Governor William Shirley built an elegant estate in Roxbury while serving as Royal Governor of Massachusetts. The fortunes of Shirley Place, now known as the Shirley-Eustis House, became tied up in the political upheaval of the Revolution, and ultimately the House became the home of William Eustis, a Revolutionary War surgeon who served as a member of Congress, Secretary of War, & as Ambassador to Netherlands before becoming Governor of Massachusetts. We talk with Tamsen George former Execut...
Aug 30, 2022•35 min•Season 3Ep. 35
The Mohawk River valley of New York was one of many "frontier" areas that saw constant raiding and skirmishing during the American Revolution. We talk with Brian Mack, one of the volunteers bringing to life the Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park , about the Revolution along the Mohawk River and the impact it had on the indigenous peoples and European settlers who lived there. We talk about Sir William Johnson, Molly Brant and her brother Joseph Brant (Thayendaga), and Walter Edmunds' Drums ...
Aug 24, 2022•32 min•Season 3Ep. 34
The Massachusetts Archives were created after the Revolution to organize and preserve the public records of Massachusetts. We talk with Michael Comeau, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Archives, and John Hannigan, the Curator, about the millions of documents and artifacts which reveal the entire history of the Commonwealth, from 1629 to the present. Muster rolls, inventories, letters from George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, invoices from Paul Revere, trophies from the Battle of Benn...
Aug 16, 2022•44 min•Season 3Ep. 33
We talk with William Martin, who has been called the "king of the historical thriller," about his novelistic biography of George Washington, Citizen Washington. What made Washington the indispensable man? We plumb the character of Washington, his theatrical sense, and the Rules of Civility that shaped his life. We also discuss his "American Experience" episode, "George Washington: The Man Who would Not be King," and the passing of our mutual friend David McCullough, and about some of William Mar...
Aug 09, 2022•52 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American of his day. But he became famous as a subject of the British Empire, and he believed in the Empire. How did he become an American? For our 100th episode, we talk with Gordon Wood , author of The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, , and many other books on the Revolutionary era, about this most fascinating and most elusive of the founders. It is always a pleasure to talk with Gordon Wood, the Alva Way University Professor and Professor of History ...
Aug 02, 2022•37 min•Season 3Ep. 31
Privateering enjoys a somewhat spotty historical reputation, being considered little more than state-sponsored pirates. But there is no denying the importance of privateers to the cause of Independence, providing military supplies, foodstuffs. cash, and merchantable goods Continental treasury. Privateers such as John Manley, Jonathan Haraden and Luke Ryan some of the first American maritime heroes, and event Continental Navy captains such as John Barry and Thomas Truxton also commanded privateer...
Jul 26, 2022•36 min•Season 3Ep. 30
How did Americans in the generations following the Declaration of Independence translate its lofty ideals into practice? A conversation with Richard D. Brown, author of Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War . We talk about religious liberty, Ephraim Wheeler, the rights (or lack of rights) of women, and also about Richard Brown's first book Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Committees of Correspondence and the Towns 1772-1774, and about the S...
Jul 19, 2022•41 min•Season 3Ep. 29
Prince Demah was an African-American artist or "limner," who created three known portraits--one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the other two in the HIngham Historical Society . These portraits, of Henry Barnes and his wife Christian Barnes, were damaged by a mob who attacked their home in Marlborough, before driving the loyalist Barnes's into exile. Mrs. Barnes thought that Prince Demah's portrait of her was a better likeness than the one done by John Singleton Copley. . We talk ...
Jul 12, 2022•36 min•Season 3Ep. 28
The Boston of today is vastly different from that of 1775 so how can we find the 18th century landscape that the Sons of Liberty knew in the landscape of today? Josiah George, Assistant Creative and Production Manager of the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum n a virtual ramble over the 18th-century Boston landscape, using the John Bonner Map (1722) as a guide. We also discuss aspects of the Boston Tea Party--where were the ships built? --you might not have thought about. Tell us what you think...
Jul 05, 2022•40 min•Season 3Ep. 27
Did the American Revolution begin with the North Carolina Regulators? Abby Chandler joins us to talk about this North Carolina political movement and some of the characters involved--Governor William Tryon, who was between the proverbial rock and hard place, the Legislature which ran afoul of back-country farmers and speculators, "Regulators" like Herman Husband, and ambitious men on the make like Edmund Fanning. Abby Chandler is writing a book about these 1760s discontents as the British Empire...
Jun 28, 2022•38 min•Season 3Ep. 26
In this provocative new biography of Eliza Harriot, Mary Sarah Bilder looks to the 1780s—the Age of the Constitution—to investigate the rise of a radical new idea in the English-speaking world: Female Genius. . Bilder finds the perfect exemplar of this phenomenon in English-born Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor. This pathbreaking female educator delivered a a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania attended by George Washington as he and other Constitutional Convention delegates gathered in Phila...
Jun 21, 2022•40 min•Season 3Ep. 25
On September 5, 1778, Major General Charles Grey landed a column of 4,000 men at New Bedford, Massachusetts to suppress privateering. The column marched swiftly and destroyed all of the maritime trade in the harbor and many of the support facilities on shore. Unfortunately many houses and shops were destroyed in the conflagration. They marched on to Fairhaven looting and burning as they marched. Join Professor Bob Allison (Suffolk University Chair of the Department of History, Language, & Gl...
Jun 14, 2022•33 min
Long Island Sound was a battleground during the Revolution. The British held New York City throughout the war, and Newport periodically, and Long Island was home to loyal Americans while Connecticut was a base for the rebellious Americans. Raiders from each side could easily traverse Long Island Sound to raid the other. The British attacked Fairfield, Danbury, New Haven, New London, and other Connecticut towns during the long conflict. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
Jun 08, 2022•42 min•Ep. 23
History is written by the victors, but to understand history we need to take a more nuanced look. What about the people who not only were skeptical about American Independence, but actively opposed it? Join this conversation about Loyalists with Eileen Ka-May Cheng, the Sarah Yates Exley Chair in Teaching Excellence at Sarah Lawrence College, author of The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth, and a forthcoming book about the loyalists. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
May 31, 2022•37 min•Season 3Ep. 22
Who were the privateers who helped win American independence--and what were their motives? We talk with Kylie Hulbert from Hampden-Sydney College about her book, The Untold War At Sea: America's Revolutionary Privateers. Some 52,000 men served on between 1500 and two thousand privateering voyages, sailing after British vessels in the Caribbean, off the coast of Brazil, and in European waters. How effective were the privateers? What motivated these men to sail? ho financed the voyages? Tell us wh...
May 24, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 21
The burning of the HMS Gaspee in June 1772 had a profound impact on the struggle for American Independence. Was it an opportune act of defiance, or was it a carefully orchestrated statement against the growing power of the British crown? Steven Park, author of The Burning of His Majesty's Schooner Gaspee: An Attack on Crown Rule before the American Revolution , an event commemorated every June with Rhode Island's Gaspee Days. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
May 17, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 20
New Jersey occupies a unique position in the American Revolution. We talk with Jim Gigantino, historian at the University of Arkansas, who has written and researched on the role of New Jersey in the Revolution, and the impact of the American Revolution on the Garden State, which became a battleground. His first book, Ragged Road to Abolitio n, on slavery and emancipation in New Jersey (where slavery continued until the Civil War). Professor Gigantino also edited The American Revolution in New Je...
May 10, 2022•38 min•Season 3Ep. 19
When the British captured Philadelphia, the seat of the American Congress, in September of 1777 General Howe delivered a decisive blow to American morale. A month later, Howe tried to consolidate his gains with an attack on the American fortification on the Delaware River at Fort Mercer, now Red Bank, New Jersey , and across the river at Fort Mifflin . The Americans not only repulsed the attack by a combined British & Hessian force, but in the process destroyed 64-gun ship HMS Augusta , the ...
May 03, 2022•39 min•Season 3Ep. 18
As the Continental Army besieged Boston in 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress coordinated efforts with local towns to support the outflux of dislocated Bostonians while attempting to protect the countryside and the army from smallpox. Families, including aged, ill and infirm individuals, as well as mothers with small children, were removed and relocated to the Massachusetts countryside, enduring much hardship and upheaval along the way. Join the conversation with researcher and historia...
Apr 27, 2022•36 min•Season 3Ep. 17
On April 19, 1894. Frederic T. Greenhalge (1842 - 1896), the British-born Governor of Massachusetts declared the day a state-wide holiday, calling it Patriot's Day. The holiday replaced the centuries old "Fast Day" that had been the spring holiday throughout the Commonwealth. Now in its 128th year, events of Patriots Day still enthralls the public. Join Professor Bob Allison (Suffolk University Chair of the Department of History, Language & Global Culture) in conversation with Jonathan Lane ...
Apr 19, 2022•40 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Join us for a conversation about the moral, intellectual, and political world of the American founders, in a discussion with C. Bradley Thompson , Professor of Political Science at Clemson University, and author of America's Revolutionary Mind: The Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined it (2019). This major re-interpretation of the Revolution, looks at the ideas of America's Revolutionaries and the Declaration in which they announced them. What did the "self-e...
Apr 12, 2022•41 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Jane McRea is one of the most famous women of the Revolution. Her story has been told in paintings, novels, and poems, and embellished by folklorists and historians. , But we know very little about this 24-year old who died tragically in the summer of 1777. We know that as General Burgoyne's army marched toward Albany she was killed, and though her betrothed was a Tory marching with Burgoyne, her death at the hands of Burgoyne's Native American allies became a cause celebre, which may have rouse...
Apr 05, 2022•40 min•Season 3Ep. 14
James Kirby Martin, the Cullen Professor of History emeritus at the University of Houston, joins us to talk about Benedict Arnold: Revolutionary Hero, his book which is now a major motion picture "Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed." We also talk about Joseph Plumb Martin, whose story lives on thanks to Martin's book Ordinary Courage, the Forgotten Allies, , the Oneida and the American Revolution, and his World War 2 novel Surviving Dresden. If you don't have time for the books or the movie, check o...
Mar 29, 2022•46 min
Alan Taylor joins us to talk about American Revolutions: A Continental History 1750-1804, and much else. Few scholars have influenced our understanding of Early American history more than Taylor, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. HIs second book, William Cooper's Town, , was hailed as a triumph of "micro-history," examining in detail a small place and from it illuminating a larger world. His three "continental histories" take a broad app...
Mar 23, 2022•39 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Few British officers names from the American Revolution come to mind as readily as Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis (1738–1805). What happened to him after his surrender at Yorktown? Richard Middleton, author of the new biography Cornwallis: Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World joins us to discuss Lord Cornwallis's career after Yorktown, the lessons learned in America which he applied to India and to Ireland, and Cornwallis's role in British politics and the military. Tell us what ...
Mar 15, 2022•40 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Wright Tavern has been at the center of Concord for 275 years. It hosted some of the most dramatic events in American history. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress's committees met here in the Fall of 1774, beginning the colony's transition from colony to commonwealth. On morning of April 19, 1775, both the Concord militia and the British military command met--separately--at the tavern to plot their interactions with each other. Tom Wilson of the Wright Tavern Legacy Trust joins us to discuss t...
Mar 08, 2022•42 min•Season 3Ep. 10
John Kaminski, the founder and director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Editor in Chief of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution project, now up to 37 volumes and also available ow online as a digital archive, joins us to talk about this landmark publication project, and about the struggle to ratify the Constitution in 1787-1788. We learn why Rhode Island kept saying No, why Elbridge Gerry is such a f...
Mar 01, 2022•48 min•Season 3Ep. 9
The American Revolution Institute imagines a future in which every American is inspired by the American Revolution, the vast event that created our nation, and embraces our revolutionary ideals of universal liberty and responsible citizenship. The American Revolution Institute hosts an annual Master Teacher's Seminar, as well as author's talks, events, and exhibits to keep alive the spirit of liberty. The Society of the Cincinnati , the nation’s oldest patriotic organization, created the America...
Feb 22, 2022•35 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Professor Ashli White (University of Miami) joins us to talk about her book, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic on the impact of the Haitian Revolution in the United States in the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson administrations. We also talk about her forthcoming book, Revolutionary Things, on objects of Revolution in the United States, France, and Haiti--like the cockades worn in hats, and wax figures. Madame Tussaud opened her waxworks in London, and in Boston...
Feb 15, 2022•37 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Eric Schnitzer, military historian and park ranger at the Saratoga National Historic Park joins us to talk about the campaign of General Burgoyne and his armies--British, German, Native American, and Americans--which captured Ticonderoga and was marching on to Albany in 1777. But Burgoyne became the first British general ever to surrender his army to a foreign foe in modern times. What happened to stop them? We hear about Horatio Gates and the New England militia, Hubbardton and Bennington, and ...
Feb 08, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 6
