The History of the Americans

In May 1660, Oliver Cromwell now dead, Charles II was restored as King of England. The 59 judges who in 1649 had signed the death warrant of the king's father, Charles I, were declared regicides, and exempted from the general amnesty Charles II offered to most people who had opposed his father. Some of the regicides were caught immediately and most gruesomely executed. Others fled to Europe. Three of them fled to New England. Their names were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell. This is their story, an epic tale of bounty-hunting across old New England, a tale woven with the anti-Royalist attitude of the Puritans and concern for their status after the Restoration. And, of course, there is the mysterious "Ghost of Hadley," a depiction of which is the art for the episode on the website for the podcast. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel Matthew Jenkinson, Charles I's Killers in America: The Lives & Afterlives of Edward Whalley & William Goffe Christopher Pagluico, The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut

This is the story of the New Haven Colony from 1643 until is absorption by Connecticut in 1664. We look at the colony's economic, military, and geopolitical successes and disasters, and the famous story of the "Ghost Ship," perhaps the most widely witnessed supernatural event in early English North America. Finally, confronted with the restoration of the Stuarts in England, the Puritan colonies of New England, the greatest supporters of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, struggle to establish their legitimacy under the monarchy. Connecticut Colony secures a charter from Charles II, and through a series of power plays absorbs New Haven Colony and puts an end to its theocratic government of the Elect. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut First Anglo-Dutch War (Wikipedia) The United Colonies of New England I: The New England Confederation Begins (1643-1652) (Apple podcasts link) The United Colonies of New England II: Confederation or Absorption (1644-1690) (Apple podcasts link)

Of the organized Puritan settlements in New England in the first half of the 17th century – Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut being foremost – the New Haven Colony was in some respects the most peculiar. It was probably the wealthiest of the four United Colonies of New England on a per capita basis, the most insistent on religion’s role in civil governance, and the least democratic, being, basically, not democratic. The men who founded it, Theophilus Eaton and the Reverend John Davenport, had great expectations and ambitions for spiritual communion and commercial profit, most of which would come to naught. It would survive as an independent colony less than 25 years. This is the story of its founding, at a place called Quinnipiac. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, History of the Colony of New Haven, Before and After the Union With Connecticut

Dr. James Horn is President and Chief Officer of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia) at Historic Jamestowne. Previously, he has served as Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Saunders Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and taught for twenty years at the University of Brighton, England. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, the College of William and Mary, and Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. A leading scholar of early Virginia and English America, Dr. Horn is the author and editor of numerous books and articles including three that we have leaned on extensively in this podcast, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America; 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy; and most recently A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. (I'll get a little tip if you buy them through the links above.) Our conversation focuses on the extraordinary life of Opechancanough, the fascinating man who twice led the Powhatan Confederacy in wars to expel English settlers from the James River and the Chesapeake. As longstanding and attentive listeners know, Opechancanough may or may not have been the same man as Paquiquineo, taken by the Spanish in the Chesapeake in 1561, received in the court of Philip II, christened Don Luis de Velasco in Mexico City, and returned to his homeland in 1570. Jim persuades me that Opechancanough was, in fact, the same man. Along the way I learn, a bit too late, how to pronounce various names properly. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In order to understand the history of English North America during the 1640s to the 1660s, one really needs to know at least something about the English Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts in 1661. This episode is a high level look at that period, oriented toward the events and themes most important to the history of the Americans. But there are still some great details, including a graphic description of the execution of Charles I, and an elegy of sorts, to Sir Henry Vane! It must be said that British listeners and others who know a lot about this period will no doubt find this overview tediously shallow and rife with rank generalizations and even error. Guilty as charged. The American analogy would be to cover the years between the run-up to our own Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South in one podcast episode. Absurd! And yet here it is. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on the Amazon links) Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689 George Bancroft, History of the United States of America (Vol 1) Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel Elvis Costello, "Oliver's Army" (YouTube)

It is the late 1640s. More than forty years before the famous witch hunt in Salem, William Pynchon's town of Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, was roiled by the strange doings of Hugh and Mary Parsons, an unhappy and anxious couple with poor social skills. In that dark, solitary place on the edge of the North American wilderness, anxiety, depression, a bad marriage, and conspiracy theories combined with bad luck and no little neurosis to produce an epic tragedy, preserved for us by many pages of deposition transcripts taken by Pynchon. True crime, Puritan theology, rumor mongering, strange doings, and the inherent justice of the New English courts combine for a fantastic story. And, of course, there is some great trivia: What does "wearing the green gown" mean? Closing disclaimer: This episode is absolutely not in recognition of "Women's History Month." X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Malcolm Gaskill, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston Nachman Ben-Yehuda, "The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective," American Journal of Sociology, July 1980. Useful prerequisite: The Life and Times of William Pynchon

This episode tells the story of three "lost voices" from early Maryland, surprising people who remind us of the complexity of the 17th century Atlantic world. Mathias de Sousa was of African descent, and is called "the first Black colonist" of Maryland. He would skipper a pinnace in the Chesapeake, trade with the local tribes, and sit in the Maryland Assembly. Margaret Brent was a stone-cold businesswoman, executor for the estate of Leonard Calvert, and would become famous for demanding not just one vote, but two, in the Maryland Assembly. Trust me when I say she had her reasons. Finally, there is Mary Kittamaquund Kent, "the Pocahontas of Maryland." Her similarities to the actual Pocahontas were, it must be said, something of a stretch. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode David S. Bogen, "Mathias de Sousa: Maryland's First Colonist of African Descent," Maryland Historical Magazine Spring 2001. Lois Green Carr, "Margaret Brent - A Brief History", Maryland State Archives. Kelly L. Watson, "'The Pocahontas of Maryland': Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake," Early American Studies, Winter 2021.

Joe Kelly is professor of literature and the director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College of Charleston, and the author of Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin. In addition to Marooned, in 2013 Joe published America’s Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Towards Civil War, which details the evolving ideology of slavery in America. He is also author of a study of the Irish novelist James Joyce, censorship, obscenity, and the Cold War (Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon). This conversation, which was great fun, covers a whole range of topics familiar to longstanding and attentive listeners, but with a new and provocative perspective. We talk about John Smith, Sir Francis Drake – who literally takes up a chapter in Joe’s book – the Sea Venture wreck, the role of the commoners in the struggle to survive on Bermuda, and the political philosophy of Stephen Hopkins, the one man to spend years in Virginia and then go on to sail on the Mayflower as a Stranger among the Pilgrim Fathers. Was Hopkins the moving force for or even the author of the Mayflower Compact, and the true original English-American political theorist? Finally, we have it out over the fraught question, as between Jamestown and Plymouth, which of our founding mythologies most clearly reflects the American we have become? Joe brings a new and fascinating perspective to that timeless argument. Buy the book!: Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

Welcome to the first "true crime" episode of the History of the Americans Podcast, the story of Oscar Hartzell and the Sir Francis Drake estate scam, perhaps the most audacious con of the 1920s, the great golden age of the confidence man. Hartzell swindled as many as 200,000 Midwesterners, many from my own state of Iowa, out of millions of dollars posing as the rightful heir to the lost estate of Sir Francis Drake. Eventually, it would drive him insane, at least as adjudged by the director of the behavioral clinic of the criminal court of Cook County, Illinois. Enjoy! X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Richard Rayner, "The Admiral and the Con Man," The New Yorker, April 15, 2002 (pdf, subscription necessary) Richard Rayner, Drake's Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," 1930 (pdf). Hartzell v. United States, Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, August 16, 1934.

William Pynchon, ancestor of the American novelist Thomas Pynchon, was the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, a successful fur trader, merchant, and magistrate, and at age 60 wrote the first of many books to be banned in Boston. Pynchon had come to Massachusetts with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and soon became one of the wealthiest merchant/traders in the colony. He founded Springfield on the main trail between the Dutch trading posts near Albany and Boston, and controlled the fur trade coming down the Connecticut River from the north. He had unusually modern opinions about the Indians and Indian sovereignty, opposed the Pequot War, and was a respected leader in New England, until he ran afoul of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the founder of the Connecticut River Towns. Their dispute would alter the map of New England forever. Pynchon was an independent thinker, especially in matters of economics and theology. In 1650, he published a book titled The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, and would be prosecuted for heresy. This episode is his story. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast The Other States of America Podcast (Apple podcast link) Selected references for this episode David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony

It is now 1648. In this episode, two tough guys, Johan "Big Belly" Printz of New Sweden and Peter "Peg Leg" Stuyvesant of New Netherland, escalate their competition to control the critical Delaware River, now an essential artery for the fur trade coming out of Susquehannock territory in Pennsylvania and points farther west. Sweden and Netherland were at peace in Europe, so there would be no shooting, but all sorts of guns would be pointed without pulling the trigger or lighting the match. Eventually, the Dutch would put together the largest European army in North America since Soto and Coronado in the 1540s, and put an end to New Sweden as a political entity, raising the Dutch flag over the forts at today's New Castle and Wilmington, Delaware. Along the way we hear the horrific story of the Katten, a Swedish ship full of settlers that ran aground just off Puerto Rico. Everybody survived the immediate crisis, only to fall into the hands of the Spanish and then the French on St. Croix. Folks, don't let that happen to you. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode New Sweden Part 2: The Tough Guys Arrive C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655 Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883.

We are back in New Sweden. In 1638, shortly after establishing Fort Christina at the site of today's Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Minuit would die in a hurricane on the way back to Sweden. The settlers left behind would go a year and half before another supply ship came, but they would survive with remarkable pluck. They were well-housed, because the Finns among them would introduce the log cabin to these shores, and they would trade effectively with the Lenape and Susquehannock nations. Then in 1643 a new governor would arrive, Johan Printz, a 400-pound giant of a man who would boot out the New English who tried to settle on the Delaware, and keep the pressure on the Dutch who also claimed both sides of that river. Under Printz's authoritarian and also competent administration, New Sweden would prosper, go on a building boom, and explore the interior of Pennsylvania, all in spite of very little help from home. The Dutch under Willem Kieft - we've met him before - wouldn't challenge New Sweden in this period because they were under pressure from the New English to the east and the Indian groups around Manhattan. Then, in 1647, Pieter Stuyvesant would arrive to govern New Netherland, and everything would change again. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode "The Founding of New Sweden" C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655 Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 "America's Oldest Log Cabin Is for Sale"

Your podcaster spent the weekend just passed in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. I learned a lot, but especially how transparently politicized so many professional historians seem have become. This episode recounts some of what I saw and heard, and concludes with my many thoughts on the greatest benefit of learning history, whether history should be "useable," and why deploying history for partisan political purposes, as is now happening widely and overtly, corrupts history absolutely. Along the way I suggest both philosophical and utilitarian reasons why overtly partisan historians are not doing their profession, or their students, any favors. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In podcast time, we’ve been knocking around the northeast of today’s United States for just about two years, starting with the Popham colony episodes back in December 2021. The recent high water mark, as it were, is 1647 or so, with the recovery of Maryland by the Calverts after the plundering time. We are not entirely caught up to that date, however. We need to get back to see what happened to New Sweden since its first year in the late 1630s, and the New Haven colony, which extended its writ to New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, deserves a couple of episodes. In the 70+ timeline episodes since Martin Pring’s expedition of 1603 and Champlain’s St. Croix settlement in Maine, we’ve talked about English, Dutch, and French settlement and exploration in today’s United States as local stories, but we have not looked at the big picture, or at least not very often. Even I’m getting confused! So in this episode we’ll do our best to bring it all together, which ought to make the next few episodes a bit easier to follow. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Map of Settlements on the Delaware Selected references for this episode Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 Hampton L. Carson, "Dutch and Swedish Settlements on the Delaware," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1909. Pavonia (Wikipedia) Zwaanendael Colony (Wikipedia)

While the first English Civil War rages, Leonard Calvert returns to the Chesapeake in September 1644, after having been away for a bit more than a year. He carries commissions from Charles I to seize "London" assets in Virginia and collect a duty on tobacco for the Crown. The Royalists who run the royal colony of Virginia refuse to support Calvert and their king because they are too busy fighting the Powhatans to divide their own ranks. Meanwhile, Richard Ingle and his ship Reformation return to the Chesapeake, where he learns that Leonard Calvert has threatened to hang him if he comes to Maryland. Ingle, however, bears a letter of marque from Parliament that he interprets as a license to steal from Catholics. So, naturally, this means war. A comical war, to be sure, and almost bloodless except for three Jesuits who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. But a war nonetheless. Ingle recruits some "rascally fellows," and essentially conquers Maryland with the support of the colony's Protestants. Leonard Calvert flees, and the Protestants install their own government at St. Mary's City. To all appearances, the Calverts had been expelled from Maryland. All appearances, it would turn out, would be deceiving. The Calverts would recover Maryland within 18 months, and Ingle would die a pauper. And so it is that the University of Maryland football team bears the Calvert family crest on its helmets. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode The "Plundering Time" of Maryland Part 1 Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646 Podcast: Rejects and Revolutionaries, “English Civil War 7: The Plundering Time”

This is the first of two episodes that recounts Maryland's "Plundering Time," when the English Civil War spilled into the Chesapeake. Protestants would rebel against Catholics, and Richard Ingle, a Protestant merchant-trader who had been the principal commercial link between the early Maryland colony and England, would loot the colony and almost put an end to the Calverts' rule there. This episode is the prelude to that ugly and also comical moment. It was, ultimately, a farce of impulsivity and ego that almost redrew the map of the future United States. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode That Time Maryland and Virginia Went to War Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646 Manfred Jonas, “The Claiborne-Calvert Controversy: An Episode in the Colonization of North America,” Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien, 1966. First English Civil War (Wikipedia) Podcast: Rejects and Revolutionaries, "English Civil War 7: The Plundering Time"

This episode will be easier to follow if you have recently listened to our previous Thanksgiving Sidebar, "Notes on Thanksgiving." Thanksgiving is less historically genuine than many Americans were led to believe. The Thanksgiving story, as it was long taught in school, was constructed to achieve a purpose: the unification of an increasingly diverse country around a national story. It worked incredibly well. Italians, Irish, eastern Europeans, and other immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century learned a version of our national origin story in a celebration of community that brought the country together when it very much needed it. But that success came at a price – it could and did alienate at least some of our people who were descended from North America’s indigenous peoples, including especially tribes of New England. The success of Thanksgiving in binding together an ever more diverse country and the alienation of people who do not celebrate the European settlement of North America is the story of this episode. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Sidebar: Notes on Thanksgiving (Encore Presentation) Elizabeth Pleck, "The Making of the Domestic Occasion: The History of Thanksgiving in the United States," Journal of Social History, Summer 1999. Jana Weiss, "The National Day of Mourning: Thanksgiving, Civil Religion, and American Indians," Amerikastudien / American Studies, 2018. Christopher Hitchens, "The Turkey Has Landed," The Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2005. Freedom from Want The Mayflower Compact Occupation of Alcatraz National Day of Mourning Red Power Movement The Nation, "Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?" James Lee West, "A Native American Reflects on Thanksgiving"

It is early spring 1644, and Europeans are fighting Indians in New Netherland and Maryland. In Virginia, though, it is quiet. It has been twelve years since the Second Anglo-Powhatan war ended after a decade of fighting that began the day the sky fell, March 22, 1622. On that date Opechancanough sprung his colony-wide ambush of the English settlements along the James. Indian soldiers loyal to the Powhatan confederacy killed almost four hundred English and other European settlers on that day, and many more in the years that followed. But peace had come in 1632, and despite occasional crises that might have triggered war, the old chief had kept that peace. We covered Opechancanough and the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in three episodes more than a year ago, “Who Was Opechancanough?,” “Opechancanough’s War,” and “After the Sky Fell,” which are definitely useful background if you have not listened to them, or haven’t listened to them in some time. The peace would end on April 18, 1644, and that is the story of this episode. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown Robert Beverley, The History & Present State of Virginia

Salina Baker lives in Austin - my town - and has just published “The Line of Splendor,” a biographical novel of the life of General Nathanael Greene, regarded by most historians as George Washington’s most important lieutenant. We talk about Greene’s life, his famous Southern Campaign in 1781 in which he and his men drove the British out of the Carolinas and Georgia while losing most of the battles they actually fought, his stint as Washington’s quartermaster general and his talent for logistics, his friendship with fellow boy-wonder Henry Knox, and what might have been had Greene not died shortly after the end of the war. Buy her novel through the link below! Also, if you are going to be in Denver on November 12, let me know if you can make the meet-up we'll do late that afternoon, probably at or new the Brown Palace Hotel. Subscribe by email X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Salina B. Baker, The Line of Splendor: A Novel of Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution

The goal of this "high altitude" episode is to establish a framework for forthcoming episodes covering the period between roughly 1640 and 1670. We look at the geopolitical landscape in the territories of today's northeastern United States and eastern Canada in the middle 17th century. The key players are the European settlers - English, French, Dutch, and Swedish - and the most important Indian nations - the Susquehannocks, the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Leni Lenapes, and the Hurons. They fiercely competed over the trade in fur, from the European point of view, and manufactured consumer products and weapons, from the Indian point of view. There would be blood. Subscribe by email X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Eric Jay Dolin, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America--The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 Francis Jennings, "Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century," Proceedings of the American Philosophic Society, February 1968