The History of the Americans

Maps of New England during King Philip's War [Attention Boston-area listeners: We will do a meet-up on Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at 5:30 at Trillium - Fort Point, 50 Thomson Pl, Boston, MA 02210. Reservation under my name. I'll also post information in a blog post on the website for the podcast, and on X and Facebook, links below. Send me an email at thehistoryoftheamericans *at* gmail if you think you can make it.] After the Great Swamp Fight, Josiah Winslow turned away overtures from the Narragansetts for a ceasefire, incorrectly believing he had the upper hand. Instead, he pursued the Narrangansetts, stumbling into the "hungry march," in which Winslow and his starving militia were lured to the north by the Narragansetts, who were moving to join the Nipmucs and the Wampanoags in attacks on Massachusetts border towns. February and March would see a string of catastrophic losses, from the English point of view, and thrilling triumphs, from the Indian point of view. Famously, the destruction of Lancaster would result in the capture of Mary Rowlandson, who would go on to write an account of her captivity that would be New England's first bestseller. By the end of March, even Providence had burned, notwithstanding a last appeal from Roger Williams, his last meaningful appearance in history. The situation in New England was desperate. As often happens, however, for the English it was darkest just before the dawn. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People James D. Drake, King Philip's War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676 George Ellis and John Morris, King Philip's War Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God

Maps of New England during King Philip's War [Attention Boston-area listeners: We will do a meet-up on Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at 5:30 at a venue TBD. I'll also post information in a blog post on the website for the podcast, and on X and Facebook, links below. Send me an email at thehistoryoftheamericans *at* gmail if you think you can make it or have a suggestion for a convenient venue, and I can respond to that when it is nailed down.] It is the fall of 1675, and "King Philip's War" rages on. The English colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut have been at war with the Wampanoag nation and its powerful allies, the Nipmucs, since late June. The Indians are beating the English everywhere, in part because the English cannot easily distinguish friendly and neutral Indians from enemies. The still neutral Narragansetts were the most powerful nation in the region. Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth did not, however, believe that the Narragansetts were in fact neutral, in part because some of their young fighters had gone rogue and joined with Nipmucs and also because the Narragansetts would not turn over Wampanoag refugees who had taken shelter in their lands. Paranoic fear of the Narragansetts would lead the New English to the most catastrophic diplomatic and military blunder in the history of European settlement up to that time. This is that story. And don't miss the "trees of death"! Errata: In this episode I describe a possible friendly fire incident late in the Great Swamp Fight in which a group of Indians emerged outside the fort and colonial militia fired upon them. A sergeant had yelled out that they were friendlies, but after hesitating Benjamin Church concluded that they weren't and had his men shoot at them, during which exchange Church himself was wounded.  I speculated that Church might have been correct, insofar as I had not read that there were Indian allies along with the thousand or so English involved in that campaign against the Narragansetts.  Within a day of posting the episode, however, I read in James Drake's excellent book from 1999, King Philip's War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676, that in there were, in fact, 150 Mohegans and Pequots there with the Connecticut Regiment. It still isn't certain that Church was wrong and the sergeant was correct, but the presence of those friendlies with Connecticut's soldiers obviously tips the balance against Church's judgment. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War Thomas Church, The History of Philip's War: Commonly Called the Great Indian War, of 1675 and 1676 The Great Swamp Fight (Wikipedia)

This is an encore presentation of a Sidebar episode we originally posted on Memorial Day 2023. It seems even more relevant today, strange as that may seem, consumed as we are now about questions of war and peace, and the role of elite universities, such as Harvard, in our own national project. On May 30 – Memorial Day — 1895, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Harvard man and then a justice on the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, delivered an address to the graduating class of 1895 in Cambridge.  The speech, known as “The Soldier's Faith,” is in and of itself fascinating substantively and also for its indirect effects. Regarding those, Theodore Roosevelt, another Harvard man, read the speech some seven years later and determined to appoint Holmes to the Supreme Court on account of it.  Beyond that, the speech is incredibly prescient, in certain respects, and eloquent, even poetic, on the question of personal courage and purpose to a degree that will seem alien to most Americans today, perhaps especially those of us who have never served. In this special episode for Memorial Day, we read (almost all of) “The Soldier's Faith” with annotations and digressions, which we hope you find worthy to reflect upon. We conclude with a look at the historical context, the United States on the brink of its own imperial moment, and the national imperative to unite North and South at the dawn of a new century. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas “The Soldier's Faith” John Pettegrew, “‘The Soldier's Faith': Turn-of-the-Century Memory of the Civil War and the Emergence of Modern American Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History, January 1996. George Root, “Just Before the Battle Mother” (YouTube)

Matthew J. Tuininga is Professor of Christian Ethics and the History of Christianity at Calvin Theological Seminary in Michigan. He is author or editor of several books, including most recently The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People, which has been an important source for this podcast's series on King Philip's War. This episode is useful context not only for our series on King Philip's War, which is still very much in progress, but also many of the other stories we've told about early New England. We talk about the intersection of religion and war in 17th century Massachusetts, the sheer difficulty of colonialism, the evolution of Puritan evangelism in the decades between the landing of Mayflower and King Philip's War, the slow development of racialist thinking, the rise of racial hostility against Indians first among the settlers on the frontier to the distress of the Puritan elites in Boston, the influence, or not, of the younger generation of settlers and Indians on the coming of the war, whether Uncas of the Mohegans was a great and shrewed leader or merely treacherous, whether King Philip's War was inevitable, the "war guilt," or not, of Samuel Mosely and Edward Hutchinson, the wisdom of John Winthrop, Jr., whether King Philip's War was "worth it" from the perspective of the settlers, the influence of the fog of war on Puritan decisions, KPW as counterinsurgency, historical myths of recent vintage that inflate Christian Indian deaths, the validity of Native American oral tradition as an historical source, and the importance of narrative history in getting people excited about history. X: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

Maps of New England during King Philip's War At the end of July 1675 two important things were happening at once. King Philip, known as Metacom to his people, and the sunksqua Weetamoo, were in flight along with at least 250 of their people.  Reports coming into the colonial militias in the Fall River area suggested that Philip and Weetamoo intended to cross the Providence River and head for Nipmuc country. Farther north, at almost exactly the same time, Massachusetts Bay Colony had heard rumors that the Nipmucs had joined, or were soon to join, King Philip's Wampanoags. The Nipmucs occupied the strategically important territory between the settled towns of Massachusetts Bay near Boston and places like Springfield on the Connecticut River.  From the Bay's point of view, it was important to determine whether the Nipmucs were in the war or would remain neutral. Since Edward Hutchinson had succeeded in extracting a purported treaty from the Narragansetts, Massachusetts dispatched him into Nipmuc country with Thomas Wheeler and twenty horsemen to do the same. Sadly for all the people of New England, Hutchinson and Wheeler would set in motion a chain of events that would cause this awful war to spread everywhere in the region east of the Connecticut River. The New English would find themselves waging a brutal counterinsurgency, with all the tactical problems of irregular war in our own time. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

This is the second of two "Sidebar" episodes in honor of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride, which we will celebrate on the night of April 18 by putting two lights in a window of our house.  Last time we explored the prelude to the ride in the months before the final crisis that triggered the march of the British "Regulars" on Lexington and Concord. This episode is the story of Paul Revere's "midnight" ride on the night of April 18-19, 1775, including the famous lanterns of Old North Church, the fraught trip across the Charles River under the guns of HMS Somerset, his spectacular horse Brown Beauty (one of the great equine heroes of American history), the "waking up the institutions of New England" that night in raising the alarm not just on the road to Lexington and Concord but throughout eastern New England, and his astonishing capture and release. And, sure, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott. Maps of Paul Revere's Ride X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride John Hancock's Trunk o' Papers

April 18, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's "Midnight Ride" to alarm the towns around Boston that the "Regulars" were marching out to capture artillery and ammunition at Concord, or perhaps to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock. This was but the last of a series of crises that rocked New England in the months before the midnight ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord the next day. This episode explores those crises, known as the "Powder Alarms," and Paul Revere's central role in the resistance movement among Boston Whigs - including the famous Sons of Liberty - during those fraught years before the shooting began. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride Portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Paul Revere's Ride" Intolerable Acts Thomas Gage

It is July 1675 in New England. On June 23, fighting men of the Wampanoag nation and of Plymouth Colony had begun killing each other and enemy civilians in earnest. The question was whether this still small conflict would remain a local and short dust-up within Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag lands encompassed by the colony's borders as defined by the New Englanders, or would it spread more widely? That question was very quickly answered – the wildfire of King Philip's War would spread to encompass virtually all of New England east of the Connecticut River and up the coast of Maine. This episode explains how it happened. The image for this episode on the website is a drawing of King Philip - Metacom - by Paul Revere, who 250 years ago today (April 8, 1775), was riding to Concord to warn the locals, not yet on the famous Midnight Ride but on a false alarm that turned out to be an unplanned dress rehearsal. Maps of New England during King Philip's War X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

After Massasoit's death in 1660 or 1661, his son Wamsutta became sachem of the Pokonoket community and the leading sachem of the Wampanoag confederation, and early on he followed Algonquian custom and changed his name.  He asked the men of Plymouth Colony, longstanding allies of his nation, to give him an English name, and they proposed Alexander.  His brother Metacom also took an English name, Philip. Alexander would soon die under circumstances that deeply concerned the Wampanoags, and his brother Metacom, now known to the English as King Philip, assumed the paramount sachemship. During the 1660s and 1670s, a series of crises would degrade the now fifty year alliance between Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag confederation, with war narrowly averted in 1671. Then, in early 1675, the Harvard-educated Christian Indian John Sassamon would be found dead, murdered by someone. Plymouth prosecuted and executed three Wampanoag men on scanty evidence, a violation of Philip's sovereignty. Misunderstandings piled on top of outrage, and pressure built on both Philip and the Plymouth authorities to mobilize. The deputy governor of Rhode Island tried to broker peace, but events moved too fast. On June 23, 1673, the war began. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War Jill LePore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People John Easton, A Relation of the Indian War (pdf) Philip Ranlet, “Another Look at the Causes of King Philip's War,” The New England Quarterly, March 1988.

This episode looks at the background causes of the brutal war between the New English colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut and their indigenous allies against a tribal alliance including both the Wampanoags and the Narragansetts between 1675 and 1678. King Philip's War is the most widely used name of that bloody and arguably existential war. In surveys of American history, it is often the only event between the founding of Jamestown, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay and the end of the 17th century that rates more than a sentence or two. This is for good reason, insofar as King Philip's War changed the trajectory of New England's history. It is thought to be the bloodiest war in American history as a proportion of the affected population. As many as 1000 colonists died, including perhaps 10 percent of the English men of military age. Three thousand Indians were killed, and as many as a thousand were sold into slavery abroad. The war altered the relationship between the European colonists and the Indians of the region to a far greater degree than the Pequot War or any of the other conflicts that had preceded it, shattered the military and cultural power of New England's most powerful indigenous nations, and so devastated the English that by some estimates per capita wealth in the region did not return to the level of 1675 until the eve of the American Revolution a century later.  The New England frontier, for better or worse, did not advance for forty years after King Philip's War. Suffice it to say, we should understand the issues that broke the long peace in the summer of 1675, almost exactly 350 years ago. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War Jill LePore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People Pekka Hämäläinen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America Philip Ranlet, "Another Look at the Causes of King Philip's War," The New England Quarterly, March 1988.

This episode ties up the loose ends that remained at the end of the expedition of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673. Among other things, we explore the ultimate fate of Jolliet's optimistic vision that a canal could bridge the continental divide in Illinois, allowing sailing ships to travel from Lake Erie all the way to the Gulf. Along the way we learn all sorts of factoids, including the fate of the Carolina Parakeet, snippits from the earliest history of Chicago, including the origin of the name of that city, and the resolution of Marquette's pervasive gastrointestinal issues. [Errata: About five minutes along I saw that Jolliet arrived at Quebec about July 29, 1673. Should have been1674. Oops.] X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Mark Walczynski, Jolliet and Marquette: A New History of the 1673 Expedition John William Nelson, Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent  Francis Borgia Steck, The Jolliet-Marquette Expedition, 1673 (pdf) Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

In the summer of 1673, two now famous Frenchmen and five others who are all but nameless traveled by canoe from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac to central Arkansas on the western bank of the Mississippi River, and then back again. Louis Jolliet was a new sort of Frenchman, a natural born North American, having come into this world in Quebec in 1645, now a fur trader and voyageur. Jacques Marquette was the more usual sort, having been born in France in 1637.  By the time of the expedition Marquette was a Jesuit priest, long known to the nations of North America as a “Black Robe.” The episode begins with an overview of New France in the years between Samuel de Champlain's death in 1635 and 1661, when it languished because the Five Nations of the Iroquois had it entirely bottled up. The expedition was a marker of New France's rapid expansion after King Louis XIV began to rule in his own right that year. Along the way, our heroes become the first Europeans to visit Iowa (Go Hawks!), see some extraordinary painted monsters, learn the importance of the calumet, and find a short portage in the eastern continental divide at a place soon to be called Chicago. Map of the route (visible in the shownotes for the episode on the website), credit Illinois State Museum X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Mark Walczynski, Jolliet and Marquette: A New History of the 1673 Expedition Francis Borgia Steck, The Jolliet-Marquette Expedition, 1673 (pdf) Piasa "monsters" (Wikipedia) Carignan-Salières Regiment (Wikipedia) Beaver Wars (Wikipedia)

This is the last of a three-episode series on the Dutch "raid on America" in 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest of the Admiralty of the Dutch province of Zeeland - "Kees the Devil" - and a privateer named Jacob Benckes had pillaged English possessions in the Indies. By late June 1673 their fleet of at least 12 ships was sailing to the Chesapeake Bay, where the year's crop of tobacco from Virginia and Maryland had been loaded on merchant ships to sail by convoy to England. Arriving there on July 10, Evertsen and Benckes fought two English warships in the second Battle of the James River, and captured or destroyed thousands of hogsheads of tobacco. As they left with their haul, they grabbed a ketch with, among other people, a couple of the New Jersey rebels on board. They gave Evertsen important intelligence about the shoddy defenses of New York. By the end of July, only three weeks after arriving at the Chesapeake, Kees the Devil would reconquer New Netherland. But not before a brave English soldier got decapitated by a cannon ball. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Donald G. Shomette and Robert D. Haslach, Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672-1674 John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke's Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664-1691 Battle of the James River (1667) (Wikipedia)

This is the second of three episodes about a daring Dutch raid on the West Indies and the English colonies of North America during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The extended raid, led by Commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest of the Admiralty of the Dutch province of Zeeland and a privateer named Jacob Benckes, was a sideshow in that war, yet its consequences were far-reaching.  Among other accomplishments, Evertsen, known to his fans as Kees the Devil, and Benckes, “subdued three English colonies, depopulated a fourth, captured or destroyed nearly 200 enemy vessels, inflicted a serious injury upon the Virginia tobacco trade, wiped out the English Newfoundland fisheries, and caused unending panic in the New England colonies.” This episode covers the first phase of the "raid on America," in which Evertsen's squadron sails from Zeeland for the South Atlantic, aiming to capture the English East India fleet at St. Helena. Failing that, the squadron sailed for South America and the Indies, eventually meeting up with Benckes at Martinique. After capturing prizes and burning down St. Eustatius, the episode ends with Evertsen and Benckes headed toward the rich tobacco fleet then gathering in the Chesapeake. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Donald G. Shomette and Robert D. Haslach, Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672-1674 Map of the land campaign against the United Provinces in the Third Anglo Dutch War: Third Anglo-Dutch War (Wikipedia) Cornelis Evertsen The Youngest (Wikipedia) The Fifth Column Podcast

This is the first of two or three episodes - your podcaster hasn't decided yet -- about a daring Dutch raid on the West Indies and the English colonies of North America during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The extended raid, led by Commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest of the Admiralty of the Dutch province of Zeeland and a privateer named Jacob Benckes, was a sideshow in that war, yet its consequences were far-reaching.  Among other accomplishments, Evertsen, known to his fans as Kees the Devil, and Benckes, "subdued three English colonies, depopulated a fourth, captured or destroyed nearly 200 enemy vessels, inflicted a serious injury upon the Virginia tobacco trade, wiped out the English Newfoundland fisheries, and caused unending panic in the New England colonies.”  They recovered New York for the Dutch to the great if fleeting joy of much of its citizenry, and so demoralized the English that Parliament turned against the war and forced Charles II to sue for peace. The story is best understood in the context of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, which have been in the background of many of our episodes. This episode, therefore, is a primer on the first two Anglo-Dutch wars, and the run-up to the third, which will feature in the next episode. Map of the Low Countries at the relevant time (note the corrider denoted the "Bishopbric of Leige" connecting the Dutch Republic to France): X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Useful background episode: https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/the-fall-of-new-amsterdam-and-the-founding-of-new-york/ Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Donald G. Shomette and Robert D. Haslach, Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672-1674 C. R. Boxer, "Some Second Thoughts on the Third Anglo-Dutch War, 1672-1674," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1969. Third Anglo-Dutch War (Wikipedia) Four Days Battle (Wikipedia) Raid on the Medway (Wikipedia)

In 1672, the settlers of the New Jersey proprietary colony arose in a bloodless rebellion against Philip Carteret, appointed by the proprietors as governor. The wannabe rebels formed an illegal legislature, and installed Captain James Carteret as "president," putting them in conflict with Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, James's father. The conflict had to do with taxes, quitrents, and title to land. John Ogden, ancestor of your podcaster, emerged as a key player in the "popular party." By the summer of 1673, the proprietors, with the help of the Duke of York and King Charles II, had put down the rebellion. James, now virtually disowned by his father, fled to Carolina, but along the way would be captured by the Dutch captain Cornelis Evertson the Youngest, known to his many fans as "Kees the Devil." James, or one of his resentful allies, would describe the defenses of New York to Evertson, setting up the Dutch reconquest of New York. X/Twitter – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – The History of the Americans Podcast – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Useful background: https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/ohhhh-whaddabout-new-jersey/ Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary James Carteret: The Black Sheep (Interesting blog post on James Carteret)

The first English settlers in today's South Carolina departed England in August, 1669, but would not actually get to the coast of Carolina until April and May the next year. Along the way they would lose ships to hurricanes and incompetence, and get into a firefight with Spaniards and their Indian allies on an island off the coast of Georgia. An unknown number would die on an island in the Bahamas. And, yet, once on the banks of the Ashley River, the first English South Carolinians would lose only 12% of their population in their first 18 months, a record of survival in the first "seasoning" year matched only by Maryland in the 17th century. X/Twitter - @TheHistoryOfTh2 - https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook - The History of the Americans Podcast - https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website - https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/the-first-english-settlement-of-south-carolina/) Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Proprietary Government 1670-1719 L. H. Roper, Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots 1662-1729 George Bancroft, History of the United States of America: From the Discovery of the Continent Alexander S. Salley, Jr., Narratives of Early Carolina 1650-1708 (Includes narrative of Maurice Mathews) Letter from Henry Woodward to Sir John Yeamans, September 10, 1670 J. Leitch Wright, Jr., "Spanish Reaction to Carolina," The North Carolina Historical Review, October 1964.

Notwithstanding the promising expeditions of William Hilton and Robert Sandford, by the end of 1666, with the Carolina proprietors waging war with the Netherlands and contending with plague and fire in London, the Carolina project was on the brink of failure. Then the youngest proprietor stepped forward; the venture received new vigor under the leadership of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley. With his friend and confidant John Locke, Lord Ashley would develop a fantastically – some would say hilariously - detailed plan of government for Carolina that would never be put into effect, but which would inspire and confound historians and even be cited by courts into our own time, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.  This episode is about Ashley, Locke, and those strange Fundamental Constitutions. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) George Bancroft, History of the United States of America: From the Discovery of the Continent Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Proprietary Government 1670-1719 L. H. Roper, Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots 1662-1729 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, March 1, 1669 Jennifer Welchman, "Locke on Slavery and Inalienable Rights," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, March 1995. John Locke

Spaniards had been in South Carolina off and on since perhaps 1514, and certainly by 1521. Even in the 1660s Spaniards occasionally came up the coast to trade and visit Santa Helena on Parris Island, which had largely been abandoned to Indians. As late as 1663, however, the English had not explored even the coast of the future Palmetto State. That would change after the granting of the Carolina Proprietary in March 1663. In 1663 and 1666, two expeditions from Barbados, then perhaps the wealthiest corner of the nascent English empire, would explore coastal South Carolina, and set the stage for the first surviving English settlement on that coast, the town of Charleston in 1670. This is the story of those two expeditions, the first by William Hilton, after whom Hilton Head was quickly named, and the second by Robert Sandford, who named the Ashley River. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Proprietary Government 1670-1719 L. H. Roper, Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots 1662-1729 Alexander S. Salley, Jr., Narratives of Early Carolina 1650-1708 (Includes narratives of William Heaton and Robert Sandford) Charles Towne John Vassall John Yeamans Cape Fear Settlements William Hilton Bermuda Sloop Henry Woodward

New Jersey is something of a puzzle, especially as a matter of early colonial history.  The future Garden State rates barely a mention in most surveys of American history until it becomes a primary battleground of the American Revolution.  That happens, however, not because of anything in New Jersey that was particularly worth defending in and of itself, but because of its location between the two most important cities in English North America in 1776, New York and Philadelphia.  But even that is puzzling.  One look at the map tells us that New Jersey is fundamentally a big fat peninsula between the two most commercially important rivers of mid-17th century North America – the lower Hudson and the Delaware.  It certainly seems strategic. It is therefore a little surprising that it was not settled in any meaningful way until after most of lower New England, Long Island, New York, Maryland, and Virginia. With few exceptions, the Dutch settled on the east bank of the Hudson, and the Swedes on the west bank of the Delaware.  New Jersey did not come in for meaningful European settlement until after the Duke of York took over New Netherland, and even then took ages to really get off the ground. Why was that? This episode answers that question! Selected references for this episode John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey, to and With All and Every the Adventurers and All Such as Shall Settle or Plant There George Carteret Ohhhhh! The New Jersey Game Show (SNL)

In recognition of the holiday(s),* this is a revision of one of the podcast's earliest episodes, Introduction to the Columbian Exchange. The "Columbian Exchange" refers to the interhemispheric transmission of diseases, food crops, populations, cultures, and technologies in the years after Columbus's famous First Voyage. The term was invented in 1972 by the famous biological historian Alfred W. Crosby Jr. of the University of Texas at Austin. The original episode focuses on the impact of diseases and crops that moved from one hemisphere to the other following 1492. It is replete with interesting factoids! The revisions include thoughts on the human consequences, including to the indigenous peoples of the Americans and Africans swept up in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how we might think about it now. *I think you know what I'm saying here. To each his own. Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650 Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas” University of Zurich, “Syphilis May Have Spread Through Europe Before Columbus”

This blessedly short episode encapsulates the types of English colonial government in the 17th and 18th centuries, which were chartered corporations, proprietary "counties palatine," and royal colonies directly ruled by the Crown through a governor and advisors. Technically abstruse as these distinctions may have been, they would become increasingly important starting in the 1670s, and will be useful background for much of what comes next. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Links to selected English-American charter documents Charter of Massachusetts Bay, March 4, 1629 Charter of the Colony of New Plymouth Granted to William Bradford and His Associates, 1629 Sir Robert Heath's Patent for Carolana, October 30, 1629 The Charter of Maryland, June 20, 1632 Charter of Carolina, March 24, 1663 Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, July 15, 1663 Charter for the Province of Pennsylvania, February 20, 1681 Avalon Project 17th Century Documents

David T. Beito's most recent book, and the subject of this conversation, is The New Deal's War On the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance (buy it through the link!), published by the Independent Institute in 2023. The presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal have now largely passed from living memory.  When I was in junior high school in the 1970s, however, many of the teachers had not only lived through the New Deal but remembered it as an almost sacred moment.  We watched scratchy black-and-white movies in class about the great success of FDR's New Deal in ending the Great Depression, the soundtrack blaring with “Happy Days Are Here Again.”  David Beito's book is about the dark side of all that, the almost crazy abuse of American civil liberties under FDR's administration.  FDR's Congressional allies, including future Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and Sherman Minton, rifled through individual tax returns and more than 3 million Western Union telegrams to find dirt on outspoken opponents of the New Deal. They proposed criminalizing "false" news. They used regulatory power and private coercion to drive virtually any criticism of the New Deal from the new medium of radio.  And, finally, they put more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps built by the famous Works Progress Administration, and kept them there long after any argument for military necessity had passed.  And that isn't the end of it by any means! And please listen to the last part, in which we discuss the frosty even if perhaps unsurprising silence with which academic historians have responded to David's excellent book. Listen on Apple, if you prefer, or Spotify. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 and Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In August 1664, an English fleet acting under the orders of James, Duke of York, the brother of King Charles II, materialized off Manhattan and forced the bloodless surrender of New Amsterdam and New Netherland. It is easy - too easy - to conclude that this was inevitable because New England had roughly 17 times the population of New Netherland. It was in fact a foundational move in the construction of the English empire of the 17th century, and the product of the machinations of first cousins in conspiracy with each other: Sir George Downey, the "second" graduate of Harvard College and one of the most devious people in English politics ever, and John Winthrop the Younger, the pious Governor of Connecticut Colony, son of the leader of the Puritan Great Migration, and a stone cold operator of the first order. In the end, Peter Stuyvesant was out of moves. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America J. Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 Richard Nicolls, Proposed Terms for the Surrender of New Netherland Grant of March 12, 1664 from Charles II to his brother, James, Duke of York L. H. Roper, "The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654-1676," The New England Quarterly, December 2014. Jonathan Scott, "'Good Night Amsterdam': Sir George Downing and Anglo-Dutch Statebuilding," The English Historical Review, April 2003. Steve Martin, "Mad at my Mother," Let's Get Small. List of most populous cities in the United States by decade (Very interesting Wikipedia page if you love data and history)

While the English were consolidating their territory on most of the eastern seaboard of North America in the 1600s, Spanish Florida plugged along with its sole city at St. Augustine, with little European population growth. That simple fact obscures remarkable changes in the civil society of the future Sunshine State. From the 1570s, after the Jesuits had given up, until the 1720s, a small band of Franciscan friars, at no time numbering more than around fifty, built a network of wood and thatched missions throughout the region. They converted tens of thousands of Florida Indians to Catholicism, many practicing with such diligence that a visiting Frenchman wrote that the Apalachee were “scarcely distinguishable [in their practices] from Europeans who had been Christians for centuries.”  The relationship between the Franciscans in Florida and the indigenous peoples was not only different than anywhere in English or Dutch North America, it was different from everywhere else in the Spanish New World, including New Mexico at the same time, and California and Texas in the following century. As a result, the relationship between the Spanish and the Indians of Florida was symbiotic, one of shared religion, trade, and mutual support rather than conquest. Unfortunately, it would all fall apart when the English Carolinians marched south looking for people to enslave. Map of Spanish Missions in Florida 1560s - 1720s: X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Michael Gannon (ed), The History of Florida Wreck of the La Nuestra Senora de Atocha

We are back to Spanish Florida after a long hiatus, with the story of St. Augustine, La Florida after the founding of the city and the slaughter of the Huguenots at Fort Caroline until the construction of the Castillo de San Marcos in the 1670s. The city would almost fail, and in 1607 the Spanish Crown ordered that it be shut down and that Spain withdraw from Florida all together. That order would be promptly rescinded when the English landed at Jamestown. It is a story of courageous Catholic evangelism, Indian wars, relentless epidemics, and pirates, climaxing in the raid of the dread pirate Robert Searles in 1668. That attack would, ironically, result in a renewed commitment by the Spanish government to sustaining the city which would ensure its long-term survival as the oldest continuing town in the United States. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Carrie Gibson, El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America Michael Gannon (ed), The History of Florida Susan Richbourg Parker, "St. Augustine in the Seventeenth-Century: Capital of La Florida," The Florida Historical Quarterly, Winter 2014 Diana Reigelsperger, "Pirate, Priest, and Slave: Spanish Florida in the 1668 Searles Raid," The Florida Historical Quarterly, Winter 2014 List of Cuba–United States aircraft hijackings

In March 1663, after 97 years of failed attempts by first the Spanish and then the English to establish settlements in North Carolina, King Charles II granted eight aristocrats a vast territory extending from the coast of today's North and South Carolina to the Pacific Ocean. These eight Lords Proprietor - George, Duke of Albemarle; Edward, Earl of Clarendon; William, Lord Craven; John, Lord Berkeley; Anthony, Lord Ashley; Sir George Carteret; Sir William Berkeley, who was again the governor of Virginia; and Sir John Colleton - would almost unwittingly authorize in their new colony a remarkably free and democratic society of small farmers, rivaled only by Roger Williams' Rhode Island in its respect for individual liberty. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729 Noeleen McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713 George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Vol. 1 Charter of Carolina - March 24, 1663 Charter of Carolina - June 30, 1665

On July 29, 2024, President Joe Biden visited The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The President referred to LBJ as "master of the Senate," which reminded me of the opening pages of Robert Caro's book of the same name. That introduction is itself a masterful description of the suppression of Black voters in the South, the meaning of voting, the history of the Senate, its historical resistance to civil rights, and LBJ's role in changing all that. It is also filled with interesting observations about timeless aspects of American politics, and since I enjoyed re-reading it I'm going to read it for you with some annotations along the way.  Oh, and it turns out that President Biden, who knows a thing or two about the Senate, left a few things out for the audience in Austin. Finally, I again recorded early in the morning outside in the Adirondacks, so there are a lot of tweeting birds in the background. Non-birdie recording will resume next time. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vol. 3) Remarks by President Biden Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act | Austin, TX The other volumes in Caro's biography (I highly recommend the first two, and haven't yet read the fourth): The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vol. 1) Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vol. 2) The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vol. 4)

In the early 1660s, a motley crew of free-thinkers, republican veterans of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, and Quakers would build the freest place in all the English world, the County of Albemarle in northeastern North Carolina. Protected from the north, and incursions by Virginia royalists, by the Great Dismal Swamp, from the east by the treacherous waters of the Outer Banks, and from Indians by the skilled diplomacy of fur trader Nathaniel Batts, the settlers would prosper as small farmers and free tradesmen. Their leaders would include John Jenkins, veteran of Fendall's Rebellion in Maryland, and a dissident Virginian planter and sheriff named William Drummond. Together they would resist attempts by the proprietors to exert control over their land and lives, and would extend the franchise to all free Englishmen in the colony. This is their story. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Noeleen McIlvenna, Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640-1700  Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729 Albemarle County, North Carolina Francis Yeardley Map of Albemarle County in context

Early North Carolina, originally part of a territory called Carolana, is all but ignored in most surveys of American history.  After a fast start – both the Spanish and the English had short-lived settlements there in the 16th century before anywhere north of the future Tar Heel State had been settled by Europeans – a long period of failure followed until the late 1650s, when it hosted a quirky rural society of free-thinkers, democratically-inclined veterans of the New Model Army, and Quakers. In this overview episode we'll bring together those long decades of failure!  Longstanding and attentive listeners will have passing familiarity with some of this, having heard it in bits and pieces since very nearly the beginning of this podcast, but since I benefited from reviewing it I thought you might too. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729 Lindley S. Butler, "The Early Settlement of Carolina: Virginia's Southern Frontier," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Jan. 1971 Sir Robert Heath

Late in the morning on June 7, 1663, soldiers of the Esopus Indians attacked the fortified Dutch settlements of New Village – now Hurley, New York – and Wildwyck, now Kingston.  New Village was fundamentally destroyed.  Wildwyck, more populous and better defended, fought off the attack but not before suffering grievous casualties.  At New Village, three Dutch men were killed, and 34 women and children were taken captive and carried away.  In Wildwyck, twelve men, including three of the garrison soldiers, died immediately, along with two children.  Eight more men were injured, including one who died a few days later of his wounds, and the Esopus Indians took ten women and children prisoner. So began the Second Esopus War. Map of the Indian nations and language groups in the area, discussed in the opening minutes of the episode: Selected references for this episode (Commission earned on Amazon links) Martin Kregier, Journal of the Second Esopus War (Translation of the diary kept by the captain of the Dutch military response to the attacks at the New Village and Wildwyck) Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History Marc B. Fried, The Early History of Kingston & Ulster County, N.Y.

Amanda Bellows is a U.S. historian who teaches at The New School, a university in New York City. She is the author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, and a new book that is the subject of this interview, The Explorers: A New History of America in Ten Expeditions. Amanda received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Explorers is a series of biographical essays of people most of you have heard of – Sacagawea, John Muir, and Amelia Earhart – and people most of you haven't heard of – James Beckwourth, Matthew Henson and William Sheppard – sewn together with the common theme of exploration. The book had come recommended to me by a couple of fans of the podcast so I jumped at the chance to have Amanda on.  I learned a lot from The Explorers, and of course have a link in the show notes on the website if you want to buy it after hearing our conversation. Books mentioned in the episode (Commission earned) Amanda Bellows, The Explorers: A New History of America in Ten Expeditions Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Errata: Jean Nicolet went to Green Bay in 1634, not 1624 as I said toward the end of the episode.

Just before dawn on September 15, 1655, the same day Pieter Stuyvesant would extract the surrender of New Sweden on the Delaware River, more than 500 Indians of various tribes from along the Hudson paddled more than sixty canoes to New Amsterdam in lower Manhattan. They ran through town shrieking and vandalizing, but neither Dutchman nor Indian was harmed until the Indians were about to leave after having met with the city council. Then somebody shot and wounded Hendrick van Dyck with an arrow, and the Dutch militia, under the command of a drunken and incompetent officer, opened fire on the retreating Indians.  Three on each side died in the skirmish. The Indians retaliated.  Over the next few days, attacks on Staten Island and and in New Jersey would take fifty Dutch lives and more than 100 European prisoners. So began "The Peach Tree War," which was followed by two even more violent wars at the settlement of Esopus, in today's Kingston, New York. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website) Marc B. Fried, The Early History of Kingston & Ulster County, N.Y. D. L. Noorlander, Heaven's Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America--The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 Jaap Jacobs, “'Hot Pestilential and Unheard-Of Fevers, Illnesses, and Torments': Days of Fasting and Prayer in New Netherland," New York History, Summer/Fall 2015.

For more than twenty years, the Puritan colonies of New England - Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven - would do their utmost to gain control of Rhode Island, Roger Williams's refuge committed to "soul liberty." They hated his nest of heretics on their border, and they coveted Rhode Island's arable land. The Puritan New Englanders would try everything short of military conquest, from subversion, to legal and military attacks on the Narragansetts, Rhode Island's closest indigenous allies, to political maneuvering in London. At every turn, Williams would outfox them, finally obtaining a charter from Charles II that definitively established absolute religious liberty in Rhode Island, and mandated a "democratical" form of government. Rhode Island under Williams would become the freest place in the English world, and Rhode Islanders would defend their freedoms even after Williams was no longer in their government. This is that story. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (Commission earned) James A. Warren, God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England (Commission earned) Joshua J. Monk, "Roger Williams' A Letter to the Town of Providence" Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, "'Naked as a sign'. How the Quakers invented nudity as a protest," Clio. Women, Gender, History, June 2021.

Kenneth W. Porter, writing in The New England Quarterly in 1934, said that “Samuell Gorton could probably have boasted that he caused the ruling element of the Massachusetts Bay Colony more trouble over a greater period of time than any other single colonist, not excluding those more famous heresiarchs, Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams.”  As we shall see, he was charismatic, eloquent in speech, and often very funny in the doing of it, although nobody much considered him a laugh riot at the time. Gorton would, for example, address the General Court of Massachusetts, men not known for their happy-go-lucky ways, as "a generation of vipers, companions of Judas Iscariot." And yet Gorton (who spelled his first name "Samuell") would be second only to Roger Williams in shaping the civic freedom of Providence and Rhode Island. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Useful background: "Roger Williams Saves Rhode Island," The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Kenneth W. Porter, "Samuell Gorton: New England Firebrand," The New England Quarterly, September 1934. John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Commission earned) Michelle Burnham, "Samuel Gorton's Leveller Aesthetics and the Economics of Colonial Dissent," The William and Mary Quarterly, July 2010. Philip F. Gura, "The Radical Ideology of Samuel Gorton: New Light on the Relation of English to American Puritanism," The William and Mary Quarterly, January 1979. Samuel Gorton (Wikipedia)

[There will be a meet-up of Houston-area fans next Friday, May 17, 2024, from 4-7 (or maybe later) at the Saint Arnold Brewing Company Beer Garden, 2000 Lyons Ave, Houston, TX 77020.  They don't make reservations, but it is a big place with lots of tables. I'll try to get there a bit early and grab a table, at which point I will post a selfie confirming my presence on X and Facebook and such.  Let me know if you think you can make it by email, the contact page on the website, or DM on X or Facebook!] This episode is about a radically democratic political movement in Maryland in the 1650s. Veterans of the New Model Army, many of whom had been swimming in political movements like the Levellers, came to Maryland and joined with other Protestants chafing under Catholic and aristocratic rule. Blood would be shed at the Battle of the Severn, and in the aftermath Lord Baltimore would install a man named Josias Fendall as the fourth governor of his proprietary colony. Fendall, it would turn out, decided he agreed with the populists, and led a legislative revolution that, for a time, would make Maryland the most politically radical government, other than in Rhode Island, anywhere in the English world. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Primary reference for this episode Noeleen McIlvenna, Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640-1700 (Commission earned)

In May 1660, Oliver Cromwell now dead, Charles II was restored as King of England. The 59 judges who in 1649 had signed the death warrant of the king's father, Charles I, were declared regicides, and exempted from the general amnesty Charles II offered to most people who had opposed his father. Some of the regicides were caught immediately and most gruesomely executed.  Others fled to Europe.  Three of them fled to New England.  Their names were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell. This is their story, an epic tale of bounty-hunting across old New England, a tale woven with the anti-Royalist attitude of the Puritans and concern for their status after the Restoration. And, of course, there is the mysterious "Ghost of Hadley," a depiction of which is the art for the episode on the website for the podcast. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel Matthew Jenkinson, Charles I's Killers in America: The Lives & Afterlives of Edward Whalley & William Goffe Christopher Pagluico, The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut

This is the story of the New Haven Colony from 1643 until is absorption by Connecticut in 1664. We look at the colony's economic, military, and geopolitical successes and disasters, and the famous story of the "Ghost Ship," perhaps the most widely witnessed supernatural event in early English North America. Finally, confronted with the restoration of the Stuarts in England, the Puritan colonies of New England, the greatest supporters of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, struggle to establish their legitimacy under the monarchy. Connecticut Colony secures a charter from Charles II, and through a series of power plays absorbs New Haven Colony and puts an end to its theocratic government of the Elect. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut First Anglo-Dutch War (Wikipedia) The United Colonies of New England I: The New England Confederation Begins (1643-1652) (Apple podcasts link) The United Colonies of New England II: Confederation or Absorption (1644-1690) (Apple podcasts link)

Of the organized Puritan settlements in New England in the first half of the 17th century – Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut being foremost – the New Haven Colony was in some respects the most peculiar.  It was probably the wealthiest of the four United Colonies of New England on a per capita basis, the most insistent on religion's role in civil governance, and the least democratic, being, basically, not democratic.  The men who founded it, Theophilus Eaton and the Reverend John Davenport, had great expectations and ambitions for spiritual communion and commercial profit, most of which would come to naught. It would survive as an independent colony less than 25 years. This is the story of its founding, at a place called Quinnipiac. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, History of the Colony of New Haven, Before and After the Union With Connecticut

Dr. James Horn is President and Chief Officer of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia) at Historic Jamestowne.  Previously, he has served as Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Saunders Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and taught for twenty years at the University of Brighton, England.  He has been a Fulbright Scholar and held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, the College of William and Mary, and Harvard University.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  A leading scholar of early Virginia and English America, Dr. Horn is the author and editor of numerous books and articles including three that we have leaned on extensively in this podcast, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America; 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy; and most recently A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. (I'll get a little tip if you buy them through the links above.) Our conversation focuses on the extraordinary life of Opechancanough, the fascinating man who twice led the Powhatan Confederacy in wars to expel English settlers from the James River and the Chesapeake.  As longstanding and attentive listeners know, Opechancanough may or may not have been the same man as Paquiquineo, taken by the Spanish in the Chesapeake in 1561, received in the court of Philip II, christened Don Luis de Velasco in Mexico City, and returned to his homeland in 1570. Jim persuades me that Opechancanough was, in fact, the same man.  Along the way I learn, a bit too late, how to pronounce various names properly. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In order to understand the history of English North America during the 1640s to the 1660s, one really needs to know at least something about the English Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts in 1661. This episode is a high level look at that period, oriented toward the events and themes most important to the history of the Americans. But there are still some great details, including a graphic description of the execution of Charles I, and an elegy of sorts, to Sir Henry Vane! It must be said that British listeners and others who know a lot about this period will no doubt find this overview tediously shallow and rife with rank generalizations and even error.  Guilty as charged. The American analogy would be to cover the years between the run-up to our own Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South in one podcast episode. Absurd! And yet here it is. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on the Amazon links) Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689 George Bancroft, History of the United States of America (Vol 1) Robert Morris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel Elvis Costello, "Oliver's Army" (YouTube)

It is the late 1640s. More than forty years before the famous witch hunt in Salem, William Pynchon's town of Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, was roiled by the strange doings of Hugh and Mary Parsons, an unhappy and anxious couple with poor social skills. In that dark, solitary place on the edge of the North American wilderness, anxiety, depression, a bad marriage, and conspiracy theories combined with bad luck and no little neurosis to produce an epic tragedy, preserved for us by many pages of deposition transcripts taken by Pynchon. True crime, Puritan theology, rumor mongering, strange doings, and the inherent justice of the New English courts combine for a fantastic story. And, of course, there is some great trivia: What does "wearing the green gown" mean? Closing disclaimer: This episode is absolutely not in recognition of "Women's History Month." X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Malcolm Gaskill, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston Nachman Ben-Yehuda, "The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective," American Journal of Sociology, July 1980. Useful prerequisite: The Life and Times of William Pynchon

This episode tells the story of three "lost voices" from early Maryland, surprising people who remind us of the complexity of the 17th century Atlantic world. Mathias de Sousa was of African descent, and is called "the first Black colonist" of Maryland. He would skipper a pinnace in the Chesapeake, trade with the local tribes, and sit in the Maryland Assembly. Margaret Brent was a stone-cold businesswoman, executor for the estate of Leonard Calvert, and would become famous for demanding not just one vote, but two, in the Maryland Assembly. Trust me when I say she had her reasons. Finally, there is Mary Kittamaquund Kent, "the Pocahontas of Maryland." Her similarities to the actual Pocahontas were, it must be said, something of a stretch. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode David S. Bogen, "Mathias de Sousa: Maryland's First Colonist of African Descent," Maryland Historical Magazine Spring 2001. Lois Green Carr, "Margaret Brent - A Brief History", Maryland State Archives. Kelly L. Watson, "'The Pocahontas of Maryland': Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake," Early American Studies, Winter 2021.

Joe Kelly is professor of literature and the director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College of Charleston, and the author of Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America's Origin.  In addition to Marooned, in 2013 Joe published America's Longest Siege:  Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Towards Civil War, which details the evolving ideology of slavery in America. He is also author of a study of the Irish novelist James Joyce, censorship, obscenity, and the Cold War (Our Joyce:  From Outcast to Icon). This conversation, which was great fun, covers a whole range of topics familiar to longstanding and attentive listeners, but with a new and provocative perspective.  We talk about John Smith, Sir Francis Drake – who literally takes up a chapter in Joe's book – the Sea Venture wreck, the role of the commoners in the struggle to survive on Bermuda, and the political philosophy of Stephen Hopkins, the one man to spend years in Virginia and then go on to sail on the Mayflower as a Stranger among the Pilgrim Fathers.  Was Hopkins the moving force for or even the author of the Mayflower Compact, and the true original English-American political theorist?  Finally, we have it out over the fraught question, as between Jamestown and Plymouth, which of our founding mythologies most clearly reflects the American we have become?  Joe brings a new and fascinating perspective to that timeless argument. Buy the book!: Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America's Origin X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

Welcome to the first "true crime" episode of the History of the Americans Podcast, the story of Oscar Hartzell and the Sir Francis Drake estate scam, perhaps the most audacious con of the 1920s, the great golden age of the confidence man. Hartzell swindled as many as 200,000 Midwesterners, many from my own state of Iowa, out of millions of dollars posing as the rightful heir to the lost estate of Sir Francis Drake. Eventually, it would drive him insane, at least as adjudged by the director of the behavioral clinic of the criminal court of Cook County, Illinois. Enjoy! X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Richard Rayner, "The Admiral and the Con Man," The New Yorker, April 15, 2002 (pdf, subscription necessary) Richard Rayner, Drake's Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," 1930 (pdf). Hartzell v. United States, Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, August 16, 1934.

William Pynchon, ancestor of the American novelist Thomas Pynchon, was the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, a successful fur trader, merchant, and magistrate, and at age 60 wrote the first of many books to be banned in Boston. Pynchon had come to Massachusetts with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and soon became one of the wealthiest merchant/traders in the colony. He founded Springfield on the main trail between the Dutch trading posts near Albany and Boston, and controlled the fur trade coming down the Connecticut River from the north. He had unusually modern opinions about the Indians and Indian sovereignty, opposed the Pequot War, and was a respected leader in New England, until he ran afoul of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the founder of the Connecticut River Towns. Their dispute would alter the map of New England forever. Pynchon was an independent thinker, especially in matters of economics and theology. In 1650, he published a book titled The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, and would be prosecuted for heresy. This episode is his story. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast The Other States of America Podcast (Apple podcast link) Selected references for this episode David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony

It is now 1648. In this episode, two tough guys, Johan "Big Belly" Printz of New Sweden and Peter "Peg Leg" Stuyvesant of New Netherland, escalate their competition to control the critical Delaware River, now an essential artery for the fur trade coming out of Susquehannock territory in Pennsylvania and points farther west. Sweden and Netherland were at peace in Europe, so there would be no shooting, but all sorts of guns would be pointed without pulling the trigger or lighting the match. Eventually, the Dutch would put together the largest European army in North America since Soto and Coronado in the 1540s, and put an end to New Sweden as a political entity, raising the Dutch flag over the forts at today's New Castle and Wilmington, Delaware. Along the way we hear the horrific story of the Katten, a Swedish ship full of settlers that ran aground just off Puerto Rico. Everybody survived the immediate crisis, only to fall into the hands of the Spanish and then the French on St. Croix. Folks, don't let that happen to you. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode New Sweden Part 2: The Tough Guys Arrive C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655 Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883.

We are back in New Sweden. In 1638, shortly after establishing Fort Christina at the site of today's Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Minuit would die in a hurricane on the way back to Sweden. The settlers left behind would go a year and half before another supply ship came, but they would survive with remarkable pluck. They were well-housed, because the Finns among them would introduce the log cabin to these shores, and they would trade effectively with the Lenape and Susquehannock nations. Then in 1643 a new governor would arrive, Johan Printz, a 400-pound giant of a man who would boot out the New English who tried to settle on the Delaware, and keep the pressure on the Dutch who also claimed both sides of that river. Under Printz's authoritarian and also competent administration, New Sweden would prosper, go on a building boom, and explore the interior of Pennsylvania, all in spite of very little help from home. The Dutch under Willem Kieft - we've met him before - wouldn't challenge New Sweden in this period because they were under pressure from the New English to the east and the Indian groups around Manhattan. Then, in 1647, Pieter Stuyvesant would arrive to govern New Netherland, and everything would change again. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode "The Founding of New Sweden" C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655 Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 "America's Oldest Log Cabin Is for Sale"

Your podcaster spent the weekend just passed in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. I learned a lot, but especially how transparently politicized so many professional historians seem have become. This episode recounts some of what I saw and heard, and concludes with my many thoughts on the greatest benefit of learning history, whether history should be "useable," and why deploying history for partisan political purposes, as is now happening widely and overtly, corrupts history absolutely. Along the way I suggest both philosophical and utilitarian reasons why overtly partisan historians are not doing their profession, or their students, any favors. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In podcast time, we've been knocking around the northeast of today's United States for just about two years, starting with the Popham colony episodes back in December 2021.  The recent high water mark, as it were, is 1647 or so, with the recovery of Maryland by the Calverts after the plundering time.  We are not entirely caught up to that date, however.  We need to get back to see what happened to New Sweden since its first year in the late 1630s, and the New Haven colony, which extended its writ to New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, deserves a couple of episodes. In the 70+ timeline episodes since Martin Pring's expedition of 1603 and Champlain's St. Croix settlement in Maine, we've talked about English, Dutch, and French settlement and exploration in today's United States as local stories, but we have not looked at the big picture, or at least not very often. Even I'm getting confused!  So in this episode we'll do our best to bring it all together, which ought to make the next few episodes a bit easier to follow.  X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Map of Settlements on the Delaware Selected references for this episode Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 Hampton L. Carson, "Dutch and Swedish Settlements on the Delaware," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1909. Pavonia (Wikipedia) Zwaanendael Colony (Wikipedia)

While the first English Civil War rages, Leonard Calvert returns to the Chesapeake in September 1644, after having been away for a bit more than a year. He carries commissions from Charles I to seize "London" assets in Virginia and collect a duty on tobacco for the Crown. The Royalists who run the royal colony of Virginia refuse to support Calvert and their king because they are too busy fighting the Powhatans to divide their own ranks. Meanwhile, Richard Ingle and his ship Reformation return to the Chesapeake, where he learns that Leonard Calvert has threatened to hang him if he comes to Maryland. Ingle, however, bears a letter of marque from Parliament that he interprets as a license to steal from Catholics. So, naturally, this means war. A comical war, to be sure, and almost bloodless except for three Jesuits who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. But a war nonetheless. Ingle recruits some "rascally fellows," and essentially conquers Maryland with the support of the colony's Protestants. Leonard Calvert flees, and the Protestants install their own government at St. Mary's City. To all appearances, the Calverts had been expelled from Maryland. All appearances, it would turn out, would be deceiving. The Calverts would recover Maryland within 18 months, and Ingle would die a pauper. And so it is that the University of Maryland football team bears the Calvert family crest on its helmets. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode The "Plundering Time" of Maryland Part 1 Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646 Podcast: Rejects and Revolutionaries, “English Civil War 7: The Plundering Time”