250 and Counting

Tag: US History

  • May 24, 1775: Congress Elects Its President

    Cover art for May 24, 1775: Portrait of John Hancock in 1770 (Crop) by By John Singleton Copley - Massachusetts Historical Society, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons,

    Even though he was President of the Second Continental Congress when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 (whoops…spoiler alert), it’s entirely possible that John Hancock would be just one more guy who signed the document, except for the fact that he signed his name so large.

    His signature is so large and so well-known that you can say to someone “Give me your John Hancock” and they know exactly what you mean.

    Sure, we know John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, because they became presidents of the US, and Ben Franklin was already a living legend. But how many others can you name?

    See what we mean? Even if you’re a fan of 1776, you might only come up with a couple of others, and you’d still be trying to work out the name of the guy from the south with the white outfit on. And Richard Henry Lee doesn’t count because he didn’t sign the thing.

    It’s just some late-night thinking on my part.

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    Addendum: for the next few nights I’m not in my usual recording space, so apologies in advance if you pick up some stray background noises.

  • May 23, 1775: New Jersey Gets Into the Act

    Cover art for May 23, 1775: colonial banknote signed by John Hart.

    New Jersey has been pretty quiet since the Lexington and Concord fighting took place. But no more: today they came back…with a vengeance!

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  • May 22, 1775: New Hampshire Gets Into the Act

    Cover art for May 22, 1775: "Private of the 2nd New Hampshire Continental Infantry" by Charles M. Lefferts, 1910.

    Up until now, New Hampshire has been rather quiet when it came to resisting British rule. But today was the day that “Live Free or Die” was more than a motto for their license plates, which had yet to be invented.

    New Hampshire already had militias, of course, but they had a much broader range of available men from whom to choose. In addition, they organized themselves into a tight fighting force quicker than anyone imagined they would.

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  • May 21, 1775: David Woods

    Cover art for May 21, 1775: Map of Washington County, NY (detail), circa 1814.

    Like so many people who lived in upstate New York in the Revolutionary era, David Woods was an immigrant from Ireland when he came over with his family in 1775.

    New York was unusual compared to the other colonies in that the overwhelming percentage of the population was immigrants; as a result it became a bit of an enclave for people from the UK and the Netherlands, so Woods blended in well.

    As a result, we believe that although he wasn’t a politician for very long, he did a solid job, which doesn’t always stand out from the bigger picture.

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  • May 20, 1775: The Mecklenburg Declaration

    Cover art for May 20, 1775: Detail of the Mecklenburg Declaration.

    When the folks in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, heard about the events at Lexington and Concord a month earlier, they were quite incensed. So much so that they decided they were going to declare independence from Britain.

    Maybe. Maybe not. Tune in as Mike explains the controversy.

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  • May 18, 1775: 18th Century Spin Doctors

    Cover art for May 18, 1775: Fort Ticonderoga in 2009.

    People seem to have an inherent need to excuse their own unfortunate behaviors. One of the most common is to point to someone else breaking a rule and making it about them.

    Or, in the case of most of the battles of the early American Revolution, the colonists seemed always to be the aggressor, making their actions strictly an act of self-preservation.

    But what happens when you’ve captured all their horses? Tune in!

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  • May 17, 1775: Daniel LeRoy

    Cover art for May 17, 1775: Portrait of Daniel LeRoy, slightly doctored by Claude. Original creator unknown.
    Actor Richard Kind

    Is it just me or does Daniel LeRoy look a lot like actor Richard Kind?

    Daniel LeRoy was born in upstate New York and started to put together a pretty good settlement, but an unfortunate choice on his part caused him to lose it all.

    So he moved west and rebuilt his life and, by most accounts, it’s reasonable to say that he did rather well in the Michigan Territory, and in the State after that area became our nation’s 26th.

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  • May 16, 1775: The Hanna’s Town Resolves

    Cover art for May 16, 1775: One of several re-created houses on the former Hanna's Town site. (via Wikimedia Commons)

    While the Declaration of Independence was still about 15 months away, a small community in the far western reaches of Pennsylvania decided not to wait around for it to happen, and they took matters into their own hands.

    The Hanna’s Town Resolves was probably the most direct challenge to British rule to date, if you don’t count the stuff that involved shooting.

    Unfortunately, in the end the entire town paid the price and it was destroyed. However, on the same site you can visit reproductions of several of the structures that originally stood.

    Likewise, the original document of the Hanna’s Town Reserves was never recovered (and was probably destroyed in the fires that took out the town), but the text was reproduced in the Pennsylvania Gazette in August of that year, which is the only reason we know about it today.

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  • May 15, 1775: The Continental Congress Toughens Up

    Cover Art for May 15, 1775 Official Presidential Portrait of John Adams, by John Trumbull, ca. 1792 (via WIkimedia Commons)

    The Second Continental Congress has only been convened for about five days and things are already heating up for them.

    Delegates are still arriving. Lexington and Concord has upset their original plans so they’re making alternate plans. And even the alternate plans they made five days ago are being amended.

    And then Virginia comes in with some crazy idea about Independence? Will the madness never end?

    (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t, but we’ll tell you if it ever does.)

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  • May 14, 1775: Don’t Mess With Fairhaven

    Cover art for May 14, 1775: HMS Falcon, accompanied by a smaller ship. Painting by William Nowland Van Powell.

    The Thirteen Colonies didn’t have a lot in the way of a navy to help them with their battles, especially not against perhaps the biggest and best navy ever up until then.

    What they did have was people who were willing to act in lieu of a navy. Some of them did it out of sheer patriotism, and others were a little more mercenary about it. Specifically, privateers.

    Now, “privateers” sounds a little like “pirates” and people often use the words interchangeably. You should stop being friends with those people. Privateers are a specific breed of sailor. They’re government-sanctioned to act as a kind of ad-hoc navy, authorized to take action in times of war. Typically, their job was to disrupt merchant vessels (hence the confusion with pirates).

    It wasn’t long after the Revolution began that Fairhaven, Massachusetts, became a place known for privateer activity.

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    Extra credit activity: check out the West Wing, Season 4, Episode 18. You’ll learn more about privateers, and as a bonus, you’ll never think of Francis Scott Key the same way ever again.