The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, but it had absolutely no plan for telling the world about it.

Congress sent just one copy of the Declaration to France. It was lost at sea. Printers ran the text however they liked. And the first formal acknowledgment of American independence came not from a European court, but from a Native American chief responding to a verbal translation of the Declaration in the middle of a treaty negotiation.

Historian and Declaration expert Emily Sneff joins us to explore what the Declaration of Independence looked like when it was just news — urgent, imperfect, and far beyond anyone's control.

Emily’s Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/439
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:04:07 The Declaration as a Congressional Product
00:06:28 Jefferson's humble signature
00:11:10 Congress Has No Plans for Circulation
00:16:22 News of the Declaration Breaks
00:24:36 Pubilc Readings of the Declaration
00:27:27 Ministers Spread News of the Declaration
00:32:57 German-American Translation of the Declaration
00:42:04 French Translation Failures
00:46:42 Verbal Translations of the Declaration
00:51:52 No Official Copy Sent to King George III
00:58:43 The Declaration of Independence as News
01:02:17 Time Warp
01:07:48 Upcoming 250th Exhibitions
01:11:24 Conclusion
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration
🎧 Episode 119: The Heart of the Declaration
🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock
🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence
🎧 Episode 431: Thomas Paine's Common Sense at 250
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Between 1763 and 1848, revolutions swept across four continents. We tend to remember three of them — the American, the French, and the Haitian Revolutions. But what about all the rest? And what connected them to each other?

In this episode, we're bringing back our conversation with Janet Polasky, Presidential Professor of History Emerita at the University of New Hampshire and author of Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World, and Paul Mapp, Associate Professor of History at William & Mary, who helps us understand why historians are increasingly looking at the American Revolution through an international lens.
Together, they reveal why the Age of Revolutions happened when it did, how the American Revolution fit within this larger Atlantic-wide moment of upheaval, and how revolutionary ideas traveled across borders through people, print, and rumor.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/165
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 428: Canal Dreamers
🎧 Episode 432: How France & Spain Helped Win American Independence
🎧 Episode 433: Haiti, France, and the American War for Independence
🎧 Episode 438: The American Revolution and the Fate of the World
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What if the American Revolution didn't just create the United States, but also created Australia?

Most of us learned about the Revolution as a story of thirteen North American colonies pushing back against a distant king. But this episode reveals something far wilder: a genuinely global war whose consequences rippled across every inhabited continent — reshaping empires, forcing migrations, and planting the seeds of more than a hundred declarations of independence that would follow over the next two and a half centuries.

Joseph Adelman joins historian Richard Bell to explore the American Revolution as a world war. They discuss:

• Why the Declaration of Independence was really a Declaration of Interdependence
• How Hyder Ali, the Muslim ruler of Mysore in southern India, became George Washington's ally by the logic of wartime coalitions
• How Spain's campaign to recapture Florida tied down thousands of British troops
• How Britain's convict crisis, caused by losing access to Maryland and Virginia, led to the founding of Australia at Botany Bay.

Rick's Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/438
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:06:28 Differences in Perception of the American Revolution
00:09:00 Reframing the Declaration of Independence
00:17:32 Molly Brandt and Haudenosaunee Diplomacy
00:24:38 Baron von Steuben: A Mercenary's Tale
00:29:15 The American Revolution: Myth vs. Reality
00:35:02 The American Revolution and Florida
00:43:39 The American Revolution's Impact on India
00:50:24 The Connection Between the American Revolution and Australia
00:56:50 Themes of the American Revolution
00:59:16 The Time Warp
00:62:00 Conclusion

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
🎧 Episode 238: Benedict Arnold
🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge
🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 437: The Home Front
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In September 1777, just fourteen months after declaring independence, Philadelphia fell to the British Army. For nearly nine months, the new nation's capital was occupied territory.

But what did that actually mean for the people who lived there? 

Not the generals, not the Congress: ordinary Philadelphians who had to decide whether to flee or stay, share their homes with British officers, watch their fences get chopped up for firewood, and figure out which neighbors to trust when it was all over.

In this episode, Aaron Sullivan, a professor of History at Rider University, George Boudreau, a public historian and Executive Director of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion Museum in Germantown, PA, and historical interpreter Kalela Williams, now the Director of the Virginia Center for the Book, take us inside occupied Philadelphia.

Together, they reveal how a city that was never fully committed to independence experienced nine months of British rule, and what the occupation cost everyone who lived through it: Quaker women negotiating with soldiers at their back gates, merchants whose fortunes rose on British hard currency while their neighbors went hungry, and Black Philadelphians who looked at the upheaval and asked whether it might open a door to freedom.

Plus: the most extravagant party thrown in eighteenth-century America, staged while the city's almshouses overflowed.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/332
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 050: Betsy Ross & the Making of America
🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail
🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 333: Life in Occupied Yorktown
🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's Wife
🎧 Episode 437: Civilian Life in America's Occupied Cities
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The British Army is at your door. They need a room. What do you do?
For thousands of civilians living in cities occupied during the American War for Independence — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, Savannah — this wasn't a hypothetical. It was a reality that upended daily life and revealed a side of the revolution we rarely talk about.
Lauren Duval, author of The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupations, and the Making of American Independence, joins us to explore what the War for Independence actually looked like from inside the household. Women who negotiated quartering terms and held their ground. Men who came to blows over who controlled the parlor. Enslaved people who used the chaos of occupation to reunite families and reach British lines.
The revolution didn't just happen on battlefields. It happened at kitchen tables, in back gardens, and on doorsteps.
Lauren's Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:01:38  The Home Front of the American Revolution
00:05:24  The Gensis of the Revolutionary Household
00:10:49  Why Focus on Urban Port Cities
00:19:46  The British Occupation's Impact on City Life
00:25:55  Quartering a British Officer: The Drinker Household
00:33:38. Quartering Experiences in Male-Headed Households
00:39:22  Lower-Class Experiences During British Occupation
00:40:55  The Impact of British Hard Currency on Urban Labor Markets
00:44:21  Black Experiences During British Occupation
00:51:21  The Overall American Experience of the War for Independence
00:54:01. The Time Warp
00:59:47 Conculsion
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 050: Betsy Ross & the Making of America
🎧 Episode 175: The War in Ben Franklin's House
🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail
🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia
🎧 Episode 333: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Yorktown
🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's Wife
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250 years ago, the British evacuated Boston: driven out by cannon that had traveled 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga. But where did the plan for those cannons take shape?
In this Revisited episode, we return to our conversation with Garrett Cloer, now Program Manager for Interpretation and Visitor Experience at Saratoga National Historical Park, to explore the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This Georgian mansion served as George Washington's home and headquarters for nearly nine months during the Siege of Boston. In this house, Washington forged the Continental Army and plotted the moves that liberated the city. Garrett reveals the house's Loyalist origins, life inside during the siege, and how poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow later transformed it into a literary landmark.
A companion to Episode 436 on Henry Knox's Noble Train of Artillery.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/194
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773
🎧 Episode 228: The Boston Massacre
🎧 Episode 296: The Boston Massacre: A Family History
🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord
🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill
🎧 Episode 436: Fort Ticonderoga & Henry Knox's Noble Train of Artillery
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On March 17, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, driven out by cannon hauled 300 miles through winter wilderness from a crumbling fort in upstate New York.

Join Matthew Keagle, Curator at Fort Ticonderoga, as we trace the fort's dramatic history from its French origins in the Seven Years' War, its chaotic capture by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in May 1775, and Henry Knox's legendary expedition to move nearly 60 tons of artillery to George Washington's army. Discover the logistics, rivalries, and resourcefulness behind one of the Revolution's most remarkable feats.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/436
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:06:26 British Withdrawl from Boston
00:07:55 Fort Ticonderoga's Origins
00:25:05 British Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, 1756
00:28:04 British Improvements to Fort Ticonderoga
00:32:44 American Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, 1775
00:49:06 Henry Knox's Expedition
01:04:46 Cannon on Dorchester Heights
01:10:36 British Evacuation of Boston
01:13:43 Legacy of Knox's Noble Train of Artillery
01:17:36 Visiting Fort Ticonderoga
01:24:65 Conclusion
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History
🎧 Episode 194: Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, NHS
🎧 Episode 238: Benedict Arnold
🎧 Episode 296: The Boston Massacre: A Family History
🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord
🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill
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In January 1776, Thomas Paine told the American colonies to break free from their king. But what was supposed to come next? 250 years later, that question still doesn't have a good answer.
To mark the anniversary of *Common Sense*, we traveled to Lewes, England, the town where Paine lived before he ever set foot in America, and recorded our first-ever LIVE episode inside Bull House, the building where Paine honed his ideas about citizens and their government.

Joseph Adelman chairs a panel with scholars Leanne O'Boyle, Nicole Mahoney, and Jeanne Sheehan Zaino as they dig into the legacy of *Common Sense*: democracy's "day two problem," the women Paine wrote out of his own story, why "the law is king" keeps showing up on protest signs, and what a 15th-century building in a small English town can teach us about where democratic ideas actually take root.
Recorded live in partnership with the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/435
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:06 What Happened After the Revolution?
00:02:59 Live from the Bull House in Lewes, England
00:04:49 A Template for Common Sense and Civic Life
00:07:12 Thomas Paine's Legacy in Lewes, England
00:10:24 Thomas Paine's Legacy in New Rochelle, New York
00:16:04 Democracy's "Day Two Problem"
00:22:50 Local Civic Engagement in Lewes
00:27:46 Women and Common Sense
00:34:54 Paine's Family Life in Lewes
00:35:31 Reconstituting Government
00:42:44 Violence and Change
00:49:31 "No Kings" Protest and 'The Law is King'
00:56:29 Thomas Paine's Legacy
00:58:10 Audience Q&A
01:18:20 Episode Wrap-Up
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks
🎧 Episode 287: Elections in Early America: Presidential Elections & the Electoral College
🎧 Episode 431: Thomas Paine's Common Sense at 250
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What would you fight for if you were free but still not equal? In 1777, brothers William and Benjamin Frank answered that question by enlisting in the Second Rhode Island Regiment of the Continental Army. Freeborn men of color, they gambled that military service would earn them what freedom alone had not: equality, land, and a better future.

Historian Shirley Green, author of Revolutionary Blacks: Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence, joins us to tell their story. Drawing on genealogical research rooted in her own family history, Green reveals what daily life looked like for free Black families in Revolutionary Rhode Island, how the Frank Brothers fought at the Battles of Red Bank, Monmouth, and Rhode Island, and how the Revolution ultimately divided them—one brother serving through Yorktown, the other crossing to the British side and resettling in Nova Scotia as a Black Loyalist.

Their story is a window into the full range of Black experiences during the Revolution, and a reminder that for men like William and Benjamin Frank, choosing a side was never simple. It was a calculated gamble, shaped by promises made—and promises broken.

Shirley’s Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/434
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:01:19 The Frank Brothers' Revolutionary Choices
00:05:14 Discovering the Frank Brothers Through Family Oral History
00:09:01 Blending Genalogy and Microhistory
00:15:22 Life for Free Black Families in Early Rhode Island
00:20:50 Why Free Black Men Joined the Continental Army
00:24:00 Motivations: Land, Pay, and Equality
00:29:15 The Gamble of Military Service Amid Policy Shifts
00:41:13 Daily Life and Combat in the Integrated Regiments
00:44:46 Ben Frank's Desertion
00:52:51 The Book of Negroes
01:00:02 Postwar Outcomes: Did Promises of Land, Pay, and Equality Hold?
01:02:47 Lessons from Black Soldiers' Experiences
01:07:26 Conclusion
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island
🎧 Episode 157: African American Soldiers in the Continental Army
🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1
🎧 Episode 333: Disruptions in Yorktown
🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge
🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill
🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation & the American Revolution in Virginia
🎧 Episode 427: How States Are Planning the 250th of the American Revolution
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More than 6,000 Black men—free and enslaved—served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Yet their stories remain some of the least told of the war.
In this revisited episode, we rejoin Judith Van Buskirk, Professor Emerita of History at SUNY Cortland and author of Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution, to explore what motivated African American men to fight for the Revolutionary cause, how the Continental Army's policies toward Black enlistment shifted over the course of the war, and what life and service looked like in units like the First Rhode Island Regiment.
Judy's Book 
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 016: The Internal Enemy
🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island
🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances
🎧 Episode 433: Haiti, France, and the American War for Independence

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What if the American Revolution was never just an American story?

Historian Ronald Angelo Johnson helps us uncover the deep connections between the American and Haitian Revolutions to reveal how both revolutions emerged from the same Atlantic imperial struggle for empire, racialized power, and war.

Using details from his book Entangled Alliances, Ron will guide us from the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to the Siege of Savannah in 1779, where hundreds of Black soldiers from French Saint Domingue landed on Georgia’s shores—not as enslaved laborers, but as uniformed volunteers ready to fight for American Independence.

Ron's Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/433
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:01:08  Episode Overview
00:04:50 The Treaty of Paris 1763 and its Impact
00:09:09 Consequences of the Seven Years' War for Saint Domingue
00:18:39 Saint Domingue Society Post-Seven Years' War
00:24:32 French Imperial Reaction vs. Local Resentment
00:28:36 Circulation of News Between British North America & Saint Domingue
00:39:22 France's Strategy to Assist American Revolutionaries
00:50:42 Reception of the Chasseurs Volontaires Regiment in Georgia
00:54:42 Re-evaluating the American Revolution
00:57:32 Time Warp
01:05:38 Conclusion
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 052: Diplomacy in Black and White
🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 228: The Boston Massacre (King Street Riot)
🎧 Episode 325: The Everyday People of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 361: The Fourth of July in 2026
🎧 Episode 421: Loyalism & Revolution in Georgia
🎧 Episode 432: How France & Spain Helped Win the American Revolution
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