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250 and Counting

Acroasis Media

This day 250 years ago

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2:00

Sam Adams Also Has Concerns–January 15, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/15

Samuel Adams in 1772, painted by John Singleton Copley. via Wikimedia Commons and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.Samuel Adams made a point of telling his second cousin John Adams that he didn’t have a lot of time to write. Then he cranked out 570 words of worries about the language in the New Hampshire constitution, which had been ratified ten days earlier. Then the next day he tacked on another 250 words. If he’d typed all 820 words out, it would be about three pages

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2:00

Washington Has Concerns–January 14, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/14

Correspondence from Charles Thompson, Secretary to the Second Continental Congress, to George Washington. via Library of Congress. As George Washington’s aide-de-camp, Joseph Reed was privy to a lot of things on his Commander-in-Chief’s mind. And it shows in the level of prose that Washington uses when writing to Reed, because it’s much less formal. Compare that to the letter he sent to the Continental Congress the same day. In both cases he was expressing concerns

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2:00

John M. Snowden–January 13, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/13

Portrait of John Maugridge Snowden, Third Mayor of Pittsburgh. From the Snowden Family Collection via Wikimedia Commons. What can I say about John M. Snowden that I didn’t tell you about in the episode itself? The truth is, he’s not a well-documented man, nor is his family, even though (as I noted) his wife was an advisor to George Washington for awhile. I can note that I foreshortened his career a little bit, in that he had done a little public service before he was the

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2:00

Prudence Island Under Attack–January 12, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/12

Prudence Park on Prudence Island, from a 1930s-era postcard. Via Wikimedia Commons.Prudence Island, in the Narragansett Bay off Rhode Island, didn’t have a lot of strategic value to anyone. What it DID have was livestock, and the British were hard-pressed to get supplies, especially for Boston, which had been under siege since mid-April. And, as Mike notes during the episode, neither army was really shy about stealing what they needed to advance their cause. While the residents of

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2:00

Rush To The Altar–January 11, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/11

Portrait of Julia Stockton Rush by Charles Willson Peale, painted in 1776. Sure, most of the episode is about Benjamin Rush, but who would YOU rather look at? Right. Although she was quite young when she married Benjamin Rush, Julia Stockton was probably as brilliant and opinionated as her husband was. Not long after they married on this day in 1776, Benjamin was appointed Surgeon General to his friend George Washington, and as the war got more intense and involved, and American losses

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It’s Just…You Know…–January 10, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/10

The original cover of Common Sense. via Wikimedia Commons. Okay, so here’s the thing about Common Sense: It’s not as though Thomas Paine came up with prose so extraordinarily clear that everyone suddenly smacked their foreheads and said, “My God! Independence! Of COURSE!” In fact, many people thought Common Sense was crazy, and others considered it an incitement to the all-out war that everyone was trying to avoid. There were complaints that what Paine had written

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2:00

A Plan Is Hatched–January 9, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/09

A miniature portrait of Josiah Martin, artist unknown, circa 1775.Josiah Martin was the last Royal Governor of North Carolina, and while he spent the first few months of the job in New York, he probably wouldn’t have a reputation as an especially bad governor if he hadn’t been hampered so much by circumstances that were in place before he got the job. There were money issues that his predecessor had left behind, and the rest of the government was plagued by internal squabbling

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2:00

The Play’s The Thing–January 8, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/08

Portrait of John Burgoyne c. 1766, by Joshua Reynolds. Via the Frick Collection.Mike wasn’t kidding when he said that, had it not been for his part in the Revolution, John Burgoyne would be best known as a playwright. He wrote several plays, most of them quite successful. Interestingly enough, the play Mike cites today is not often listed among his oeuvre. So we get the feeling that “The Blockade to Boston” was more of a one-act, or a skit-level kind of show meant specifically

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2:00

Preparing To Defend New York–January 7, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/07

Portrait of Jonathan Trumbull and his wife Faith, painted by his son John Trumbull, 1778. via New York Public Library. There are many letters between George Washington and Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull. Presumably something as simple as proximity to another leader was attractive to both of them, especially in an age where letters took several days to go a hundred miles. We have to presume that the two men had very reliable people transporting these letters, given how much detail is

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2:00

Retreat From Charleston–January 6, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/06

Oil painting of William Moultrie, who was a General when this was painted by Charles Wilson Peale in 1782. From a strategic standpoint, Charleston Bay was probably much more attractive to the British than Boston Harbor was. The northern harbor was more open to the sea, there were a bunch of small islands to navigate around, and the weather could get quite treacherous. Meanwhile in South Carolina, there was a definite entry/exit point, there were fewer islands to deal with, and while it can

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2:00

The First State Constitution–January 5, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/05

The manuscript for the first New Hampshire constitution. Via New Hampshire Secretary of State social media account.It’s fun to say that the New Hampshire Constitution was the first time that an American commonwealth constitution, and that several of the others quickly followed, as though a dam had broken. But the fact is, the various colonies were putting together their own constitutions at the urging of the Second Continental Congress, and New Hampshire just happened to be the first

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2:00

Marines On A Mission–January 4, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/04

Historic US Marine Corps portrait of Samuel Nicholas, their first Commandant. Artist and date of creation unknown. Although he held the title “Captain of Marines” at this point, Samuel Nicholas was the first officer commissioned to the Continental Marines (later the US Marine Corps), and by tradition is therefore considered to be the first Commandant of the Marines. Hey, are YOU going to argue with the USMC? I didn’t think so. Not me, either. Nicholas was commissioned

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2:00

A Plan For Reconciliation–January 3, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/03

A 1913 painting of the Continental Congress in session, by John Ward Dunsmore. This is supposed to be the moment that John Adams recommends George Washington to lead the Continental Army. I couldn’t find any images of Lord Drummond, at least not the correct Lord Drummond. It was called “A Plan of Accommodation,” and it had been in the works for most of the previous year before Lord Drummond tried to present it to the Second Continental Congress. Taxation was the big ticket

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2:00

A Furnace for Arms–January 2, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/02

The Mount Riga Ironworks Furnace in Salisbury, CT. There was more than one furnace at this location; this is the surviving one. It’s on the National Register of Historic Locations and a lovely place to visit if you’re in the northwest corner of the state. The Mount Riga Iron Furnace isn’t an especially unique artifact on the east coast of the US. In fact, as someone who lives in Baltimore, I get to see one of them regularly when I visit my mother-in-law, who lives about a

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2:00

The Burning of Norfolk–January 1, 1776

250 and Counting ·

2026/01/01

“Incident in the Burning of Norfolk,” engraving, artist unknown. Originally appeared as an illustration in Cassell’s History of the United States in the late 1870s.Happy New Year to you! The burning of Norfolk was the follow-up to the Battle of Great Bridge and the Patriot occupation of that town. Colonel Howe probably overplayed his hand with this one, and the consequences were catastrophic for the town. The Declaration of Independence is just a few months away, now,

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2:00

The Battle of Quebec–December 31, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2025/12/31

The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec (detail), by John Trumbull, 1786. Montgomery was struck in the head by grapeshot, so it probably wasn’t nearly as tidy as this. While hindsight is very much a 20/20 vision, it’s still worth exploring why the Battle of Quebec went so poorly for the American side: While General Montgomery was clever enough to attack during a storm, he didn’t necessarily expect Nor’easter blizzard conditions, which made it tough

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2:00

Washington Has A Change Of Heart–December 30, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2025/12/30

Back on October 8, the Continental Army determined that Blacks were no longer to be permitted to enlist, and that existing soldiers would not be allowed to re-enlist. But on this date, George Washington changed his mind. Was he suddenly an abolitionist? Not a chance. He owned slaves until the day he died. This was a more pragmatic decision. It was borne of the fact that he and his staff suddenly realized that a lot of soldiers were going to end their enlistment come January. That October

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2:00

Birth Of A Navy–December 29, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2025/12/29

The Pine Tree Flag, which was the ensign of the Massachusetts State Navy. There are a few variations of this, because the original was destroyed by the British. While the Massachusetts Naval Militia was pretty much wiped out in 1779 (oops, spoiler alert), it wasn’t the end of a state-based Navy for Massachusetts. Massachusetts began to rebuild, but in 1780 a new state constitution was adopted, and just as the navy was delayed in its original inception by bureaucracy, the Massachusetts

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2:00

Congress Organizes Military Support–December 28, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2025/12/28

The plaque in Carpenters Hall, commemorating the table where the Secret Committee met with Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir. You’ll remember I mentioned Samuel Adams in this space a couple of days ago, as a member of the Continental Congress, and as a member of several committees, most of them related to defense. He was almost certainly at the heart of the events of today that took place in Congress which Mike describes in our episode, even though he isn’t named directly in

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2:00

Ben Franklin Analyzes the Snake–December 27, 1775

250 and Counting ·

2025/12/27

Yeah, I cheated and used the same image from last week. While he didn’t use a rattlesnake, Benjamin Franklin was the guy who came up with the original “Join or Die” snake image [right]back in 1754. (At least most people give him credit for it.) It was based in a superstition that if you cut up a snake into pieces and then reassembled those pieces before sunset, the snake could be resurrected. In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Delaware was part of Pennsylvania

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250 and Counting

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