250 and Counting

Although she was quite young when she married Benjamin Rush, Julia Stockton was probably as brilliant and opinionated as her husband was. Not long after they married on this day in 1776, Benjamin was appointed Surgeon General to his friend George Washington, and as the war got more intense and involved, and American losses began […]

The post Rush To The Altar–January 11, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Okay, so here’s the thing about Common Sense: It’s not as though Thomas Paine came up with prose so extraordinarily clear that everyone suddenly smacked their foreheads and said, “My God! Independence! Of COURSE!” In fact, many people thought Common Sense was crazy, and others considered it an incitement to the all-out war that everyone […]

The post It’s Just…You Know…–January 10, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Josiah Martin was the last Royal Governor of North Carolina, and while he spent the first few months of the job in New York, he probably wouldn’t have a reputation as an especially bad governor if he hadn’t been hampered so much by circumstances that were in place before he got the job. There were […]

The post A Plan Is Hatched–January 9, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Mike wasn’t kidding when he said that, had it not been for his part in the Revolution, John Burgoyne would be best known as a playwright. He wrote several plays, most of them quite successful. Interestingly enough, the play Mike cites today is not often listed among his oeuvre. So we get the feeling that […]

The post The Play’s The Thing–January 8, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

There are many letters between George Washington and Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull. Presumably something as simple as proximity to another leader was attractive to both of them, especially in an age where letters took several days to go a hundred miles. We have to presume that the two men had very reliable people transporting these […]

The post Preparing To Defend New York–January 7, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

From a strategic standpoint, Charleston Bay was probably much more attractive to the British than Boston Harbor was. The northern harbor was more open to the sea, there were a bunch of small islands to navigate around, and the weather could get quite treacherous. Meanwhile in South Carolina, there was a definite entry/exit point, there […]

The post Retreat From Charleston–January 6, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

It’s fun to say that the New Hampshire Constitution was the first time that an American commonwealth constitution, and that several of the others quickly followed, as though a dam had broken. But the fact is, the various colonies were putting together their own constitutions at the urging of the Second Continental Congress, and New […]

The post The First State Constitution–January 5, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Although he held the title “Captain of Marines” at this point, Samuel Nicholas was the first officer commissioned to the Continental Marines (later the US Marine Corps), and by tradition is therefore considered to be the first Commandant of the Marines. Hey, are YOU going to argue with the USMC? I didn’t think so. Not […]

The post Marines On A Mission–January 4, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

It was called “A Plan of Accommodation,” and it had been in the works for most of the previous year before Lord Drummond tried to present it to the Second Continental Congress. Taxation was the big ticket item originally, but they managed to work that out with a perpetual grant of a percentage of revenues […]

The post A Plan For Reconciliation–January 3, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Mount Riga Iron Furnace isn’t an especially unique artifact on the east coast of the US. In fact, as someone who lives in Baltimore, I get to see one of them regularly when I visit my mother-in-law, who lives about a half-hour’s drive away in a more rural part of the state. Unfortunately, that […]

The post A Furnace for Arms–January 2, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.