In this episode, I cover the Battles of Lexington and Concord, truly the first military excursions in the patriot struggle for independence. Although Thomas Gage hoped not to provoke an aggressive response from patriot forces, he still attempted to shrewdly act seize military supplies and powder that had been secured in storage locations by the…
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The First Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the colonies to determine a concerted response to the Intolerable Acts.
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As the British seek vengeance upon Boston, they hope that their policies would do much to isolate patriot sentiments in Boston from the other colonies, preventing interference from other places. However, this episode expresses why such a plan backfired in a monumental way.
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Today in History, on July 2 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed the Richard Henry Lee resolution, which called for ties between Great Britain and the American states to be “totally dissolved.” The vote was unanimous amongst the colonies, all of which had one vote regardless of size, with New York abstaining. Initially reluctant to…
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The Stamp Act was a major source of tension between the British and the colonists in the years leading the start of the War of Independence. The act was part of a broader constitutional crisis between the colonies and England. Echoes of that crisis have reverberated all the way through America’s history until today.
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While almost all histories of the timeframe concentrate on the Boston Tea Party, I felt it was important to cover how other colonies responded to the Tea Act as well.
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The continual clashes with Britain had indeed created two incompatible constitutional doctrines – the colonial Whig interpretation on one hand, and the Tory interpretation on the other.
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Tellingly, the event spurred patriots in the other colonies to sympathize with the plight of New Englanders.
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While many of the histories of this time portray the antagonist against the British as a tax revolt, the open condemnation of standing armies reveals that there were other factors that created a schism between two different parts of the British Empire.
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The Constitution. Every issue, every time. No exceptions, no excuses.
