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
Independence - The King’s Friends
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History is written by the winners, and the winners of the American Revolution wrote the Loyalists down as a handful of rich cowards. The truth was larger: as many as a fifth of Americans stayed loyal to the King — and their case against the Revolution was made by serious people in good conscience. This is the story of the other side. A parson dragged 70 miles by armed horsemen for writing pamphlets; a clergyman who preached obedience with a loaded pistol on his pulpit; the Boston wit who asked whether it was better to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or three thousand tyrants a mile away. From Samuel Seabury’s “jaws of a lion” this is the Revolution seen from the losing side of it — a civil war that split families down the middle, and a bet on the Crown that hundreds of thousands of Americans made, and lost.