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
The Glorious Cause - Out of His Protection
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In the winter of 1775, the colonists still called themselves loyal subjects of a king they believed would protect them. Then the King’s men spent a single season proving otherwise. A Royal Navy squadron burned the town of Falmouth to the ground before a Maine winter. In Virginia, the royal governor Lord Dunmore offered freedom to any enslaved person who would take up arms against their master — and hundreds ran to him, some marching into battle in coats stitched with the words “Liberty to Slaves,” turning the great slaveholding colony against the Crown almost overnight. And in London, Parliament declared every American ship the property of “open enemies,” and threw the colonies, by the King’s own law, out of his protection.
These were the acts of war that made independence not a choice but a fact — Falmouth and Norfolk in flames, Dunmore broken at Great Bridge, and the law John Adams called “the Act of Independency.” By spring, the colonists no longer had to be argued out of loving their king. He had written the case against himself.