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...
When we picture the War for American Independence, we picture battles. But for the men and women who actually lived and fought in it, the American Revolution was also a job with mess rotations, night watches, short rations, and children underfoot...
The British Army is at your door. They need a room. What do you do? For thousands of civilians living in cities occupied during the American War for Independence — Boston, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah — that question...
What would you fight for if you were free but still not equal? In 1777, brothers William and Benjamin Frank answered that question by enlisting in the Continental Army. Freeborn Black men in Rhode Island, they gambled that military service would...
The American Revolution wasn’t just a War for Independence. The Revolution was part of a wider age of revolutions that reshaped the Atlantic World. Ronald Angelo Johnson, the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Chair of History at Baylor University, joins us...
Episode 414: John McCurdy: Robert Newburgh’s Trials: Queerness & Reputation in Revolutionary America
How do we uncover queer lives from the distant past, especially in an era when language and records often erased or obscured them? What did queerness look like in early America, and how might it have intersected with power, religion, and empire on...
June 17, 2025, marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first full-scale battle of what would become the American War for Independence. Although technically a British victory, Bunker Hill proved that colonial soldiers could hold...
April 19, 2025 marked the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord—the moment the American Revolution turned from protest to war. What do we really know about that fateful day? How did the people of Concord prepare for what they...
Within the Declaration of Independence, the founders of the United States present 27 grievances against King George III as they declare their reasons for why the thirteen British North American colonies sought their independence from Great Britain...
The American Revolution and its War for Independence comprised the United States’ founding movement. The War for Independence also served as the fifth major war for European empire in North America. The fourth war for European empire, the Seven...