250 and Counting

Early in the war, it became apparent that the treatment of prisoners was going to be a very lopsided affair. British soldiers were treated humanely and with dignity. American soldiers…not so much. As we noted last August, when Americans were captured they weren’t treated as prisoners of war but rather as criminals who didn’t deserve […]

The post What To Do With A Captured Brit?–May 21, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Simon Fraser was born in Hoosick, New York, which is close to where New York’s border meets with those of Vermont and Massachusetts. He was the youngest of eight children. He moved to Montreal when he was 14 and worked with his uncles in the fur trade, apprenticing to the North West Company the following […]

The post Simon Fraser–May 20, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Captain enlisted in the Continental Army not long after the battles at Lexington and Concord. He was commissioned as a Captain and immediately put to work capturing British ships. One of the more surprising things about the battle between the USS Franklin is not so much the victorious outcome, which was starting to feel a […]

The post Mugford’s Last Stand–May 19, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

About that title: I regret nothing. Dennis Pennington gets a lot of well-deserved attention for his political work in Indiana, but the fact is that what he did affected the entire Northwest Territory, which also includes most of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota east of the Mississippi River. He was also instrumental in the […]

The post Hoosier Daddy–May 18, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Amos Eaton, a co-founder of the Renssalaer School (later Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, NY, managed to flip scientific thinking on its head. He believed in having students learn through experimental demonstrations: let them apply the science in the field and then break it down later in the lab. This flew directly in the face […]

The post Amos Eaton–May 17, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

If the name Henry Knox sounds familiar to you, give yourself a prize. Knox was the man in charge of the Noble Train of Artillery, in which large amounts of ordinance were taken from Fort Ticonderoga and transferred to Boston. The presence of the new guns, with greater range than either side had at that […]

The post Henry Knox Wants To Get Tough–May 16, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

I have to admit that this small chunk of history has me a little confused, because if you’re going to vote on a resolution, shouldn’t you have the wording of that resolution in place? But the Second Continental Congress did vote on May 10, and now they’ve written a Preamble to the Resolution, largely drafted […]

The post The Declaration’s First Draft?–May 15, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Thomas Jefferson gets most of the credit for writing the Declaration of Independence, but Thomas Jefferson’s background clearly informed his writing of that document. That’s what Mike talks about in today’s episode. In this space I’d like to tell you a little about Declaration House. The building was newly erected at the time Jefferson rented […]

The post Thomas Jefferson’s Origin Story–May 14, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Few people outside of Georgia know who Jett Thomas was, and everybody’s kind of okay with that. Thomas was instrumental in ensuring that major buildings in Athens (Ga.) and Milledgeville were constructed specifically to support education and jurisprudence, and as a result two towns and an entire county are named after Jett Thomas today. Now, […]

The post Jett Thomas–May 13, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, was France’s Foreign Minister from 1774 to 1787 during Louis XVI’s reign. France was still salty about having lost the Seven Years’ War. On this side of the pond we refer to it as the French and Indian War, but this was a global affair that took place mostly in […]

The post America Benefits From French Politics–May 12, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.