The Glorious Cause - Common Sense
In January 1776, the American war was 9 months old and nobody would say the word. The colonists were fighting, dying, and still hoping to be loyal British subjects again — independence was very nearly...
21 Huhti 202530min
The Glorious Cause - The 14th Colony
In the autumn of 1775, the American rebellion reached for an entire country. Congress wanted Canada as the fourteenth colony, and sent two armies north to take it: one under the reluctant ex-British o...
14 Huhti 202524min
The Glorious Cause - An Army from Nothing
In July 1775, George Washington rode into Cambridge to take command of the army that would win American independence, and found that the army did not exist. What he had instead was a great armed crowd...
7 Huhti 202528min
The Glorious Cause - Bunker Hill
The British called it a victory. It nearly destroyed them. On June 17th, 1775, the King’s regulars marched up a hill outside Boston three times into the muskets of New England farmers, and walked away...
31 Maalis 202529min
The Long Fuse - Lexington and Concord
On the night of April 18th, 1775, General Gage sent 700 of his best soldiers on a secret march to seize the militia’s weapons at Concord. The plan depended on speed and surprise, and he had neither. T...
24 Maalis 202526min
The Long Fuse - The First Continental Congress
In September 1774, 56 men from twelve colonies rode to Philadelphia and sat down together for the first time, strangers and rivals trying to discover whether they were anything more than twelve separa...
17 Maalis 202528min
The Long Fuse - The Intolerable Acts
In the spring of 1774, Parliament set out to break one rebellious town. After the Boston Tea Party, the King’s ministers closed Boston’s harbor with the Royal Navy, tore up the Massachusetts charter, ...
10 Maalis 202527min
The Long Fuse - The Cockpit
On January 29th, 1774, Benjamin Franklin, the most famous American in the world, stood in a Whitehall hearing room once used for cockfights and was torn apart. For more than an hour, the King’s Solici...
3 Maalis 202531min
