president of the Second Continental Congress but had to return to Virginia and was replaced by John Hancock. Shortly thereafter he had a fit of apoplexy (what we now call a hemorrhagic stroke) and died in October 1775.

    So even though he didn’t live to learn of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Randolph is frequently considered to be one of our Founding Fathers.

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  • March 18, 1775: Ben Franklin Confides in Edmund Burke

    Cover art for March 18, 1775: Portrait of Edmund Burke. 1771 by Joshua Reynolds

    Among the casualties of the early days of American History are all the friendships that were damaged by people being on opposite sides of the political fence. Good thing we’re all past that sort of petty nonsense nowadays, amirite?

    Sigh.

    We’ve talked in the past about John Adams and his former friend Daniel Leonard, who sparred in print under pen names and never quite repaired their relationship. Today we talk about Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament who was good friends with Franklin, though perhaps not publicly. Today marks the likely last day that the two men ever saw each other, as Franklin was on the final trip to England of his lifetime. Sadder still, Burke was actually sympathetic to the Colonist cause, though he wasn’t entirely convinced that they’d win a war.

    On the other hand, hardly anyone was convinced that Britain would be defeated, so there’s that.

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  • March 15, 1775: New York Calls for Delegates

    Cover art for March 15, 1775: A 2012 photo of Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan, site of the Committees' meetings.

    The New York colony gets a bad reputation for not having its act together when it came to American Independence, but the fact is, they were late to the party because they held on to their loyalty to the Crown until there was clearly no more reason to do so. Simply put, they were the last holdout.

    What makes this extra remarkable is that most of the residents of New York really had no reason to be loyal to King George III, since they weren’t English-born, nor were they the descendants of Englishmen. Instead, most of them were descended from Dutch settlers from over a hundred years earlier.

    But eventually they did come around, and when they did they showed an ability to snap into action quickly.

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  • March 14, 1775: Lord Dunmore Calls for Help

    Cover art for March 14, 1775: John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore by Sir Joshua Reynolds, via Google Art Project

    John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore, or more commonly Lord Dunmore, came to the Colonies in 1770 to become the Royal Governor of New York, but fate intervened and he wound up as the Royal Governor of Virginia instead.

    He might have fared better in New York, but given the events of the Westminster Massacre you learned about yesterday, we’re not sure it would have made much difference. Dunmore wasn’t an especially good politician in general, and he didn’t hold the Colonists in an especially high esteem. And that’s the sort of thing that A) isn’t easily concealed, and B) doesn’t always go over well with your constituents. Not always.

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  • March 13, 1775: The Westminster Massacre

    Cover art for March 13, 1775: An etching of the Court House at Westminster, which no longer stands.

    The Westminster Massacre was a seminal event in the history of both the United States and the State of Vermont.

    At that time, Vermont was a disputed territory between New York, which was loaded with Loyalists, and New Hampshire, which had many Patriots. So when a group of five dozen New Yorkers showed up to break up a New Hampshire rally, there clearly wasn’t going to be a happy ending to the encounter.

    But afterward, many New Yorkers were ejected from the area and nearly two years later, Vermont declared its independence from everybody, calling itself its own country rather than a British colony or an American state. It was a condition that lasted until 1791.

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  • March 7, 1775

    Cover art for March 7, 1775: detail of a map of New England prepared by Braddock Mead (alias John Green), 1774

    [NOTE: our apologies for those who came early and got the wrong file. We hope at least that you enjoyed the re-run. The correct file is now in place. –CC]

    Topsfield, Massachusetts wanted to be prepared when the British came. What’s more, they wanted to ensure that their militiamen were drilled and fully outfitted should the need arise. To that end, they offered some of the best wages for their Minutemen.

    But they had some trouble recruiting at first, until the town’s selectmen decided that their initial force wasn’t nearly formidable enough.

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  • March 6, 1775

    Cover art for March 6, 1775: Undated and unattributed portrait of Prince Hall

    Prince Hall, who appears in today’s artwork in an undated and unattributed picture, became interested in becoming a Mason but was turned down because of his race. The British Masons, however, were perfectly willing to accept Blacks into their ranks…so long as they fought on the British side of the Revolution.

    It wasn’t long before the Americans caught on to the scheme and reversed their decision. But Hall wasn’t done with simply joining the Freemasons. He had additional ambitions for himself, and others who looked like him.

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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 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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