American Political History
The full story of this country, told through the people who lived it. From the soldier in the mud to the statesman at the table. Chronological, self-contained seasons, built on the primary sources. New episodes Tuesdays and Thursday.
American Political History
Episodes
Interlude
If you've listening to this, you been with this show a while, scroll back to the beginning of the feed. Everything down there is new.Every episode from the start of this show has been remade. Season one, season two, all of it — re-resear...
A Failed Nation - A Rope of Sand
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 act so astonishing that a stunned King George ...
A Failed Nation - A Dangerous Instrument
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 Newburgh, New York, had every reason to be furi...
A Failed Nation - The Financier
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 merchant who put his own fortune and signat...
Independence - A War to Win
In June 1778, a barefoot Connecticut private named Joseph Plumb Martin marched out of Valley Forge and, for the first time in the war, toward the enemy. This is the story of the moment the American Revolution stopped being a war of survival and...