Playwright Patrick Gabridge uses theatre to convey the human story of the Revolution and other historic events. Through his "Plays in Place" he and actors have told the stories of the Boston Massacre in the Council Chamber of the Old State House, the decision for independence at Old North Church, as well as the stories of abolitionists and others at Mount Auburn Cemetery. The scenes are local, the human dimension is universal. He is also the author of non-historical plays, screenplays, and novel...
Oct 17, 2023•39 min•Season 4Ep. 40
Stacy Schiff's biography of Samuel Adams, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams is a milestone in Revolutionary-era biographies, and introduces a complex and engaging political character--his main focus was liberty, and he learned how to shape a revolutionary movement to secure it. Pulitzer-prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff--born in the town of Adams, Massachusetts tells us about the Samuel Adams we thought we knew, and the one we should know. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
Oct 10, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 39
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow forever etched Paul Revere's name in the pantheon of Revolutionary heroes with his poem "Paul Revere's Ride." William Dawes and Samuel Prescott have joined Revere as celebrated alarm riders of April 18, 1775. However, even the addition of those two riders does not fully tell the story of the Lexington Alarm. Alan Foulds tells us about others, including Martin Herrick of Reading, who spread the alarm on April 18 and 19 and the role of the communities of Lynn, Lynnfield ...
Oct 03, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 40
Tadeusz Kościuszko was 30 years old when he emigrated to America to join the cause in support of American Independence. The recommendation he carried from Benjamin Franklin and other friends in France earned him a Colonel's commission, and his engineering skills were especially useful as Kościuszko designed the fortifications along the Hudson River, most notably, West Point. After the War, he was active in trying to establish a free Poland, and trying to eradicate slavery in America. We talk wit...
Sep 26, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 39
In December of 1777, the 12,000 man army of General George Washington marched into Valley Forge to build a winter encampment. In addition to the soldiers, more than 400 women were in the column. They were not only the wives of senior officers but the wives of soldiers who had followed the army since it was assembled. We learn about these women, as well as others who nursed, cooked, sewed, washed and otherwise helped keep the army together from Nancy K. Loane, author of Following the Drum: Women ...
Sep 19, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 38
On December 14, 1774, John Langdon and a group New Hampshire Patriots stormed the lightly garrisoned Fort William & Mary to seize its stores of gunpowder and cannon. Sarah Vedrani tells us about the raid, about the historic events being planned in commemoration. Now Fort Constitution on an active Coast Guard base in New Castle, (the only New Hampshire town which is entirely on islands), the Fort is still worth visiting! She also tells us about the exciting happenings at Portsmouth's Strawber...
Sep 12, 2023•39 min•Season 4Ep. 37
How well do we know the Boston Tea Party? Did you know that almost as much tea landed in Charleston, South Carolina--and in Boston--as was destroyed? What happened to the tea that went to Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York? What happened to the tea from the William, that wrecked on Cape Cod? We talk with James Fichter, author of Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution 1773-1776, about the tea's arrival in places other than Boston, and how tea became a symbol and why boycotts were so diffi...
Sep 05, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 36
George and Martha Washington did not have children together, but they raised Martha's children from her first marriage and her grandchildren. Cassandra A. Good, award-winning scholar and writer, joins us to talk about this extended family, and the lives they led in the period after the Revolution. She tells their stories in her book First Family: George Washington's Heirs and the Making of America. Professor Good's first book, Founding Friendships, received the Organization of American Historian...
Aug 29, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 35
Can a fashion doll from England find happiness and friendship in Colonial America? Among the cargo carried to Boston on ships bringing "the detested tea," was a doll that has become known as the " Polly Sumner Doll " named for its original owner. She was purchased by a young woman in Boston, Polly Sumner, and her younger sister named the doll for the purchaser. For five generations children in this family played with the doll, and took her to see some historic events--the Battle of Bunker Hill a...
Aug 22, 2023•35 min•Season 4Ep. 34
We go on the road, for the first of our "Revolution 'Round the Corner" podcasts! Today we visit the Edmund Fowle House in Watertown. Built by cordwainer Edmund Fowle in 1772, it was still unfinished when the Massachusetts Provincial Congress leased it two years later to house the Provincial Council--with Boston occupied by British troops and the charter government suspended by General Gage--the elected government moved to Watertown. The Provincial Congress met in the Meeting House across the str...
Aug 15, 2023•26 min•Season 4Ep. 33
Nathanael Greene put aside his Quaker faith and successful business to lead Rhode Island troops in support of the people of Massachusetts. From the Siege of Boston to the British evacuation, Greene was in the field--as the Revolution's best strategic thinker, and Washington's designated successor. Janet Uhlar joins us to talk about the extraordinary and brief life of Nathanael Greene, which she also recounts in her book Freedom's Cost: The Story of General Nathanael Greene. Tell us what you thin...
Aug 09, 2023•45 min•Season 4Ep. 32
When the British surrendered at Yorktown, the war ended and American independence was secure. Or was it? The British still occupied Savannah, Charleston, and New York City, and the Congress was not able to pay the American army. During the two years between Cornwallis's surrender and the final British evacuation, George Washington faced one of the gravest crises in American history--an attempt by some of his officers to usurp the authority of Congress and establish themselves in power. Would Was...
Aug 01, 2023•29 min•Season 4Ep. 31
Adam Smith, born in 1723 and the father of modern economic theory, remains one of the most influential writers on markets development and state formation. He is also the author of Theory of Moral Sentiments, an examination of how people relate to one another. Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, prolific scholar of the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson, joins us to talk about Adam Smith, the Scottish enlightenment, and Revol...
Jul 25, 2023•42 min•Season 4Ep. 30
New Jersey was the "Crossroads of the American Revolution." Historian Todd Braisted's book The Grand Forage 1778 gives us insight into the events in New Jersey as both armies sought provisions and advantage. Todd Braisted also maintains the website Royal Provincial telling the stories of the New Jerseyans and others who fought for the Crown. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
Jul 18, 2023•39 min•Season 4Ep. 29
While the American Revolution brought independence to much of colonial America, the indigenous peoples of America, even those like the Oneida who supported the American cause, found themselves suffering in the new Republic. Historian James Kirby Martin joins us to talk about Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
Jul 11, 2023•46 min•Season 4Ep. 28
For this 4th of July - Iconic words. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of Happiness. Life and Liberty may be self explanatory, but what, to the minds of the Founders, was the Happiness to be Pursued? In his new book Pursuit of Happiness . President and CEO of the National Constitution Center chases down the meaning of happiness according to the men who wrote those immortal words. Tell us what you think! Send us a text message!...
Jul 04, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 27
Protests against British policy involved more than angry speeches--Amricans changed what they wore and how they bought their clothes. Kimberly Alexander from the University of New Hampshire tells us about how Americans began fashioning their own clothing. In addition to two books on fashion: Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era, and Fashioning the New England Family, which grew out of an exhibit at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Professor Alexander and her students have cre...
Jun 27, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 26
Josiah Quincy, known as "Josiah the Patriot" was one of the brilliant lights of the Revolutionary cause in Boston. He came from a well-known and well-respected family and as a young lawyer he worked with John Adams to defend Captain Thomas Preston in his trial for murder stemming from the Boston Massacre. Learn more about this impressive young man who died in 1775, depriving a soon-to-be independent America of his passion for liberty and the rights of man. Janet Uhlar, author of Liberty's Martyr...
Jun 20, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 25
Thomas Jefferson called the election of 1800 a "revolution," meaning a return to the principles of 1776. For the next twenty-four years, he and his close allies James Madison and James Monroe, would hold the office of President. How well did they do? Did their administrations fulfill the promise of the Revolution? We discuss the Jeffersonians with Kevin Gutzman, gutzman.com/ rofessor Kevin Gutzman, historian, Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University, and author of The Jeffers...
Jun 13, 2023•46 min•Season 4Ep. 24
John Hancock, the most famous signer of the Declaration of Independence, was a man of contradictions. He was a man born into privilege, and yet he became one of the most passionate voices for the rights of the common man. He was a wealthy man of business, but longed for military glory. We talk with Brooke Barbier, author of King Hancock: The Radicat Influence of a Moderate Founder, about this enigmatic figure we think we know so well. Brooke Barbier is also the founder of Ye Olde Tavern Tours, f...
Jun 06, 2023•45 min•Season 4Ep. 23
Alexander Cain joins us to talk about the impact of the Revolution's first battles on the civilians in Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy. Cain, a former practicing lawyer, now maintains the Historical Nerdery blog, and has written two books: We stood Our Ground looks at Lexington in the first year of the war; and I See Nothing but the Horrors of a Civil War looks at the position of loyalists in the first years of Revolution. In our conversation he discusses the women and children, civilians, babi...
May 30, 2023•39 min•Season 4Ep. 22
George Wythe is one of the most interesting, important, and least known of the founders. The second law professor in the English-speaking world (the first was William Blackstone), he taught the law to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and others. He also was one of the few Virginia leaders to free the people he owned, and he taught at least one Latin, Greek, and the Law before being poisoned, at the age of 80, by a jealous nephew. George Wythe, signer of the Declaration of Independenc...
May 23, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Colin G. Calloway , the John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and a professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College has led the study of Indigenous Americans. He has written more than a dozen books, including The American Revolution in Indian Country ( 1995) and The Chiefs Now in This City ( 2021) on Native Americans and early American urbanization. His 2018 The Indian World of George Washington was a finalist for the National Book Award, and received Mount Vernon's George Washin...
May 16, 2023•46 min•Season 4Ep. 20
The Oneida Nation supported the Americans in the War for Independence, an alliance that would have profound consequences for the Americans, the Oneida, and the Iroquois Confederation. James Kirby Martin, one of the Revolutionary-era's leading scholars, joins us to give the background to the Oneida's decision, in the first of two parts of a conversation on the Forgotten Allies: the Oneida in the Revolutionary War, the subject of one of Professor Martin's many books. Tell us what you think! Send u...
May 09, 2023•44 min•Season 4Ep. 19
December 20, 1777, the kingdom of Morocco became the first to recognize the United States of America as an independent and sovereign nation. We talk with Anouar Majid, Director of the University of New England's Center for Global Humanities, and the Tangier Global Forum, about the long connections between Morocco and the United States. Did you know that the only American historical site outside the United States is the Tangier American Legation Museum? We discuss this and other issues with one o...
May 02, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 18
The institution of slavery impacted American foreign relations in significant ways from the Revolution to the Civil War. Historian Steve Brady from the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences discusses these connections in his new book, Chained to History: Slavery and United States Foreign Relations to 1865 . He sits down to discuss these many connections, from Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris, to the Haitian Revolution, prohibition of the international slave trade in 1807, the War of 1812 and ...
Apr 25, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 17
What better way to commemorate Patriot's Day than the discuss with award-winning author Bob Gross his inspirational study of Concord on the eve of the American Revolution, The Minutemen and their World: 50th Anniversary Edition . First published in 1976 and long considered a touchstone in historical study, and now in a revised and expanded edition, Gross's changed how we understand the experiences of one small town on the road to American Independence, and how history is researched, written and ...
Apr 18, 2023•43 min•Season 4Ep. 16
The publication of Thomas Hutchinson's secret letters to London politicos outraged Massachusetts citizens, as Hutchinson advised the British establishment on how to suppress colonial dissent and insulted those who disagreed with British policy. Ultimately, when it was learned that Benjamin Franklin had leaked the letters, Franklin's reputation was ruined in England, and he became an undisputed revolutionary. But how did Franklin get the secret letters? Jeremy Bell, author of three books on Willi...
Apr 11, 2023•39 min•Season 4Ep. 15
George Washington's greatness is undeniable. He gave his all not only to secure the independence of the United States, but to unite them. He could not have done this without the love and support of his beloved wife Martha Washington . She joined him on his military campaigns, and kept Mount Vernon functioning during the eight years General Washington was away. Join us for a conversation with Mrs. Washington, back at Mount Vernon in April 1784, as portrayed by Sandy Spector . Tell us what you thi...
Apr 04, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Eugene Procknow has written a biography of William Hunter--son of a British sergeant who spent his childhood and teen years accompanying the British army, was taken as a prisoner of war, became a printer and returned to America in the 1790s to edit a series of newspapers in Pennsylvania and Kentucky defending freedom of the press before becoming a Jacksonian political figure. At some point Hunter sat down to write a memoir, which contains one of the few observations by a child of the war, as wel...
Mar 28, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 13
