In December 1777, Continental Army Colonel David Henley climbed off his horse to discipline a drunk British prisoner of war with a sword. Major General John Burgoyne cited this incident when he accused Henley of plotting to murder British POWs. Burgoyne demanded a formal court-martial.
Professor T. H. Breen explores Henley’s trial and asks a question most grand narratives of the American Revolution skip past: What did it actually feel like, in real towns among real people, to stop being British? What did it mean to be American?
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Episode Summary
T. H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History Emeritus at Northwestern University. He’s an award-winning historian with research expertise in the history of early American political thought, material culture, and cultural anthropology. He’s written several books, including Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People, and, most recently, The American Revolution on Trial: A New Nation Confronts the Burden of Independence.
During our conversation, Timothy reveals:
-
- Details of John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga
- The incidents that led to John Burgoyne serving as chief prosecutor in an American military court
- How Americans debated what their lives and culture would look like after independence
What You’ll Discover
- Why grand narratives overlook how ordinary people experienced the Revolution
- The difference between political and cultural independence
- How Timothy discovered the transcript of Colonel David Henley’s court-martial
- The incidents that led to Henley’s court-martial
- Why Major General John Burgoyne angered New Englanders
- The creation of the Convention Army
- Burgoyne’s demand to serve as prosecutor in an American military court
- Why George Washington objected to Horatio Gates’s terms
- How American treatment of the Convention Army compared with British treatment of American prisoners
- Competing British and American ideas about honor
- Why 6,000 prisoners of war marched to Cambridge
- Conditions inside the British and German prison camps in Cambridge
- How newspapers and letters recorded a growing sense of “un-Britishness”
- Congress’s decision to write to King George III about Burgoyne
- What became of the Convention Army after it left Cambridge
Links to People, Places, and Publications
- T. H. Breen
- Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence
- American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People
- The American Revolution on Trial: A New Nation Confronts the Burden of Independence
- Transcript
Time Warp Question
What might have happened if Horatio Gates had not been so generous with John Burgoyne? Do you think the Americans would have retaliated against the British treatment of their POWs and those British prison hulks? Or do you think that an attempt would have been made to trade some of the Convention Army prisoners for American POWs in those prison halls?
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 048: Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives During the War for Independence
🎧 Episode 122: The Men Who Lost America
🎧 Episode 374: The American Revolutionary War in the West
🎧 Episode 414: Robert Newburgh’s Trials: Queerness & Reputation in Revolutionary America
🎧 Episode 434: The Frank Brothers: Freeborn Black Soldiers in the American Revolution
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