Revolution 250 Podcast

George Washington grappled with many problems keeping his army intact and trying to figure out his adversary's next move.  Bright spots were few.  The winter of 1779-1780 was the coldest of the war, and his army faced starvation in Morristown.  The loss of Charleston, the failure of an expedition to retake Newport, and Congress's failure to supply his army darkened the horizon.  Even his promising meeting with a new ally, General Rochambeau, in 1780 was overshadowed by the discovery of Benedict Arnold's treason.  If Arnold betrayed us, whom could we trust? Washington asked.  Jeffrey Denman tells these stories and more in his new book Closing the Ring:  George Washington's War in the North 1778-1781,  showing how these dark clouds did not obscure for Washington the opportunity that would come in 1781 to defeat another British army and secure independence for the United States. 

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George Washington's greatest achievement was not winning the Revolutionary War.  It was surrendering power to the civilian government.  Richard Lim, host of the "This American President" podcast, joins us to talk about his new book, Refusing a Crown:  How George Washington Changed the World.  Washington's surrender of power—which he did in 1783, returning his commission to the Congress, and in 1796, when he chose not to run for another term—was partly rooted in his personal virtue.  But Lim argues that Washington's decision was also based on an understanding of power and its potential for abuse.  Washington set an example for future leaders, and became the standard against whom all are measured. 

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The American Revolution was fought with muskets and cannon, but it was also waged with words, images, symbols, and stories. Long before the Patriots secured independence on the battlefield, they were winning the battle for public opinion.

In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, Professor Robert Allison welcomes Julie Hall, President of the Charlestown Historical Society, veteran communications strategist, and author of Revolutionary Spin: How PR Shaped the American Revolution. Together, they explore how America's founders employed remarkably sophisticated public relations techniques to rally support, shape perceptions, create heroes and martyrs, and convince audiences on both sides of the Atlantic of the righteousness of their cause.

From the power of political messaging to the careful cultivation of a revolutionary identity, Hall reveals how the struggle for American independence became one of history's most successful campaigns of persuasion. Discover how the Patriots mastered the art of telling their story, and why the lessons of their revolutionary communications strategy remain strikingly relevant 250 years later.

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Boston, 1765. Eleven years before the Declaration. Tax collectors, mobs, fire in the streets, and the first sons of a revolution nobody saw coming. The decade your teachers skipped. If you like your history hard, your men flawed, and your stakes real, this one's for you. Join us for a conversation with Joe Wearmouth, who tells the story of this tumultuous time through the eyes of unforgettable characters--some we know--John and Abigail Adams, John Hancock, Joseph Warren, Crispus Attucks, Joyce Junior--and others he has created--Tom Bradford and his unbearable cousin Richard, Benjamin Wilson, and more. Rising Sons is the novel about why the Revolution began in Boston, and how it felt to those creating it. 

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Winning independence was only the beginning. How did George Washington turn a divided country into a nation? On this episode of Revolution 250, Professor Robert Allison welcomes Nathaniel Philbrick to discuss Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy. Retracing Washington’s presidential journeys with his wife, Melissa, and their dog, Dora, Philbrick uncovers stories of local pride, political division, and the enduring contradictions of liberty and slavery. Join us for a lively conversation about the people who preserve our past—and why Washington’s struggle to hold America together still matters.

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 What is the American experiment?  Johann Neem explores this question in books and essays, beginning with his Creating a Nation of Joiners:  Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts, which showed how Americans created a civil society which fostered their independence.  He explored how newly-independent Americans created a system of public education to sustain the republic, in Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, and he continues to explore these questions of American identity and civic culture.  A Professor of History at Western Washington University, Neem has also written of the role of colleges today, and on the state of k-12 education in preparing citizens for the next 250 years. 

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Digging in his Jersey City backyard in 2007, Chris Bray uncovered a 12-pound iron sphere.  This was a mystery.  What was it?  How did it get there?  Doing more digging in archives, he found that his neighborhood was the site of the Paulus Hook fort the rebels held in the summer of 1776, and the iron ball had been fired from a British cannon as the Royal Navy stormed up the Hudson River.  The cannonball now sits in the City Hall in Jersey City, next to Frank Hague's desk, a reminder that the Revolution is still all around us. 

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 John Lowe of the University of Louisville joins us to talk about his new book, “Benevolence & Bondage”: Jonathan Edwards, Slavery, Race, and the Paradox of Spiritual Equality. Jonathan Edwards is remembered as one of colonial America’s most influential theologians—a preacher who taught that all souls stood equally before God. Yet Edwards was also an enslaver who lived and preached within a society shaped by racial bondage. Lowe examines the profound tension between Edwards’s theology of Christian benevolence and spiritual equality and his participation in slavery, and Edwards' long influence on American religious thought. 

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The Declaration of Independence is the United States' most radical idea, and its most enduring paradox.  Byron Williams, renowned public intellectual, theologian, columnist, explores this paradox in his new book, Liberty and Equality in America:  Examining the Radical and Paradoxical Legacy of the Declaration of Independence.  Williams asks: What does it mean for a nation officially committed to liberty and equality, while unofficially hamstrung by paradox to achieve its central tenets? Refusing simplistic celebration or cynical dismissal, Williams explores America's founding through the enduring tension between its highest ideals and its deepest contradictions.

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For a century after Independence, Americans believed that their Revolution was still in progress. Nowhere was this clearer than on the Fourth of July, when Americans gathered for speeches that, as one orator put it in 1834, aimed to “examine the present, and to look forward to the future.”  Nathan Perl-Rosenthal joins us to talk about this exploration, which he covers in his new book The Long Revolution: Creating a United States after 1776,, which mines thousands of Independence Day orations.  In the words of local notables and national celebrities, men and women, white and Black, Perl-Rosenthal identifies contrasting visions, intense anxieties, and radical power the Revolution evoked deep into the nineteenth century. He has also created a map, July Fourth Orations, which shows where these thousands of events took place. This is a history of the American founding for today’s fragmented and anxious political moment, helping us find a usable past to guide us toward our own uncertain future.

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