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Oliver Hazard Perry survived the Battle of Lake Erie and a pistol duel at Weehawken, only to die of yellow fever on his 34th birthday during a diplomatic mission in Venezuela. This episode traces his life from going to sea at 13 to his court-martial after the wreck of the Revenge, and his assignment to build a fleet from scratch at Presque Isle in the War of 1812.

On September 10, 1813, Perry's flagship Lawrence was shattered, so he rowed half a mile through enemy fire to the Niagara and broke the British line. His message, We have met the enemy and they are ours, made him a legend. The episode then explores his feud with Jesse Elliott, the duel with John Heath, and the mission up the Orinoco that removed him from Washington politics.

• How the 1811 wreck of the Revenge tested Perry's crisis leadership
• Building a freshwater fleet and Perry's study of Horatio Nelson's tactics
• The Don't Give Up the Ship flag and the transfer from the Lawrence to the Niagara
• Why Jesse Elliott held back and how the feud escalated
• How the victory protected the Ohio Valley and led to the Battle of the Thames

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Boston's Old North Church, officially Christ Church and completed in 1723, is famous for the 1775 lantern signal, but its history is far messier. This episode explores how an Anglican congregation in Puritan Boston funded the building by selling pews, why the lantern story was once disputed, and how wealth from the Atlantic slave economy helped build the church.

The episode covers the 2013 controversy over Captain Jackson's Chocolate Shop, the hurricanes that toppled the steeple in 1804 and 1954, and the crypt holding an estimated 1,100 bodies, including British Major John Pitcairn. It also looks at the admission fee introduced in 2018 and the 8 million dollar renovation for the church's 300th anniversary.

• How pew ownership created voting power and how seating reflected colonial hierarchy
• Why the Puritan Old North Meeting House could not have held the lanterns
• Historical audits linking donors like Newark Jackson and Leonard Vassall to slavery
• The current steeple as a 1955 rebuild and the ship of Theseus question
• The crypt sealed in the 1850s and future threats from rising sea levels

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At the 1777 Battle of Oriskany, General Nicholas Herkimer had his leg shattered, then had himself propped against a beech tree, lit his pipe and rallied his militia. This episode traces the life of the trilingual son of Palatine German immigrants who built wealth and influence in New York's Mohawk Valley.

Herkimer spoke English, German and Mohawk, defended German Flats in the French and Indian War and ran a lucrative portage business relying on enslaved and indentured labor. In the Revolution he led the Tryon County Committee of Safety while his own brother became a Loyalist, and Joseph Brant rejected his plea for neutrality. He survived the Oriskany ambush only to die after a botched amputation.

• Why the British settled Palatine Germans as a buffer on the New York frontier
• How language skills and the portage trade made Herkimer a regional power
• The 1776 meeting at Unadilla and why Joseph Brant sided with the Crown
• The cascade of medical failures that led to his death on August 16, 1777
• His legacy in place names, schools and the film Drums Along the Mohawk

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Long before the image of a grandmother in a ruffled cap, Martha Washington was a 26-year-old widow who inherited 17,000 acres and enormous wealth. This episode traces her path from eldest of eight children in a Virginia family to the manager of five plantations who negotiated directly with London merchants after the death of Daniel Parke Custis.

Her marriage to George Washington was a partnership built on routine and respect that helped carry both through the loss of all four of her children. During the Revolution she spent winters in army camps, copying documents and organizing officers' wives to supply the troops. As the first presidential spouse she invented the role from scratch, while also pursuing the escaped Ona Judge, a contradiction the episode examines directly.

• How Martha kept control of the Custis estate and bargained with London merchants
• Why her marriage to George was a merger of wealth and rising reputation
• Her winters at Cambridge and Valley Forge and her role at headquarters
• The Friday drawing rooms, the 9 p.m. rule and homespun fashion as political tools
• Why she burned her letters with George and freed his enslaved people early

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American revolutionaries called him Monster Brant, yet Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea, translated the Gospel of Mark into Mohawk, wore a Masonic apron and lived in a mansion with fine china. This episode explores how Brant, born in 1743, rose to power through a bilingual education and family ties to Sir William Johnson, bypassing traditional hereditary leadership.

Brant traveled to London in 1775, met King George III and allied the Mohawk with Britain to protect their land from colonial expansion. He led Brant's Volunteers in raids across the New York frontier, then faced betrayal in the Treaty of Paris. On the Grand River in Ontario he built an economic strategy of leasing land to settlers, while confronting internal opposition, the death of his son Isaac and his own ownership of enslaved people.

• How his mother's ginseng trade and his sister Molly's union with William Johnson shaped his rise
• Why Brant saw neutrality as an illusion and chose the British Crown
• The Monster Brant propaganda and the Freemason captive he spared
• The Haldimand Proclamation and his plan for an economically independent Mohawk state
• The contradictions of his legacy and his final plea to help his people

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Benjamin Franklin's famous severed snake cartoon is remembered as a symbol of resistance to Britain, but in May 1754 it was designed to promote colonial unity with the British Crown. This episode explores the cartoon's origins in the Pennsylvania Gazette, the joint snake folklore behind it, and Franklin's push for the Albany Plan against the French during the French and Indian War.

A decade later, the Stamp Act turned the image into a symbol of resistance to Britain, much to Franklin's dismay. His counter-cartoon, Magna Britannia, failed to stop it. The snake went on to appear on Paul Revere's masthead, was used by both sides in the Civil War, became a modern tattoo, and is planned as a 46-foot monument outside Independence Hall for the 250th anniversary.

• Why the snake had only eight segments and left out Delaware and Georgia
• How Franklin likely borrowed the design from a 1685 French emblem by Nicolas Verrien
• Patriot and Loyalist readings of the snake as vigilance or as the serpent of Eden
• Franklin's 1766 Magna Britannia cartoon and why it could not compete
• Lessons about how creators lose control of symbols once they are released

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In 1743, a 25-year-old Connecticut farmer tied a rope around his ankles and crawled into a wolf den with a torch and a musket. That farmer, Israel Putnam, became known as the Old Wolf and later one of the most famous and controversial figures of the American Revolution. This episode looks past the folk legend to the real man.

Putnam enlisted as a private at 37 in the French and Indian War, served with Rogers' Rangers, survived near-execution by fire and a shipwreck off Cuba, and joined the Sons of Liberty. Appointed a major general by a unanimous vote, he pushed the fortification of Breed's Hill. The episode weighs his strategic shortcomings against his skill at leading untrained men, including his response to a Connecticut mutiny and his prediction of a long war.

• The wolf den story and what it reveals about Putnam's leadership style
• His frontier experience, the Fort Edward fire and his capture by Mohawk warriors in 1758
• Riding 100 miles in eight hours after hearing of Lexington and Concord
• Bunker Hill, the whites of their eyes order and Henry Dearborn's later accusations
• His toast to a long war, his 1779 stroke and the souvenir hunters who chipped away his tombstone

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On May 29, 1780, in the Waxhaws region of South Carolina, British commander Tarleton caught up with Colonel Abraham Buford's retreating force of Virginia Continentals. This episode examines the British Southern strategy, Tarleton's bluff about having 700 men, Buford's refusal to surrender, and his fateful order to hold fire until the cavalry was just 10 yards away.

With more than 100 Patriots killed and only five British dead, the clash quickly became known as a massacre. The episode weighs the Patriot accounts of slaughter against British claims that troops lost control after Tarleton's horse was shot from under him, including a rumor recorded by neutral Moravian settlers. It then shows how Tarleton's quarter became a rallying cry that inspired the Overmountain Men and the victory at Kings Mountain.

• Why the British shifted the war to the Carolinas and Georgia
• What dragoons were and how Tarleton's mounted force overtook Buford
• The physics of flintlock muskets and why a single volley could not stop a cavalry charge
• Competing Patriot, British and Moravian accounts of what happened after the line broke
• The three captured regimental flags that sold at auction in 2006 for over five million dollars

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On March 5, 1770, Parliament moved to repeal most of the Townshend duties at the very moment British soldiers fired on civilians in Boston. This episode explores how Charles Townshend's attempt to tax imports like glass, lead, paint, paper and tea was really a scheme to pay colonial governors and judges from London and strip colonial assemblies of the power of the purse.

The Townshend Acts built a web of control, including writs of assistance, an American customs board in Boston, vice admiralty courts without juries and the suspension of the New York Assembly. Colonists answered with John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts circular letter and non-importation boycotts that cut British exports by nearly 40 percent, while the seizure of John Hancock's Liberty led to the military occupation of Boston.

• Why Townshend's external taxes were expected to raise only about 40,000 pounds a year
• The five acts, from the Revenue Act to the New York Restraining Act, and how they worked together
• How vice admiralty court judges profited from the fines they imposed
• The death of 11-year-old Christopher Seider and the road to the Boston Massacre
• Why Lord North kept the tax on tea and how it set the stage for the Boston Tea Party

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A dry mathematical ratio became one of the most consequential decisions in American history. This episode traces the three-fifths compromise from a failed 1783 tax formula under the Articles of Confederation to its role in the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where Southern delegates reversed their position once the prize became seats in the House of Representatives.

The clause gave slave states far more seats and electoral votes than their free populations warranted, influencing the 1800 election, the gag rule and the defeat of the Wilmot Proviso. The episode examines the competing views of William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, Akhil Reed Amar's analysis, and how after the 14th Amendment, disenfranchisement let the South count its full Black population while denying them the vote.

• Why the South first argued enslaved people were property for tax purposes, then wanted them counted for representation
• Elbridge Gerry's challenge and Gouverneur Morris's insight that the tax trade-off was a bluff
• How Southern House seats rose from 33 to 47 in 1793 and from 73 to 98 by 1833
• Garrison's view of a pro-slavery Constitution versus Douglass's argument that the clause was a penalty
• The unenforced Section 2 of the 14th Amendment and decades of seniority-based Southern power