250 and Counting

Happy New Year to you! The burning of Norfolk was the follow-up to the Battle of Great Bridge and the Patriot occupation of that town. Colonel Howe probably overplayed his hand with this one, and the consequences were catastrophic for the town. The Declaration of Independence is just a few months away, now, and (spoiler […]

The post The Burning of Norfolk–January 1, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

While hindsight is very much a 20/20 vision, it’s still worth exploring why the Battle of Quebec went so poorly for the American side: Now, I am by no means a military expert, but these are the things that stood out for me just based on a quick read of the situation. It was hubris, […]

The post The Battle of Quebec–December 31, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Back on October 8, the Continental Army determined that Blacks were no longer to be permitted to enlist, and that existing soldiers would not be allowed to re-enlist. But on this date, George Washington changed his mind. Was he suddenly an abolitionist? Not a chance. He owned slaves until the day he died. This was […]

The post Washington Has A Change Of Heart–December 30, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

While the Massachusetts Naval Militia was pretty much wiped out in 1779 (oops, spoiler alert), it wasn’t the end of a state-based Navy for Massachusetts. Massachusetts began to rebuild, but in 1780 a new state constitution was adopted, and just as the navy was delayed in its original inception by bureaucracy, the Massachusetts State Navy […]

The post Birth Of A Navy–December 29, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

You’ll remember I mentioned Samuel Adams in this space a couple of days ago, as a member of the Continental Congress, and as a member of several committees, most of them related to defense. He was almost certainly at the heart of the events of today that took place in Congress which Mike describes in […]

The post Congress Organizes Military Support–December 28, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

While he didn’t use a rattlesnake, Benjamin Franklin was the guy who came up with the original “Join or Die” snake image [right]back in 1754. (At least most people give him credit for it.) It was based in a superstition that if you cut up a snake into pieces and then reassembled those pieces before […]

The post Ben Franklin Analyzes the Snake–December 27, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Most of us have a pop culture view of the American Revolution period, and some of us go so far as to have some idea of what happened via the 1970 film 1776. Oddly enough, that movie has both a ton of accuracy with its facts (but not necessarily in the right order), and a […]

The post Sam Adams Has Thoughts–December 26, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Battle of Great Bridge may be over, but its effects linger on. Lord Dunmore, the former Royal Governor of South Carolina, communicated to General Robert Howe that he’d like to effect a prisoner exchange. It’s not clear whether Howe was playing hard-to-get, or playing dumb, or something else. He and Dunmore exchanged several letters […]

The post Confusing–And Howe–December 25, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Mike’s pretty much covered the story of the capture of a British ship in the episode, so I’m going to tell you a little bit about Joseph Warren, who (you may recall) was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. Warren became a doctor early in his career, and he also became a Patriot before […]

The post Merry Christmas, Indeed–December 24, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

As important as some of the action in the southern colonies was—and make no mistake, Colonel Richard Richardson’s campaign to sniff out the Loyalist leaders in the western part of the state wound up being very important—other events were important in different ways. One such event would be the Snow Campaign. There came a point […]

The post The Snow Campaign–December 23, 1775 appeared first on 250 and Counting.