American Political History

On January 29th, 1774, Benjamin Franklin, the most famous American in the world, stood in a Whitehall hearing room once used for cockfights and was torn apart. For more than an hour, the King’s Solici...

3 Maalis 202531min

In the spring of 1773, the most powerful corporation on earth was going bankrupt, and Parliament’s plan to save it was a shipload of cheap tea. The Tea Act would make British tea cheaper than the smug...

14 Joulu 202428min

After the Boston Massacre, the great quarrel with Britain seemed to burn out. The soldiers sailed home, the boycotts collapsed, and London congratulated itself that the trouble was over. It was not ov...

10 Loka 202329min

On the night of March 5th, 1770, 8 terrified British soldiers, pelted with ice and clubs by a Boston crowd screaming at them to fire, fired. 5 colonists died. Samuel Adams called it a massacre, and Pa...

9 Loka 202325min

When the colonists beat the Stamp Act, they drew a careful line: Parliament could tax their trade, but not reach inside the colonies for revenue. In 1767, a brilliant, reckless Chancellor of the Exche...

9 Loka 202328min

In January 1766, a gout-stricken William Pitt had himself carried into the House of Commons to tell his colleagues something no statesman of his rank had dared to say: that he rejoiced America had res...

9 Loka 202328min

In the summer of 1765, the argument over the Stamp Act came down out of the pamphlets and into the streets. This is the story of the Sons of Liberty: the Boston effigy that hung from the Liberty Tree,...

9 Loka 202329min

He was a 29-year-old backcountry lawyer in shabby clothes, nine days into his first term, in a chamber full of the most powerful men in Virginia. By the time he sat down, he had compared King George t...

9 Loka 202323min