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.
Episodes
154 episodes
The Grand Convention - Eleven Days Early
James Madison stepped off the New York stage on May 3rd, 1787 — 11 days before the Federal Convention was scheduled to open, and 22 days before it actually could. This is the story of those waiting weeks and the first days of business: the mudd...
The Grand Convention - An Assembly of Demigods
4 prisoners from the Walnut Street jail carried Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention in a sedan chair — the oldest delegate, 81, riding above the cobblestones to sit with the youngest, a 26-year-old former army captain. Jefferson,...
The Grand Convention - Merely Federal
On May 29th, 1787, Edmund Randolph — 33 years old, governor of Virginia, owner of the finest voice in the room — rose to open the main business of the Federal Convention, and 3 notebooks took him down. Madison recorded a statesman’s autopsy of ...
The Grand Convention - I Will Never Confederate
In the second week of June 1787, the small states stopped losing votes politely. David Brearley proposed erasing every state boundary and redrawing America into 13 equal parts. William Paterson declared New Jersey would never confederate on pro...
The Grand Convention - One Vote
On June 11th, 1787, Roger Sherman proposed the settlement — population in the House, one vote per state in the Senate — and the Constitutional Convention voted it down without a debate. This is the story of the 5 weeks it cost to walk back: Lut...
A Failed Nation - A Rope of Sand
On December 23rd, 1783, in the Senate chamber at Annapolis, George Washington did the thing conquerors never do: he laid his commission at the feet of the Congress and went home to be a farmer — an act so astonishing that a stunned King George ...
A Failed Nation - A Dangerous Instrument
In the spring of 1783, with the Revolution all but won, the most dangerous enemy of the United States was its own army. Unpaid for years, cheated of their promised pensions, the officers camped at Newburgh, New York, had every reason to be furi...
A Failed Nation - The Financier
He was the richest man in America, and for most of the Revolution he was also its treasury. When the United States had no money and no credit, it borrowed on the name of Robert Morris — a Philadelphia merchant who put his own fortune and signat...
A Failed Nation - Pennies on the Dollar
In 1786 the Congress of the United States asked the thirteen states for 3.8 million dollars to pay the debts of the Revolution. It collected 663 dollars. This is the story of the broken money machine underneath everything else in these years — ...
A Failed Nation - Rogue Island
In September 1786, a Newport butcher named John Weeden refused to take paper money for a joint of meat, and demanded silver. Under Rhode Island law, that was a crime — punishable by a fine, the loss of his vote, and a trial with no jury and no ...
A Failed Nation - Shays’ Rebellion
In the winter of 1787, a few thousand indebted farmers in western Massachusetts marched on their own government — and though they lost their one real battle in minutes, in the snow outside a federal arsenal, they did more to reshape the country...
A Failed Nation - The Closed River
In 1784, Spain closed the lower Mississippi River — and with it, the only road to market for the tens of thousands of Americans pouring into Kentucky and the West. This is the story of what that closed river nearly did to the United States. Whe...
A Failed Nation - Driven into a Separation
The Treaty of Paris handed the United States a wilderness empire running to the Mississippi and the Great Lakes — and the bankrupt Confederation needed to sell it, fast, because western land was very nearly the only asset it had. There was one ...
A Failed Nation - Thirteen Nations
There were thirteen United States — and to the rest of the world, there were thirteen nations. This is the story of what that cost. In 1785, pirates out of Algiers seized two American ships and enslaved their crews, and the United States could ...
A Failed Nation - On an Equal Footing
The Confederation has failed at nearly everything — paying its debts, defending its frontier, commanding the world’s respect. This is the episode about the one enormous thing it got right. In 1785, a lone surveyor named Thomas Hutchins began dr...
A Failed Nation - Vices of the Political System
While the Confederation staggered, a small, sickly, soft-spoken Virginian sat in his study and tried to think his way out of the crisis. This is the story of James Madison’s quiet revolution — the trunk of books Jefferson shipped him from Paris...
A Failed Nation - A Convention of the States
The convention that produced the Constitution was born, improbably, out of a fishing dispute and a failure. This is the story of the strange chain of events that led to Philadelphia. It begins in 1785 at Mount Vernon, where commissioners from V...
A Failed Nation - Sole and Express Purpose
This is the finale of A Failed Nation. In February of 1787, the Confederation Congress faced the most awkward decision in its short and unhappy life: whether to bless a convention summoned, however politely, to replace it. Six states had alread...
Independence - A War to Win
In June 1778, a barefoot Connecticut private named Joseph Plumb Martin marched out of Valley Forge and, for the first time in the war, toward the enemy. This is the story of the moment the American Revolution stopped being a war of survival and...
Independence - The Open Field
On a Sunday in June 1778, in heat that killed men where they stood, Washington’s reborn army finally caught the British in the open at Monmouth Court House. This is the story of the day the Continental Army proved it could stand. It nearly went...
Independence - The Southern Strategy
In December 1778, a British army took Savannah in an afternoon — guided around the American line by an enslaved man betting on which side would make him free. It was the opening move of Britain’s new plan: the South was said to be full of Loyal...
Independence - The Swamp Fox
In August 1780, the “Hero of Saratoga,” General Horatio Gates, marched the last American army in the South to Camden — and lost it in a single morning, his militia breaking at the first bayonet charge while he galloped 180 miles to safety and t...
Independence - Tarleton’s Quarter
On May 29th, 1780, on a road in the Carolina backcountry, Banastre Tarleton’s cavalry cut down hundreds of Virginia Continentals as they threw down their arms to surrender — and gave the southern war a phrase it would never lose: “Tarleton’s Qu...
Independence - The King’s Friends
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 Rev...
Independence - Two Volleys
After Charleston and Camden, the Continental Army in the South was a wreck — and George Washington sent it a limping Rhode Island foundryman named Nathanael Greene, who promptly did the one thing every rule of war forbids: with a stronger enemy...