
443 How Independence Happened, Part 1: The Lee Resolution
Declaring independence on July 2, 1776, was only the beginning. To actually become a nation, the United States needed something else: foreig...
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This is a show about early American history. Awarded Best History Podcast by the Academy of Podcasters in 2017, it’s for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the...
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Declaring independence on July 2, 1776, was only the beginning. To actually become a nation, the United States needed something else: foreig...

On July 4th, 2026, the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence announced a new nation to the world. But how well...

When we picture the American Revolution, we picture battles. But for the men and women who actually lived and fought in it, the Revolution w...

Most of us learned the same story: During the winter at Valley Forge, George Washington's army suffered and endured. Ragged soldiers huddled...

When David George lay sick with smallpox in Savannah during the Revolutionary War, he faced three possible outcomes: death, re-enslavement,...

She fled on horseback in the thick of war. Her six-year-old son rode with her. The white tailor at her side would pass, when anyone asked, a...

Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence contained 28 grievances against King George III — not 27. The final grievance, t...

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society and asked one of the most searing questions in A...

The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, but it had absolutely no plan for telling the world about it. Congre...

Between 1763 and 1848, revolutions swept across four continents. We tend to remember three of them — the American, the French, and the Haiti...

What if the American Revolution didn't just create the United States, but also created Australia? Most of us learned about the Revolution as...

In September 1777, just fourteen months after declaring independence, Philadelphia fell to the British Army. For nearly nine months, the new...

The British Army is at your door. They need a room. What do you do? For thousands of civilians living in cities occupied during the American...

250 years ago, the British evacuated Boston: driven out by cannon that had traveled 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga. But where did the plan...

On March 17, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, driven out by cannon hauled 300 miles through winter wilderness from a crumbling fort in up...

In January 1776, Thomas Paine told the American colonies to break free from their king. But what was supposed to come next? 250 years later,...

What would you fight for if you were free but still not equal? In 1777, brothers William and Benjamin Frank answered that question by enlist...

More than 6,000 Black men—free and enslaved—served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Yet their stories remain some of...

What if the American Revolution was never just an American story? Historian Ronald Angelo Johnson helps us uncover the deep connections betw...

What does it take to become a revolutionary in more than one revolution? In this revisited conversation with Mike Duncan, we explore the lif...