The History of the Americans – Details, episodes & analysis

This is the second of two “Sidebar” episodes in honor of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s famous ride, which we will celebrate on the night of April 18 by putting two lights in a window of our house. 

Last time we explored the prelude to the ride in the months before the final crisis that triggered the march of the British “Regulars” on Lexington and Concord. This episode is the story of Paul Revere’s “midnight” ride on the night of April 18-19, 1775, including the famous lanterns of Old North Church, the fraught trip across the Charles River under the guns of HMS Somerset, his spectacular horse Brown Beauty (one of the great equine heroes of American history), the “waking up the institutions of New England” that night in raising the alarm not just on the road to Lexington and Concord but throughout eastern New England, and his astonishing capture and release. And, sure, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott.

Maps of Paul Revere’s Ride

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride

John Hancock’s Trunk o’ Papers

April 18, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s “Midnight Ride” to alarm the towns around Boston that the “Regulars” were marching out to capture artillery and ammunition at Concord, or perhaps to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock. This was but the last of a series of crises that rocked New England in the months before the midnight ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord the next day. This episode explores those crises, known as the “Powder Alarms,” and Paul Revere’s central role in the resistance movement among Boston Whigs – including the famous Sons of Liberty – during those fraught years before the shooting began.

[Errata: I implied that Dr. Benjamin Church’s betrayal of the Patriot cause wouldn’t be understood “for years,” but in fact it was uncovered during the summer of 1775, after the shooting had begun, when one of his letters to the British was intercepted. He was permitted to leave the country in lieu of imprisonment, and sailed for the West Indies. His ship disappeared at sea and Church was never seen again.]

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride

Portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride”

Intolerable Acts

Thomas Gage

In 1672, the settlers of the New Jersey proprietary colony arose in a bloodless rebellion against Philip Carteret, appointed by the proprietors as governor. The wannabe rebels formed an illegal legislature, and installed Captain James Carteret as “president,” putting them in conflict with Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, James’s father. The conflict had to do with taxes, quitrents, and title to land. John Ogden, ancestor of your podcaster, emerged as a key player in the “popular party.” By the summer of 1673, the proprietors, with the help of the Duke of York and King Charles II, had put down the rebellion. James, now virtually disowned by his father, fled to Carolina, but along the way would be captured by the Dutch captain Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest, known to his many fans as “Kees the Devil.” James, or one of his resentful allies, would describe the defenses of New York to Evertsen, setting up the Dutch reconquest of New York.

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Useful background: https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/ohhhh-whaddabout-new-jersey/

Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary

James Carteret: The Black Sheep (Interesting blog post on James Carteret)

“Welcome, Englishmen!” The Pilgrims had had been building houses and establishing defenses for Plymouth for three months before Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore representing the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, marched boldly into town. Until that moment, they had seen a few Indians watching them, but had made no contact. Now, Massasoit had to decide whether to seek a treaty with the Englishmen, or to fight them.

Along the way we reconnect with Tisquantum, and tell one of the most famous stories in early English-American history with, of course, a couple of twists.

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Errata: Oops, at one point I said “ancestors” once when I meant “descendants.” You’ll figure it out…

Selected references for this episode

Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty

William Bradford and Edmund Winslow (presumed), Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth

Jonathan Mack, A Stranger Among Saints: Stephen Hopkins, The Man Who Survived Jamestown And Saved Plymouth

Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and her Passengers

Lynn Ceci, “Fish Fertilizer: A Native North American Practice?”, Science, April 4, 1975.

The Charter of New England

The Three Sisters (agriculture)

It is November 11, 1620. The Mayflower has anchored in the harbor at today’s Provincetown, Massachusetts. The passengers and crew of the Mayflower had been stuffed into the small ship for at least ten weeks, and for those who didn’t go ashore in England longer than that. They were eager to get off the ship, explore the region, and find a permanent place to settle. That would prove to be more difficult than they expected, in no small part because winter in New England was much colder than at the corresponding latitude in Europe. Nevertheless, after three dramatic expeditions along Cape Cod, they found a place to call home. Unfortunately, winter was coming, and hard.

If you are looking at these show notes on the website, the credit for the featured photograph for the episode, the marker at Pilgrim Spring, belongs to listener Adam Page. Thank you!

Link to more of Adam’s photos of Pilgrim Spring as it is today.

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Selected references for this episode

Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty

William Bradford and Edmund Winslow (presumed), Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth

Who were the Pilgrims, and how was it that they settled in the Netherlands, only to sail on the Mayflower for the lower Hudson River? And having done that, what was it like on board, and how was it they ended up in New England?

All will be revealed, including the story of John Howland, who narrowly escaped death on the crossing and who is today ancestor to more than two million Americans, roughly 0.6% of all of us.

Errata: I obviously misspoke when I said the Mayflower II sailed in the 1590s. It was the 1950s, doh!

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Selected references for this episode

Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty

This episode starts at the end of the story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth by looking at the famous “Mayflower Compact,” and how Americans have spoken and written about it for more than 200 years. Was it a “document that ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution as a seminal American text,” or merely an expediency for heading off the possibility of mutiny? Everybody from John Adams to historians writing today – and now the History of the Americans Podcast! – have debated that first grassroots American social contract.

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Selected references for this episode

(If you buy any of these books, please click through the links on the episode notes on the website.)

Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

George Bancroft, A History of the United States From the Discovery of the American Continent to the Present Time (Vol 1)

Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The New World

Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People

Paul Johnson, History of the American People

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

Walter A. McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585-1828

Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States

Louis P. Masur, The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America

Wilfred M. McClay, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story

The American Yawp (Vol 1)

Mark L. Sargent, “The Conservative Covenant: The Rise of the Mayflower Compact in American Myth,” The New England Quarterly, June 1988.

This year’s Independence Day “Sidebar” episode is about 18 year-old Daniel Webster’s first public speech, on the 4th of July, 1800, in front of an audience of good citizens in Hanover, New Hampshire.  The speech is interesting for a number of reasons, including that it shows how early in our history the 4th of July became the national holiday for ordinary Americans, and also that it is an early indicator that Webster would go on to become perhaps the greatest orator in American history.

References for this episode

Daniel Webster, “An oration, pronounced at Hanover, New-Hampshire, the 4th day of July, 1800; being the twenty-fourth anniversary of American independence.”

Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time

Dierks Bentley, “Home”

This episode examines the arrival of the first Africans – Angolans, specifically – in English North America on a privateer called the White Lion. We look at the much-debated status of the new arrivals, the circumstances of their arrival, their origins in Angola under unbelievably brutal conditions, their treatment in American history over the last 145 years, and their significance in the History of the Americans.

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Selected references for this episode

James Horn, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy

John Thornton, “The African Experience of the “20. and Odd Negroes” Arriving in Virginia in 1619,” The William and Mary Quarterly, June 1998

George Bancroft, History Of The United States Of America

Carl Degler, Out of Our Past

Jill LePore, These Truths

McCartney, Martha. “Africans, Virginia’s First” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (22 Mar. 2022). Web. 28 Jun. 2022

“Here Come The Bridges” Theme Song

Independence Day (Alien scene)

The year 1619 is a famous one in the history of Virginia. There were two big moments — the introduction of the “Great Charter,” which brought representative government to the future United States for the first time, and the first importation of enslaved Africans in English North America. This episode, Part 1, looks at the innovation of the Great Charter, the invention of the “General Assembly,” and the context in which representative government, if that is what it was, first came to the future United States.

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Selected references for this episode

James Horn, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy

W. W. Henry, “The First Legislative Assembly in America: Sitting at Jamestown, Virginia, 1619,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1894)

Sir Edwin Sandys (1561–1629)

The Graves of the Powhatan

“The Dutch”