The First Revolution - Six Parts in Seven

The Treaty of Paris handed the United States a wilderness empire running to the Mississippi and the Great Lakes — and the bankrupt Confederation needed to sell it, fast, because western land was very ...

1 Sep 32min

In 1784, Spain closed the lower Mississippi River — and with it, the only road to market for the tens of thousands of Americans pouring into Kentucky and the West. This is the story of what that close...

27 Aug 29min

In the winter of 1787, a few thousand indebted farmers in western Massachusetts marched on their own government — and though they lost their one real battle in minutes, in the snow outside a federal a...

25 Aug 27min

In September 1786, a Newport butcher named John Weeden refused to take paper money for a joint of meat, and demanded silver. Under Rhode Island law, that was a crime — punishable by a fine, the loss o...

20 Aug 30min

In 1786 the Congress of the United States asked the thirteen states for 3.8 million dollars to pay the debts of the Revolution. It collected 663 dollars. This is the story of the broken money machine ...

18 Aug 29min

He was the richest man in America, and for most of the Revolution he was also its treasury. When the United States had no money and no credit, it borrowed on the name of Robert Morris — a Philadelphia...

13 Aug 30min

In the spring of 1783, with the Revolution all but won, the most dangerous enemy of the United States was its own army. Unpaid for years, cheated of their promised pensions, the officers camped at New...

11 Aug 35min

On December 23rd, 1783, in the Senate chamber at Annapolis, George Washington did the thing conquerors never do: he laid his commission at the feet of the Congress and went home to be a farmer — an ac...

8 Aug 38min