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.
Joseph Warren’s life as a Patriot was rather brief (in fact his life overall was relatively short), but it was quite important to the cause. Warren was part of the committee that investigated the Boston Massacre, he sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride (just go with it for now), he wrote a song called “Free America,” which was based on a British melody called “The British Grenadiers”, he fought at Lexington and Concord, and he died at Bunker Hill.
And he was one of only two men who was asked to speak more than once on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. And this second time was the one that really sold the crowd.
The Gunpowder Incident was an event that took place on April 21, 1775, so there won’t be much about it today. But that was the event that pushed Virginia deeply into the movement toward independence, and allowed the Continental Congress to finally consider seriously the idea of formally breaking away from England.
But it was an event that took place on this day— that barely got any notice at the time—which ultimately led to the Gunpowder Incident.
As we noted yesterday, there were all kinds of abuses of tea going on in the Colonies. It (mostly) started with the Boston Tea Party, but also spread to other areas as well. The Boston Tea Party was notable for being a literal destruction of unsold tea, removing it from the market.
Other tea parties and actions largely involved tea that had already been purchased in the Colonies, either in the form of boycotts (as in the Edenton Tea Party), or in the form of destroying tea from one’s own pantry as a form of protest, as was the case in today’s episode. As noted during yesterday’s show, the Thirteen Colonies didn’t have enough economic clout to make a meaningful impact; they were meant to be symbolic in nature. But the British took these things seriously enough that their actions demonstrated they were looking for a fight rather than trying to avoid it.
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.
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…
It’s one thing to hear someone hollering “The British are coming!” and quite another to actually see them arriving in your port. And that’s especially true when they’re also seen confiscating the cannons that you’d hidden upriver.
This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but there was something different about the Colonists’ response—and it almost touched off the war nearly two months before it actually did.
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.
Back when Mike and Claude were kids, February 22 was celebrated as a national holiday, the 22nd being recognized as George Washington’s birthday. Lincoln’s Birthday was February 12, so we had two Federal holidays close together. (To be fair, Lincoln’s was always unofficially recognized.)
Until, that is, 1968, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act came along, and many holidays were moved to the Monday of that week. Not every state complied right away, but eventually Lincoln’s Birthday disappeared and Washington’s Birthday moved from the malleable February 22nd to the always-on-Monday Presidents Day.
But here’s the part they don’t always tell you: George Washington wasn’t born on February 22. He was actually born on February 11, 1731 but that was under the old Julian calendar. In 1752, Britain and all its colonies switched to the Gregorian Calendar, which changed Washington’s birthday (well, everyone’s, really) by a year and 11 days, to February 22, 1732.
Believe it or not, people did not take the calendar change well. Because it was essentially a Catholic innovation (named after Pope Gregory XIII), Protestants thought it was a Catholic plot to return them to the fold. Other people, especially in the Colonies, thought that time was being stolen from their lives, and they demanded that the “lost” days be returned. It wasn’t until public figures—including George Washington—adopted the new dates and made a big deal about doing so, that people started to calm down.
None of this is relevant to the story you’ll hear in today’s episode, but this whole Washington’s Birthday thing doesn’t get told nearly enough. In the meantime, enjoy Mike’s story of William Seymour.
We’ve mentioned in the past that the intent of most of the Intolerable Acts and the Coercive Acts were designed to punish the Massachusetts Province, but it had some effect on the other colonies as well. What’s more, there was a growing worry that, if Parliament could do things like this to Massachusetts, what’s going to stop them from doing it to us?
To that end, the city of Albany, NY, began making plans just in case war broke out. It was against the law, but their reasoning was that it was better to have a militia and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
