250 and Counting

Tag: US History

  • March 28, 1775: Lord Dunmore Makes Noise

    Cover art for March 28, 1775: Lord Dunmore By Joshua Reynolds - lgECWFRNNa2txg at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21865923

    One of the interesting things about many of the British officials who were around during the early days of the American Revolution is that most of them were actually pretty good at their job. It’s just that they were given rather thankless tasks to do which wound up backfiring on them.

    And then there’s John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore. History has not been especially kind to Lord Dunmore, not should it be. He often acted rashly and without consulting some of the people he should have consulted, and in the end he wound up getting a lot of people very angry, instead of getting a few people a little annoyed.

    Lord North, over in London, is often defined as the Prime Minister who lost the Colonies, but Dunmore clearly did his part to ensure that they stayed lost regardless of the outcome. And today in history, Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation against electing delegates to the Second Continental Congress, but the Second Virginia Convention, by now in its last day or so, ignored him and sent people anyway. (They’d already elected a couple, so Dunmore’s proclamation was a little bit of closing the barn after the horse had escaped.)

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  • March 27, 1775: Thomas Jefferson Gets an Important Appointment

    Cover art for March 27, 1775: Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, 1791, by Charles Willson Peale.

    We hate to say it, but Thomas Jefferson was kind of a nepo baby.

    Jefferson was part of the Second Virginia Convention, and no doubt he got there honestly, as a man who had lots of property and was well-regarded, even at the tender age of 32. But when Peyton Randolph needed someone to replace him in the Second Continental Congress, he called on Jefferson—who was his cousin.

    On the positive side, Jefferson acquitted himself well in both the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he represented Albemarle County, and simultaneously at the Second Continental Congress. So while he probably didn’t need the familial boost, it surely didn’t hurt.

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  • March 26, 1775: Thomas Monteagle Bayly

    Cover art for March 26, 1775: B&W detail of a (c. 1820) painting by George Catlin of the Virginia House of Delegates.

    Never let it be said that we can’t find the less-obvious folks in American History. Thomas Bayly was definitely one of them.

    Bayly was a one-term congressman to the US House of Representatives as part of the 13th Congress (as this is written, we’re in the 118th). By most accounts he wasn’t especially distinguished, but only serving for the one term didn’t mean that he was politically finished. A few years after he left Congress, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was part of the Virginia Constitutional Convention.

    Bayly was “minor” enough in history that we were only able to find a single image of him—the one in the cover artwork. And it’s actually a black-and-white rendering of a color painting that’s been zoomed in to the point where you can see the texture on the canvas. It’s a detail from a painting of the entire House of Delegates around 1820.

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  • March 25, 1775: Letters to and From George

    Cover art for March 25, 1775: AI-generated image of George Washington writing a letter. Via Canva.

    George Washington was a frequent letter writer, something that the creators of the stage play 1776 would poke some fun at. But the documentation he kept plays an important part not only in the history of the American Revolution, but in the more mundane details of life during that time in American History. What’s more, we’re fortunate that so much of the correspondence both to and from Washington remains extant to this day. (Not all of it, as you’ll hear today, but it appears that most of it does.)

    Today we present two letters: one written from the Second Virginia Convention from George to his brother, and another written to George the same day by a merchant he frequently dealt with. The merchant died not long after writing the letter, so it’s not known whether Washington received it before the merchant died. What we do know is that the death resulted in an unexpected expense for Washington.

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  • March 24, 1775: The Massachusetts Provincial Congress Steps Up

    Cover art for March 24, 1775: John Hancock, oil on canvas by John Singleton Copley, 1765; in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

    We’ve spent a lot of time talking about events in Virginia lately, but that doesn’t mean that the folks in Massachusetts weren’t getting things done. It just means that they weren’t making a big deal about it.

    For the past several weeks, they’d been working on the down-low to make plans in case the British took any action that they might find too intrusive, from simple confiscations to an all-out shooting offense. (Of course that was still on the table; nobody had forgotten the Boston Massacre.)

    It wasn’t until this day in history that they made their resolution publicly known. And in the wake of Patrick Henry’s very recent proclamation, nobody would be surprised if things escalated sooner rather than later.

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  • March 23, 1775: A Wedding Announcement and a Birthday Celebration

    Cover art for March 23, 1775: Portrait of Dr. William Foushee, ca. 1820 (public domain image; attribution on the image is to someone named "Eugene")

    This show isn’t just about the big moments in American history, though we’ve been giving you those. We also take the time to look at some of the smaller things, which may have an effect later on down the line. And today we can mark two of those events.

    First up is a wedding taking place in Southampton County in Virginia, across the bay from Williamsburg. The bride was an educated woman who carried on that tradition afterward, and the groom was a future mayor of Richmond, the city’s first, in fact.

    Meanwhile, up in Pennsylvania, America’s first botanist was celebrating a birthday. Unfortunately it was one of his last.

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  • March 22, 1775: Edmund Burke Gives Parliament His Thoughts

    Cover art for March 22, 1775: Edmund Burke addresses the House of Commons, by CJ Staniland, date unknown

    A quick note on the cover art: this may be the first time I (Claude) happened to match the side banner with the background of the webpage exactly.

    As we’ve noted in the past, Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke were good friends who worked together to come up with a solution that would get the Colonies and the Crown back into each others’ good graces.

    Now that we think about it, Franklin was good friends with many people on both sides of the Atlantic, and now we’re wondering if he was just one of those guys to whom you take an instant liking without knowing quite why.

    At any rate, by this point the two men had to concede that it was far too late to prevent further escalation, and they were right. Burke took the time to address Parliament on this day, and let them all know just what a mistake they’d made.

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  • March 21, 1775: Franklin Departs London Forever

    Cover art for March 21, 1775: The house where Benjamin Franklin stayed while on his final trip to London.

    Benjamin Franklin was pretty good at diplomacy, but even when given several years to try, he was unable to bring about peace between England and the Thirteen Colonies.

    From December 1774 through February 1775, he and some of his British friends tried to put together a map to peace, but unfortunately both sides were too entrenched to even consider compromise. Franklin finally went home on this day in 1775, but he left one final impression that we’ll learn about tomorrow.

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  • 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 19, 1775: The Watauga Purchase

    Cover art for March 19, 1775: Historical marker in Elizabethtown, Tennessee, commemorating the Watauga Purchase.

    The Watauga Purchase was one of several land purchases in the area of the Watauga River made around the same time. But this one was first, and we know this because it’s literally on Page One of the deed book, which still exists in the Archives of two different states (one is a copy, of course).

    Interestingly, while this territory is sometimes considered by historians to be a self-governing area, the residents actually considered themselves to be British subjects, even after the war began, and to a certain extent even for a short period after the Declaration of Independence was signed. That likely ended when the Cherokees (who were aligned with the British) attacked several settlements, although they were badly beaten in the attempt.

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