- 1 hour 23 minutes452 How Everyday Loyalists Experienced the Revolution
We often ask why some Americans chose to remain loyal to the British and why they did not want to seek independence. But the question some Americans asked at the time of the Revolution focused more on navigating daily life: How could they protect their families, property, and honor when neighbors, committees, and crowds decided what side they were on?
Today we’re joined by three guests who will help us investigate the American Revolution through Loyalist eyes and explore how Loyalists experienced the American Revolution.
Timothy Compeau, an Associate Professor of History at Huron University College at Western University in London, Ontario; Bonnie Huskins who teaches history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick; and Kacy Tillman, a professor of English and Writing at the University of Tampa.
Timothy's Book | Bonnie's Work | Kacy's Book
Show notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/452
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:07 The Origins and Definitions of the Term “Loyalist”
00:11:11 Common Misconceptions about Loyalists
00:22:52 How Communities Identified their Loyalist Neighbors
00:31:34 How Everyday Loyalists Experienced the Revolution
00:40:19 Women Loyalists and the Fear of Violence
00:50:40 Black Loyalists and the Search for Freedom
01:00:05 Post-War Animosities Between Loyalists and Revolutionaries
01:09:12 What We Still Get Wrong About the Revolution
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 085: American Loyalists in Canada
🎧 Episode 126: The Reintegration of American Loyalists
🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's Wife
🎧 Episode 421: Loyalism and Revolution in Georgia
🎧 Episode 441: The Escapes of David George
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6 October 2026, 5:00 am - 48 minutes 31 secondsBFW Revisited: The Reintegration of American Loyalists
What would it take for you to forgive a neighbor who sided against you in a civil war? And what would you say to win back a community that you had fought against?
In our last episode, we explored loyalism across the Atlantic World and met Loyalists who, as serious political actors, had their own ideas about how the British Empire should operate. But the story of Loyalism didn’t end with the founding of the United States, nor with the end of the war.
In this revisited episode, Rebecca Brannon explores how South Carolina’s War for Independence was a true civil war, one that pitted neighbor against neighbor and, in some instances, fathers against sons.
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 126: Reintegration of Loyalists in South Carolina
🎧 Episode 294: 1774: The Long Year of Revolution
🎧 Episode 330: Loyalism in the British Atlantic World
🎧 Episode 380: The Tory’s Wife
🎧 Episode 421: Loyalism and Revolution in Georgia
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29 September 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 6 minutesBFW Revisited: Loyalism in the British Atlantic World
In the late winter of 1775, colonists in a village outside of New York City hoisted the royal standard of King George III 75 feet into the air.
The standard raisers signed their names to a proclamation pledging to defend the king and his government. For them, defending the British crown did not mean surrender; it served as a clear statement of what it still meant to be British.
In Episode 451, we explored a court-martial trial that allowed us to see how early Americans thought about what it would mean to be an American after independence.
In this revisited episode, historian Brad Jones helps us take up the other half of that question: what did it mean to be British during the age of the American Revolution? And why did answers to this question take different forms around the Atlantic World?
Brad’s Book
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22 September 2026, 5:00 am - 20 minutes 58 secondsBFW Bonus: We Want More History
American history is in the news a lot these days. We see and hear about fights over monuments, textbooks, and the stories we should include or exclude from our museums and historic markers.
What these stories overshadow is the great demand for more history in the United States. A coalition of historians and history organizations noticed this demand and decided to feed it by organizing a new initiative: A We Want More History weekend, which takes place September 25-27.
In this bonus episode, we’re joined by Beth English, the Executive Director of the Organization of American Historians, and Kate Masur, the John D. MacArthur Professor of History at Northwestern University. The guest historians share more about the origins of the national, coordinated weekend of history programs, how we can get involved, and where to find more information.
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18 September 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 5 minutes451 The Court-Martial That Put The American Revolution on Trial
In December 1777, Continental Army Colonel David Henley climbed off his horse to discipline a drunk British prisoner of war who was screaming epithets about Americans and vowing to fight for his king. Henley struck the prisoner, one of 6,000 in his care, with his sword.
The wound was minor, but Major General John Burgoyne cited this incident when he accused Henley of plotting to murder British prisoners of war. Burgoyne demanded a formal court-martial.
Professor Timothy Breen joins us to examine Henley’s trial with details from his new book, The American Revolution on Trial. Timothy asks a question most grand narratives of the American Revolution skip past: What did it actually feel like, in real towns among real people, to stop being British? What did it mean to be American?
Timothy’s Book
Show notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/451
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:04:43 The 250th Anniversary and the Limits of Grand Narratives
00:09:31 How Timothy Found the Henley Court-Martial Transcript
00:13:26 Major General John Burgoyne and Aristocratic Privilege
00:23:00 Competing Ideas of Honor During the Revolution
00:29:53 Inside the Cambridge Prisoner of War Camps
00:36:23 The Two Incidents that Led to the Court-Martial
00:45:25 The Verdict and What Happened Next for Henley and Burgoyne
00:48:37 How Early Americans Judged the Revolution and the New Nation
00:53:41 What Happened to the British and German POWs in Cambridge
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 048: Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives During the War for Independence
🎧 Episode 122: The Men Who Lost America
🎧 Episode 374: The American Revolutionary War in the West
🎧 Episode 414: Robert Newburgh’s Trials: Queerness & Reputation in Revolutionary America
🎧 Episode 434: The Frank Brothers: Freeborn Black Soldiers in the American Revolution
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15 September 2026, 5:00 am - 51 minutes 37 secondsBFW Revisited: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
What caused the American Revolution?
Taxation without representation? Colonies that had outgrown their dependence on the British Empire? Or something harder to see: a quarrel about power itself and about what a government may rightly do to the people it governs?
In 1967, Bernard Bailyn published The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, a book he built out of more than 400 pamphlets, and one historians have been arguing with ever since.
In this revisited conversation from Episode 152, Professor Bailyn explains why he never accepted a purely economic explanation for the Revolution, where the revolutionaries' ideas actually came from, and why colonists rationally concluded that the British government was concealing a conspiracy against their liberties.
Bernard Bailyn’s Wikipedia Page | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/152
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 294: 1774: The Long Year of American Revolution
🎧 Episode 311: Religion and the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 307: History and the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 407: Patrick Henry
🎧 Episode 434: The Frank Borthers: Freeborn Black Soldiers in the American Revolution
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8 September 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 8 minutes450 Whose Revolution? The Delaware and the War for Independence
In December 1776, a Delaware Chief named White Eyes stood before the Second Continental Congress. He had not come to declare himself a revolutionary, nor had he come to pledge his loyalty to King George III. White Eyes came to test a promise.
What does the American Revolution look like to people for whom independence was never a question? For the Delaware, also known as the Lenape, the War for Independence raised older and harder questions:
Whose word could be trusted? What choices can we make about whether to fight, stay neutral, or flee that might let our community remain itself on the land we know?
Jeremy Johnson, Cultural Education Director for the Delaware Tribe of Indians, traces Lenape and Delaware history from long before European contact through the American Revolution. He also introduces us to the September 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt, the first treaty the United States made with a Native Nation and which promised a 14th Native state.
Delaware Tribe of Indians’ Website
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/450
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:35 The Lenape Experience of the American Revolution
00:07:56 Lenape History and Indigenous Origin Stories
00:10:52 Diplomacy in Lenape Traditions
00:15:32 Evolution of Lenape Diplomacy Through European Contact
00:20:00 The Walking Purchase of 1737
00:24:55 Lenape Experiences of the Seven Years' War
00:32:13 Lenape Participation in Pontiac's Rebellion
00:37:17 The Delaware and the American Revolution
00:46:32 Negotiating the Treaty of Fort Pitt
00:50:16 The Hope for Delaware Sovereignty
00:52:53 The Delaware People & America's 250th
01:00:02 Time Warp
01:02:41 Resources
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🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canandaigua
🎧 Episode 286: Elections in Early America: Native Sovereignty
🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder
🎧 Episode 397: Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
🎧 Episode 449: Stealing America: Indigenous Enslavement & the American Revolution
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1 September 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 23 minutesBFW Revisited: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1
In 1723, the College of William & Mary opened the Brafferton building, a permanent home for an Indian School the college had been chartered to run and struggled to fill for its first 30 years. The premise of the Brafferton: take Native boys and strategically teach them in ways that would make them more useful to the British Empire.
So what actually happened inside the Brafferton Indian School?
In this revisited episode, the first of a two-part series, our three guests investigate why the Brafferton School existed, how the English filled Brafferton with students even as Native families refused to send their children, and what the Indigenous students did with the knowledge the English taught them.
We’ll also explore how a school built on a colonial college campus during the reign of King George I connected to schools like the Carlisle School, which were still separating Indigenous children from their families in the 1950s.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/367
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES:
🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries' Army
🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt. 1
🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt. 2
🎧 Episode 353: Women and the Making of Catawba Identity
🎧 Episode 368: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 2: Legacies
🎧 Episode 449: Stealing America
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25 August 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 32 minutes449 Stealing America: Indigenous Slavery and the American Revolution
More than half a million Indigenous people were enslaved within the present-day borders of the United States.
Historian Linford Fisher spent fifteen years in archives across North America, the Caribbean, and Britain to investigate this forgotten history. What he found was not a second story running alongside African slavery. It was something different in kind. Europeans and early Americans enslaved people who lived on land they intended to possess. This practice made slavery a tool of dispossession.
The American Revolution is where this process accelerated. Lin and Lorén Spears, a Narragansett tribal citizen and the executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, trace how the Revolution opened space for captive raiding on the western frontier, how Native nations weighed which side to take during the war, and how their Stolen Relations digital project is recovering the names of the Natives early Americans enslaved.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/449
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:23 The Declaration's Overlooked Grievance Against Indigenous People
00:02:29 The Other Revolutionary War
00:03:20 Investigating the Hidden History of Indigenous Enslavement
00:07:07 Uncovering the Scale of Indigenous Enslavement
00:13:43 Building Stolen Relations Through Archival and Tribal Collaboration
00:20:51 Decolonizing Archival Records
00:30:40 Connection Between Indigenous Enslavement & Land Dispossession
00:33:53 How Native Nations Navigated the American Revolution
00:37:16 From Colonial Experimentation to Revolutionary Expansion
00:41:15 How the American Revolution Expanded Indigenous Slavery
00:45:20 How Indigenous Nations Weighed Neutrality, Alliance, & Survival
00:52:51 The Declaration of Independence's Impact on Indigenous Communities
01:01:10 The Treaty of Paris, 1783 and the Continuation of Indigenous Dispossession
01:03:51 The Uncertain End of Indigenous Enslavement
01:11:59 Commemorating the American Revolution Through Indigenous History
01:24:36 Revolution to Freedom Through Indigenous Sovereignty
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canadaigua
🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion & the Political Economy of Plunder
🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1
🎧 Episode 368: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 2
🎧 Episode 406: Threads of Power
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18 August 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 18 minutesBFW Revisited: American Expansion & the Political Economy of Plunder
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But what did liberty and equality mean for the peoples the Declaration never named—the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations who had governed the vast Great Lakes homeland they called Anishinaabewake for generations before a single European sailed its waters?
In this revisited conversation, historian Michael Witgen, Professor of History at Columbia University and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, takes us inside the Anishinaabe world and reveals how the new United States set about transforming it.
The answer, Witgen shows us, wasn't simple conquest. It was something more elaborate, more profitable, and in some ways more insidious: what he calls the political economy of plunder—a system engineered to strip Indigenous peoples of their homelands while funneling the wealth of that dispossession directly into the settler colonial economy.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323
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🎧 Episode 051: A History of Early Detroit
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🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
🎧 Episode 223: A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region
🎧 Episode 286: Native Sovereignty
🎧 Episode 310: History of the Blackfeet
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11 August 2026, 5:00 am - 45 minutes 48 seconds448 The Declaration of Independence as American Scripture
The engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence is on display at the National Archives building in Washington, DC. Millions of visitors flock to see it and the other Charters of Freedom. But how did it end up there and why do people approach it with religious reverence?
In this episode, we explore how the Declaration took on its symbolic role as the founding text of the United States.
Pauline's Book
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:30 Introducing Mary Beth Norton
00:07:17 American Scripture: Pauline Maier
00:10:00 Graduate School with Pauline Maier
00:13:36 The State of Historians' Thinking in the 1990s
00:15:23 Other Declarations of Independence
00:21:08 Thomas Jefferson's Drafting of the Declaration
00:23:44 Why Create a Parchment Copy of the Declaration?
00:28:24 How the Declaration Became American Scripture
00:30:32 The Impact of American Scripture
00:32:10 Situating the Declaration in the American Revolution
00:35:39 The Role of the Parchment Copy Today
00:40:12 Closing Thoughts on Pauline Maier
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
🎧 Episode 155: Pauline Maier's American Revolution
🎧 Episode 294: 1774: The Long Year of Revolution
🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence
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4 August 2026, 5:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App