250 and Counting

Tag: American Revolution

  • June 16, 1775: Washington Officially Accepts Command

    Cover art for June 16, 1775: George Washington accepting command of the Continental Army (detail). From a print by Currier and Ives, c. 1876.

    Yesterday, George Washington was unanimously elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.

    Today he officially accepted the position.

    He won’t take actually begin until early July (we’ll get to that episode in a few weeks), but take a look at this image here. He’s already in the blue coat, and his hair is whiter than it was in yesterday’s art.

    The truth about his hair color is likely somewhere in between these two images, but of course he wasn’t wearing a coat like that just yet. This art is from a hundred years later, by Currier and Ives.

    What I found interesting is that some of the people in the background look a little put out by Washington, even though they’re the ones who elected him. I think Currier and Ives were trying to convey that it was a serious event, but everyone just looks angry. John Adams (in the dark blue to the right) appears especially annoyed, and he’s the one who nominated him in the first place.

    And check out the guy to Adams’ right, staring straight at us. There’s always one guy who can’t help but look at the camera.

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  • June 15, 1775: The Original G-Man

    Cover art for June 15, 1775: Portrait of George Washington in 1775 by Samuel King

    Jeez, I gotta stop writing these titles late at night.

    Sometimes the history books make it sound like some people just appeared out of nowhere, but they did have pasts. George Washington would be a good example.

    Washington has been nearly invisible since this show started on January 1, but that doesn’t mean that the Congress hollered “Anyone wanna be a general?” and he stepped up first. In fact, he was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and for some time he’d been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, often simultaneously with the Congress thing. And he did have a commendable military background dating back to the French and Indian War, so appointing him the Commander of Colonial forces wasn’t part of someone’s crazy scheme: they thought he could really do it.

    And do it, he did.

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  • June 14, 1775: Cake and Candles for the US Army

    Cover art for June 14, 1775: The former seal of the now-defunct United States Department of War founded in1778. It is now used as the seal of the United States Department of the Army.

    No tongue-in-cheek for today.

    No weird jokes.

    No political stances.

    Just thanks for giving us America, and then helping us keep it.

    In today’s episode, Mike takes you back to the first day.

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  • June 13, 1775: Colonists Catch Wise…Again

    Cover art for June 13, 1775: 1850 map of the Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill areas. Boston is in the lower right corner.

    It wasn't even close to being the first time, but this was an important "get": the colonist forces learned that troops were coming to capture Charlestown and Dorchester in an effort to break the siege. They got lucky, it all led to some ugliness and eventually both sides could call it a win, and both sides could call it a loss.

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  • June 12, 1775: Press One for English

    Cover art for June 12, 1775: The cover of the first of the letters directed at citizens of Canada, ca. 1774.

    The folks in America wanted to ensure that the folks in Canada knew just how bad the conditions were, but the problem was that most of the regular inhabitants of Canada spoke French, so when the Continental Congress created documents meant to sway the Canadians to our side of the loyalty fence, they were written in French.

    But the problem was, they couldn’t use these documents as evidence for folks here in the Colonies, because not enough people understood French. What to do, what to do?

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  • June 11, 1775: The Battle of Machias

    Cover art for June 11, 1775: A map from around that date of the Machias Bay area. The pin shows the approximate location of the town.

    Full Disclosure: I have no idea whether I pronounced “Machias” correctly. We’ll all have to live with that one, I suppose.

    The Battle of Machias was not exactly one of epic proportions. It was a couple of boats chasing after a couple of other boats, and one boat got away but the other one managed to damage itself and was ultimately boarded.

    So why is it significant?

    Well. Not only was it the first naval battle of the American Revolution, it was a battle that the Colonies won, no matter how you look at it. And every little win was, in fact, a big win.

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  • June 10, 1775: The Berkeley Riflemen

    Cover art for June 10, 1775: The historical marker commemorating the Berkeley Riflemen, located in Martinsburg, now in West Virginia.

    In the wake of Lexington and Concord, some places didn’t wait to start assembling troops to fight off the British. Most of them were in that part of the Colonies, though.

    Enter the Berkeley County Riflemen, from a section of Virginia that is now West Virginia. George Washington put out the word that soldiers were needed, and about a hundred men from Martinsburg stepped up, even going so far as to ensure that they dressed mostly alike, since there was no Continental Army just yet, and therefore there were no uniforms.

    And while the sign doesn’t really say much about it, the Berkeley County Riflemen are said to be the genesis of the United States Army.

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  • June 8, 1775: Lord Dunmore Checks Out

    Cover art for June 8, 1775: divers swim above the exposed timbers of the HMS Fowey, but not the one mentioned in this episode.

    In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Incident, Lord Dunmore decided that the better part of valor involved getting out of town before the locals could get a good lynch mob together, and he left Virginia on the HMS Fowey.

    Here’s the interesting part: the Fowey which Dunmore boarded was not the first of its name; in fact it was the fifth. But the other interesting part is that it was the second one of that name to sink in American waters.

    via Google Maps: the approximate location of the HMS Dowey (1744).

    The fourth HMS Fowey was a fifth-rate vessel (remember, ratings refer to the number of guns, not the quality of the boat) with 44 guns on it. It was first launched in 1744. In June of 1748 the ship struck a coral reef and sank off the coast of Florida (see map). She wasn’t re-discovered until 1975 and, through an agreement with England, is considered a Protected Site by the National Park Service. The photo used for today’s art is of divers swimming over the exposed timbers of that ship. It’s definitely a “look but don’t touch” situation.

    In 1749 another Fowey was built, a sixth-rate frigate with 24 guns. This is the one which Lord Dunmore used to skip town. The remains of this ship are probably in the York River, but it’s not known for sure.

    Why is “Fowey” such a popular name for a ship? It’s not clear. In fact, it’s not clear whether the name comes from the Cornish town of Fowey, or the river Fowey which runs through it.

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  • June 7, 1775: Just Another Day In Congress

    Cover art for June 7, 1775: a printed version of the proclamation written by the committee assigned on this day.

    The Second Continental Congress was in full swing by now. The first committees are beginning to report out to the Congress. New committees are being created for various purposes. The Congress is meeting as a group to determine the state of America. And one committee is recruited to draft a proclamation that, to modern ears, might sound a little peculiar. But the fact is, even a hundred years later a proclamation like this was quite common.

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  • June 6, 1775: A Disarming Guy in New York City

    Cover art for June 6, 1775: portrait of Marinus Willett, ca. 1791 by Ralph Earl. Image donated to Wikimedia Commons by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    We’ve mentioned the Willett family in prior episodes. They were a prominent family at the east end of Long Island, and in what we’d now call the Queens portion of New York City, at a time when there wasn’t a whole lot of much else between the two. There are some landmarks around Long Island that have the Willet (the other ‘t’ dropped off somewhere in history) name attached to them; in fact when I was young I lived quite close to one of the roads named after that family.

    (Spider Robinson fans please note: it’s less than a mile from where I think Callahan’s Saloon is located.)

    Marinus Willett made a name for himself early on; first in the French and Indian War and then again during the American Revolution. In between, he attended college. He was so ambitious that he managed to distinguish himself after the Revolution as well, but I’ll let Mike tell you about that.

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