250 and Counting

The Pennsylvania Constitution turned out to have many unique qualities, but they were so good that before long they weren’t unique anymore, because so many people copied them.

That’s not to say that everything about the Pennsylvania Constitution was unique, or even original. For instance, the document begins with a Declaration of Rights that was lifted directly from Virginia.

Regardless, there were some radical ideas in there (for that time), which clearly demonstrated that some of the authors had a little bit of an ax to grind when it came to the way thin...

The Battle of the Black Hole, also known as the Battle of Coweecho River, lasted about two hours and had surprisingly few casualties, considering its location and just how fierce the fighting was.

Colonel Andrew Williamson essentially marched into an ambush in a deep gorge, and had to fight their way out. They began by using a circular formation because they found themselves surrounded. But because they were in such a tight spot geographically, they realized that the only way out is through, as the expression goes. Williamson led a bayonet charge, which drove out the Cherokees...

Washington’s report to Congress regarding the events at Harlem Heights a couple of days earlier didn’t pull any punches with regard to how badly his army was beaten, or what mistakes he and his men might have made.

It didn’t always make for cheerful reading in Congress, but at least they knew what they were up against. They knew they weren’t getting whitewashed “Everything Is Just Peachy” reports from someone afraid of dealing with Congressional fallout.

And fortunately, Washington’s report in this case was a mixed bag of bad luck, extraordinaril...

Langdon Cheves had a bit of a rough start in life, but he managed to pull himself up and become quite the influential man in the early 1800s.

Despite the fact that few people have heard of him, Cheves was an active member of the House of Representatives, and managed to make the best of bad situations. When the 1810 embargo on European goods had the effect of collapsing rice and cotton prices, Cheves was able to channel the voters’ dissatisfaction into returning him to Congress. He was considered a War Hawk as 1812 rolled around and still managed to...

While it didn’t change the result in New York, the Battle of Harlem Heights was a tactical win for the Continental Army, and a boost to morale as well.

It was the Continental Army’s first true victory since Lexington and Concord, and after the demoralizing loss at Kip’s Bay only a day earlier, demonstrating that these soldiers (who were still little more than ordinary citizens) could, in fact, stand up successfully to the mightiest fighting force in the world.

Harlem Heights is a neighborhood to the west of Harlem, and nowadays is called...

Calling it “The Battle of Kip’s Bay” may actually be overstating it a little bit; there were 500 militamen from Connecticut in the area when the British landed, and their defenses were blown away almost immediately, after which they panicked and ran.

But I tell you all about that in the episode. This is my chance to tell you a related story, and nobody knows whether it’s true.

If you look at today’s artwork, you’ll see a piece of a map and an estate called Inclenberg, about where modern-day Murray Hill can be found. Ki...

Washington was on the brink of retreating from New York City, but he was getting pushback from some of his generals regarding how it should be done.

Fortunately for him, this Gordian Knot was cut by a letter arriving from John Hancock on behalf of the Continental Congress.

Nathanael Green and William Heath weren’t necessarily in agreement with Hancock’s recommendations, but orders are orders and everyone prepared to move out based on those.

But about a week later, something happened to render part of those orders moot.

When Patriot forces saw four ships moving into Bushwick Creek, it was ominous but probably not a huge surprise, given that the British already held Brooklyn. They put up largely token fire from their own strongholds and that was pretty much that.

Washington knew that Manhattan was next, but it wasn’t clear how the attack would come, or from where specifically, but he’d already begun the work of getting people and materials out of town, so it probably wasn’t much more than a distraction for him.

In fact, it was a distraction and a...

The Staten Island Peace Conference was a bust almost from the beginning. Not because the sides were so opposed, but because one side didn’t have the authority to do any real negotiation.

John Adams, Edward Rutledge and Benjamin Franklin had to row over from Perth Amboy, New Jersey to get to the Totten House, which is near the southernmost tip of New York State, on Staten Island. At the narrowest point I could find from the vicinity of the house, that’s nearly a half-mile across the mouth of the Arthur Kill River where it opens into...

General William Heath was around for the battle at Lexington and Concord, but you may remember him from our episode from just a few days ago. He was already a Brigadier General in Massachusetts before Lexington & Concord, and as the siege in Boston started, he worked at training the troops. When the Continental Army […]

The post More Bad News–September 10, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

First off, my apologies to you, and to Mike (because it was his episode), for not double-checking that yesterday’s episode was actually loaded into the feed. I’ve been fighting off a ridiculous sinus infection and I think my medication had me woozy. On the bright side, I’m probably sounding extra sexy in today’s episode because […]

The post The Peace Delegation–September 9, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

There are lots of images of Nathan Hale that have him looking like a middle-aged fellow, and then there are others that have him looking like some kind of idealized young man, with a prominent jaw and youthful good looks. The fact is, nobody today is 100% sure what he looked like, because no contemporaneous […]

The post Nathan Hale’s Fateful Decision–September 8, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

…but the situation was not excellent, for the American side, anyway. George Washington got a wake-up call in the form of a letter from Congress. In that letter he was told that it was not a good idea to burn down New York City; what’s more, they weren’t quite so invested in his holding the […]

The post All Under Heaven Is Chaos–September 7, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

I’ve brought this up in the past, but Maryland appears to have an extraordinary grasp of its own history, even when it comes to naming Maryland counties. As Mike notes today, Maryland has the first two counties established by local representatives, and the first counties named after popular Americans. But even in Maryland, when the […]

The post Redrawing Maryland Maps–September 6, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The American Army has evacuated Brooklyn. Reports are coming in from all over that the Loyalists are being rather sore winners over the event. Refugees are coming into Connecticut from across the Long Island Sound. George Washington, literally the last man out of Brooklyn, is trying to figure out his next move, and that of […]

The post More Brooklyn Aftermath–September 5, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

When Nicholas Emery was born, the state in which he did most of his important work didn’t yet exist. At the time of his birth, Maine was still considered part of Massachusetts, which is a vast oversimplification, since New Hampshire also had claim to a lot of this land (and that partially explains why New […]

The post Nicholas Emery–September 4, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The HMS Rose was a British ship that we first discussed a little over a year ago. Her job was largely to patrol the waters off southern New England to prevent smuggling activity on the part of the Americans. In July 1776 the Rose was dispatched—like many, many other British ships—to New York Harbor for […]

The post Down By The Bay–September 3, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

General John Sullivan had been captured only a few days before by the British, during the Battle of Long Island. Now, Mike tells us in this episode that the Howes talked him into approaching the Continental Congress with their peace offering, but equally likely is that Sullivan simply agreed to deliver the message because it […]

The post A British Offer–September 2, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

If nothing else, Ezekiel Bacon was a fairly reliable Representatvie in Congress, given how often he voted with his party, and the fact that he had a good attendance record as well. Bacon became a representative in Massachusetts when his predecessor, Barnabas Bidwell, resigned from the state legislature over irregularities in the Berkshire County books […]

The post Ezekiel Bacon–September 1, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Washington wrote two letters today: one to General William Heath, and the other to Congress. To Heath, he basically gave a little bit of an “attaboy” in agreeing with Heath’s assessment regarding the British Army’s next move. So he recommended that chevaux de frise be sunk in the waters nearby the next likely target (Huntspoint), […]

The post Washington Is Back To Business–August 31, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Even though George Washington was in charge of the whole Continental Army, he still had people to answer to. Most directly that would be the Continental Congress and that will happen very soon, but in the meantime there were also some local officials he had to placate. Which brings us to today’s episode, in which […]

The post GW Explains His Exit–August 30, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Maryland 400 (who got that name because “The Maryland 270 ” was too awkward?) was directly responsible for keeping the American losses relatively low, considering how badly the battle went for them. In the final accounting, about 300 soldiers were dead, another 650-800 were wounded and 1100 were captured. British and German casualties numbered […]

The post The Maryland Heroes–August 29, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

As we told you yesterday, Washington got the word rather late that the battle wasn’t going down the way he thought it would, largely because the Jamaica Pass, which was rarely used, was the path that most of the British Army took against the Continental Army. At the same time, they left a contingent of […]

The post The Battle Winds Down–August 28, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Battle of Long Island was one of our largest engagements with the British, and it was also the first one after the Declaration of Independence. And it was a rout; the Americans got their heads handed to them. The British took New York and they occupied it for the rest of the war. After […]

The post The Battle of Long Island–August 27, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

At this point, both George Washington and General William Howe know that they’re literally on the eve of battle, and they’re making their final preparations. The British, along with the Hessians, were making plans to move along the Jamaica Pass (it’s the road just above the Acroasis logo in today’s art), which, while they didn’t […]

The post Eve of Battle–August 26, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Like the Continental Army didn’t have enough problems with being outnumbered nearly two-to-one, now they’re looking at another five thousand Hessians landing in Brooklyn. The name “Hessians” is what they call a synecdoche; that’s when a part of something is used to refer to the whole. For instance, when we say “boots on the ground,” […]

The post More Hessians Arrive–August 25, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

That George Washington chose to add Israel Putnam to his leadership rolls in Brooklyn isn’t specifically mysterious. What is mysterious is that Putnam was added rather than used as a replacement for someone else. As a result of that move, there were essentially two men in charge on Long Island, with Putnam as the theater […]

The post Meet The New Boss–August 24, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The day after the British landed on Long Island, George Washington was disheartened to learn that army provisioning wasn’t at the level he’d expected, despite his orders only a week earlier. It was bad enough that he’d been caught a little flatfooted by both the magnitude and the direction of the British movement, now he […]

The post Reacting to Brooklyn–August 23, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

One fine Thursday morning in August of 1776, about 4000 British troops, led by General Henry Clinton and General George Cornwallis, landed at Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn. By the end of the day, their number had swelled to over 16,000. George Washington’s problem was that he only heard about the initial 4000 later that day […]

The post Landing In Brooklyn–August 22, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

When looking at historical documents related to Joseph Healy, it appears that most of them relate to Healy in a rather ancillary manner. We know how many times he voted in Congress because someone keeps tallies of everyone in Congress. We know about his family tree because he was traced back via Ancestry.com. Healy is […]

The post Joseph Healy–August 21, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

It’s been coming for at least two months, and the Battle of Long Island has finally begun. As we’ve noted a few times the past couple of days, George Washington had to make a few educated guesses about what the British were planning to do, but this left his troops thinly spread throughout Brooklyn and […]

The post The Battle Begins–August 20, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The reason that this portrait—and most of the others—of Rufus Putnam is in profile is that, when he was a child, one of his eyes was disfigured in an accident, giving it a, “outward, oblique cast.” Putnam joined the Revolutionary War effort the very first day, after the battle at Lexington and Concord. During the […]

The post Not Making It Easy–August 19, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Samuel Dunbar was born in Boston on October 2, 1704. When he was 4, his father died. At a very early age he attracted the attention of the Reverend Cotton Mather. With Mather’s guidance, Dunbar attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College. In 1727, the people of Canton reached out and sent letters of inquiry […]

The post The Declaration, In Church–August 18, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Ever the polite man, George Washington strongly urged (rather than ordered) civilians to evacuate Manhattan before the British began their attack. Washington’s biggest problem was that he knew that the British were coming, but he had no idea how they were going to do it, given that Manhattan is an island, and while Brooklyn is […]

The post Get Outta Town!–August 17, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

We’ve visited Esek Hopkins in the past, when we told you about the transgressions he committed that led to today’s activity. To be fair, when Hopkins chose to engage in the raid on Nassau, the reaction in Congress was mixed, especially at first. John Hancock was happy that the Continental Navy had seized badly-needed war […]

The post An Official Reprimand–August 16, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Nathanael Greene was among the first to step up when the shooting started at Lexington and Concord. This is almost certainly because a British official seized a vessel owned by Greene and his brothers. After the Intolerable Acts were enacted in 1774, Greene organized a militia unit called the “Kentish Guards.” Despite his leadership, he […]

The post Greene Isn’t Happy–August 15, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

John and Abigail Adams were one of the great love stories of the 18th Century, and for John to receive a letter from Abigail must have been heavenly, even if it happened nearly every day. To be sure, Abigail didn’t always have good news with regard to whatever might be happening at home, and today’s […]

The post Mail From Braintree–August 14, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Abraham Shepherd hails from Shepherdstown, West Virginia, but when he was born it was Mecklenburg, Virginia. As near as I can put it together, there were originally two large tracts of land belonging to Shepherd families; one was over 200 acres and the other was a 750-acre plot of mostly farmland. In 1776 there were […]

The post Abraham Shepherd–August 13, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Andrew Pickens was a plantation owner whose property was near Seneca, South Carolina, which is almost as far west as you can go and still be in South Carolina. As the Cherokee-American wars wore down, Pickens was able to sign peace treaties with the tribe, which was known as the Treaty of Hopewell. Meanwhile, in […]

The post Do The Fight Ring–August 12, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.