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 - The Noble Train of Artillery
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In the winter of 1776, the American army had Boston under siege and could not break it. The heavy guns that might have broken it sat 300 miles away, behind the walls of a captured fort at Ticonderoga, on the far side of a frozen wilderness. The man who volunteered to go and get them was a 25-year-old Boston bookseller named Henry Knox, who had learned everything he knew about cannon from the books in his own shop.
This is the story of Knox’s “noble train of artillery” — 59 guns and 60 tons of iron dragged across lakes, rivers, and the Berkshire Mountains in the dead of winter — and of what George Washington did with those guns when they came: a fort raised on Dorchester Heights in a single frozen night, on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, that left the British fleet helpless beneath American cannon. It is the story of how an army of amateurs outthought the finest soldiers in the world, drove them out of Boston without a battle, and handed George Washington the first victory of the Revolution.