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 - All London Afloat
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Two months after declaring independence, George Washington faced the largest expeditionary force Britain had ever sent across an ocean — 400 ships and 32,000 men — arriving off a city that could not be defended. This is the story of the New York campaign of 1776: the catastrophe at the Battle of Long Island, where General Howe marched his army through an unguarded pass in the dark and rolled up the American line at dawn; the doomed, magnificent stand of a few hundred Maryland soldiers that bought the army its escape; and the night the Continental Army slipped across a mile of water under the enemy’s nose, saved by a regiment of Marblehead fishermen and a providential fog.
It is also the story of how close it all came to ending — Kip’s Bay, the fall of the city, the disaster at Fort Washington, the prison ships, and a shrinking army retreating across New Jersey in the cold behind a general who confided to his brother that “the game is pretty near up.” The words of July were written. Whether they meant anything now depended on a winter that had not yet come.