The Glorious Cause - An Army from Nothing
In July 1775, George Washington rode into Cambridge to take command of the army that would win American independence, and found that the army did not exist. What he had instead was a great armed crowd...
7 Apr 202528min
The Glorious Cause - Bunker Hill
The British called it a victory. It nearly destroyed them. On June 17th, 1775, the King’s regulars marched up a hill outside Boston three times into the muskets of New England farmers, and walked away...
31 Mar 202529min
The Long Fuse - Lexington and Concord
On the night of April 18th, 1775, General Gage sent 700 of his best soldiers on a secret march to seize the militia’s weapons at Concord. The plan depended on speed and surprise, and he had neither. T...
24 Mar 202526min
The Long Fuse - The First Continental Congress
In September 1774, 56 men from twelve colonies rode to Philadelphia and sat down together for the first time, strangers and rivals trying to discover whether they were anything more than twelve separa...
17 Mar 202528min
The Long Fuse - The Intolerable Acts
In the spring of 1774, Parliament set out to break one rebellious town. After the Boston Tea Party, the King’s ministers closed Boston’s harbor with the Royal Navy, tore up the Massachusetts charter, ...
10 Mar 202527min
The Long Fuse - The Cockpit
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 Mar 202531min
The Long Fuse - The Insult of Cheaper Tea
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 Des 202428min
The Long Fuse - Thirteen Clocks
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 Okt 202329min
