American Political History

In 1702 the governor of Carolina took an army south to seize the oldest city in America — and came home in disgrace, his ships burned, his name ruined, beaten by a fort made of seashell. Two years lat...

23 Jul 202219min

Four hundred miles from the coast, an English trader winters in a town that will never see an English soldier — selling guns, buying deerskins and human beings, the farthest reach of a colony into a c...

23 Jul 202219min

In October 1690, a Boston man stood blindfolded before the governor of New France and gave him one hour to surrender Canada — to an army that belonged not to England, but to a single colony. This is t...

23 Jul 202221min

In the late summer of 1684, a French royal army sat starving on the shore of Lake Ontario — and an Onondaga orator walked into its camp and dictated terms to the king’s governor. That was the Haudenos...

18 Jul 202223min

On a frozen leap-day morning in 1704, a French and Native war party came over the palisade of a sleeping Massachusetts town, and New England’s most famous minister woke to find warriors in his house a...

17 Jul 202222min

The Dominion of New England did not fall because the colonies resisted it. It fell because the king who built it lost his throne in a single winter. This is the finale of By What Authority: the Glorio...

16 Jul 202217min

In 1670 a London jury was locked up without food, water, or heat and ordered to convict a young Quaker named William Penn. They refused — and the ruling that followed made the independence of juries a...

1 Mai 202223min

In 1659 a woman stood on the gallows on Boston Common with a rope around her neck — and was cut down alive at the last moment, by a reprieve her son had ridden to win. She was Mary Dyer, condemned for...

1 Mai 202224min