Colonel Henry Knox was just about ready to begin moving the Noble Train of Artillery (a phrase he coined, incidentally). He’d have everything he needed to move by the 20th or 21st of December, and then just seventeen days later, he’d be marching into Cambridge.

As we all know, he was wrong about how long it would take. But that sort of thing happened frequently.

What we don’t know is why he said he had the animals he needed to transport the materiel when he didn’t. And even though there are numerous images of the Noble Train of Artillery involving oxen, there weren’t any at all: everything was moved using horses.

On a personal note: today would have been my grandmother’s 103rd birthday. A lot of things have changed since I was born, but a lot more things changed from the time she was born. The mind boggles.

The post The Noble Train Of Artillery–December 17, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

I rather dislike using historical markers back-to-back for the cover art, but there are no images of Chief White Eyes, and I’d about run out of images of Great Bridge yesterday, so here we are.

Also—and I admit I only know this because there’s a town not far from where I grew up with this name—I’m pretty sure that Mike mispronounced the word “Sachem,” though I suppose it’s possible that there’s a West Coast variant. But he’s a nice guy so we’re letting it slide. Especially since I made him re-record when he mispronounced “Narragansett” the other day.

Yes, I am in a mood. Why do you ask?

Koquethagechton was the given name of Chief White Eyes. and you may see it spelled differently elsewhere. The Lenape did not have a standardized written language, so everyone was making do with the Roman alphabet and doing their best to transliterate.

As Mike notes during the episode, he later became a guide for an expedition in the Ohio Territory. He died during that trip, reportedly from smallpox, but questions have been raised regarding whether this actually happened. After his death, the Americans had no interest in a territory under Lenape control, and whatever deal he’d worked out completely unraveled.

The post The Delaware Who Came To Congress–December 16, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

We’ve done several episodes about the Battle of Great Bridge, and there’s a reason for that. Bunker Hill gets all the press, but remember we LOST that battle.

Great Bridge was the first real Patriot victory, it was the first major battle in Virginia, and therefore it poked the Virginia Convention into adopting the first public declaration expressing a spirit of independence.

Also of note is that, according to the Great Bridge Battlefield Museum, the last Patriot to retreat before the battle began in earnest was named Billy Flora, a free black man. He came under heavy fire but he managed to remove a plank from near the end of the bridge, thus slowing the British advance.

The shorter version of all this is that Great Bridge gave us the possibility of actually winning this thing. And oddly enough, Independence still really wasn’t on the table.

The post Colonel Woodford’s View–December 15, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Thomas Cochrane had quite the colorful, storied life, and it’s too bad that we can only cram so much into a twenty-minute podcast episode.

For instance, it’s entirely possible that he was involved in a stock fraud scheme based on false rumors of Napoleon’s death. Fortunately for him, he was elected back into the House of Commons about a month after his conviction. Even today, his guilt is in question by historians.

Cochrane also spent several years serving in the Chilean Navy and spent time as that nation’s first Vice Admiral, reorganizing the structure and assisting with the independence of Peru.

At any rate, if you dig naval history, take a look at Thomas Cochrane’s career.

The post Thomas Cochrane–December 14, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

If you’re going to build a navy, you’ve got to get serious about it. Congress established the need for a Navy back in October, but they were kind of sloppy about executing the plan.

For the last several weeks, the Congress has been purchasing existing ships and retrofitting them to make them battle-worthy. That’s great if you’re maintaining status quo, but if you’re trying to overthrow the government, you’re going to need some new hardware.

So the Congress agreed to build thirteen ships from the ground up, each with sufficient firepower to do some real damage. And they want all thirteen of them by March.

The post Time To Buy A Navy–December 13, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Ben Franklin and Gabriel de Borbón had corresponded with one another previously, so while the letter that is the subject of today’s episode has a very specific (and relevant) ask in it, it was also just another in a chain of correspondence between the two.

For his part, Prince Gabriel was probably receptive to Franklin’s suggestions, but he wasn’t likely to be in a position to act on them in the way that Franklin hoped. As the fourth son of Charles III, the throne was a long way off, though he was considered the heir apparent for some time.

When Spain provided assistance the following year, they did so because Spain and France were allies and France was providing assistance to the Americans; furthermore they had their own bone to pick with the British, so Two Birds and all that. So they sent over lots of assistance, mostly in the form of money so that the Continental Army could purchase cannons, mortars, gun carriages and other ordinance.

It’s possible that Prince Gabriel had some influence on his father, but more likely is that Charles III was simply maintaining existing alliances.

The post Ben Franklin Wants A Friend–December 12, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Most of the portraits we see of Martha Washington were made when she was older, so we have (I think) this image of her as a bit of a crabby old frump.

And maybe she was, by the time her husband got to be President. She didn’t really love the life of the public spouse and charming party hostess. But it turned out she was good at it, and if it made her crabby, nobody who mattered knew about it on a firsthand basis.

In fact, Martha Washington was known to be fashionable, calm, outgoing and easy to get along with. And because Boston was rather straitlaced compared to Virginia, she gave off a bit of an exotic air during her time in Cambridge.

Frump, indeed.

The post Martha Comes to Cambridge–December 11, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Conanicut Island isn’t much of an island to look at, but they had supplies of some kind, and the British were looking.

Admiral Graves had the task of finding supplies for the British who were under siege in Boston, and he decided to move beyond the local waters, and went into Narragansett Bay. In some towns (such as Newport, which was Loyalist) he was able to just buy supplies. But if the locals resisted, that’s when he broke out the guns.

Conanicut Island looked like a vulnerable place to get supplies. He was able to get some of what he needed, but it wasn’t the cake walk he thought it would be.

The post Raid on Conanicut–December 10, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Battle of Great Bridge is a little bit overlooked these days, and more’s the pity. It was the first battle in Virginia, it was a big victory for Patriot troops, the Royal Governor and his crowd got pushed out altogether, and nobody died on the Patriot side.

On the British side, about 100 soldiers were dead. The last time the British lost a substantial number of troops, it was at Bunker Hill, which they won. (The vocabulary word you seek is “Pyrrhic Victory.”)

Best of all, it fueled Virginia’s moves toward independence.

The post The Battle of Great Bridge–December 9, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The siege of Quebec was an event that was months in the making, and it was still just the penultimate act of the play.

Benedict Arnold and his troops thought they could get to the American side of the St. Lawrence River within 21 days; instead it took several weeks. Along the way they lost about a third of their troop strength. Some of the men died of illness en route, but most of them finally gave up altogether and headed home.

When they finally arrived they realized they didn’t have nearly what they needed to effect a decent attack on the city, so they had to hunker down and wait for supports to arrive. They were able to institute a couple of blockades, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

Finally General Montgomery showed up, and after an attempt at getting the city to surrender, they began the shooting. Unfortunately that didn’t do a lot of good, so the Continental Army had to settle for placing the city under siege. At this point, however, the clock was ticking because a big chunk of the Colonial soldiers were due to have their enlistments end on December 31. Something had to give, and soon.

The post The Siege of Quebec–December 8, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.