Ben Franklin's World

When we picture the American Revolution, we picture battles. But for the men and women who actually lived and fought in it, the Revolution was also a job with mess rotations, night watches, short rations, and children underfoot.

Historians Eugene Procknow, Gabriel Neville, and Thomas Sobol pull back the curtain on everyday military life during the War for Independence. They discuss how the armies were structured, what soldiers actually ate, what camp followers endured, and how soldiers found humanity amid grinding hardship.

You'll hear about a Black Continental soldier who had eaten nothing but bread for eleven days, and was still writing letters home that went unanswered. A Georgia soldier who agreed to fight for the British just to escape a prison ship, then deserted and marched across two states to rejoin Nathanael Greene's army. And you'll discover why John Adams believed the most dangerous moment of the Revolution wasn't a battle at all.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:05:44 Structure of the British and Continental Armies00:10:33 Militia, German Soldiers, and Indian Allies00:20:43 Everyday Life in the American War for Independence00:25:80 Camp Followers00:33:10 Downtime in the Army00:36:59 Soldiers' Letters00:46:00 Food Procurement & Supply Chains00:50:27 Supplementing Rations00:55:34 War Mementoes & Plunder00:58:36 Medical Care in the Army01:08:07 The Revolution in ContextRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries' Army🎧 Episode 122: The Men Who Lost America🎧 Episode 252: The Highland Soldier in North America🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 2🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge🎧 Episode 374: The Revolutionary War in the WestSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
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Most of us learned the same story: During the winter at Valley Forge, George Washington's army suffered and endured. Ragged soldiers huddled together in frozen huts and gnawed on shoe leather for food.

But what if that story is mostly myth?

Military historian Ricardo Herrera, author of Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778, reveals what was really happening during the winter of 1777–1778.

Valley Forge wasn't a place of frozen inactivity, it was a hub of military operations. The army's survival depended not on virtue and willpower alone, but on the armed foraging columns Washington sent into the Pennsylvania countryside to seize food, horses, and supplies from the civilians he was fighting to protect.

Rick’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/348 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries' Army🎧 Episode 189: The Little Ice Age🎧 Episode 301: Innoculation to Vaccination, Part 1🎧 Episode 302: Innoculation to Vaccination, Part 2🎧 Episode 332: Occupied Philadelphia🎧 Episode 333: Occupied YorktownSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
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When David George lay sick with smallpox in Savannah during the Revolutionary War, he faced three possible outcomes: death, re-enslavement, or freedom.

Greg O'Malley, Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz, follows David George across six decades and three continents, from enslaved Virginia to the Muscogee Creek nation, and from British-occupied Georgia to Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone, in his new book, The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution. It's a story that will change how you think about what the Revolution actually delivered, and for whom.

Greg’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:14 Welcome to Ben Franklin's World 00:02:31 Introducing Greg O'Malley and David George 00:05:43 David George's Odyssey Begins 00:08:12 The Rare Narrative of David George 00:11:07 Authenticating David George's Voice 00:13:39 David George's Multiple Escapes from Slavery 00:20:30 David George's Conversion to Christianity 00:24:53 Why Baptist? The Appeal of Evangelical Faith 00:29:52 David George's Family and Name 00:37:12 Life in Nova Scotia as a Refugee Preacher 00:42:03 Journey to Sierra Leone 00:54:44 Piecing Together David George's Later Years 00:59:49 Discovering the Silver Bluff Baptist Church 01:06:24 Time Warp: What If David George Stayed? 01:10:29 Reflections and TakeawaysRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 008: Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 322: Running from Bondage in Revolutionary America🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation🎧 Episode 434: The Frank Brothers: Freeborn Black Soldiers🎧 Episode 440: Brooke Newman, Jefferson's Cut Grievance and the British Monarchy's Role in Slavery

SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
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She fled on horseback in the thick of war. Her six-year-old son rode with her. The white tailor at her side would pass, when anyone asked, as her husband. Her name was Sarah. She was one of tens of thousands of enslaved people who self-emancipated during the American Revolution, and one of the many women earlier histories barely noticed. In this Revisited episode, Karen Cook-Bell, author of Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and the Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America, recovers their stories. We learn how Lord Dunmore's 1775 proclamation reshaped the landscape of resistance, why motherhood drove women to flee rather than keeping them in place, and what creative, subversive strategies they used to slip out of bondage and into freedom.

This is the companion conversation to Ep. 440's exploration of Jefferson's cut grievance. If Brooke Newman gave us the view from the throne, Karen Cook-Bell gives us the view from the ground. And it changes what the proclamations look like.

Karen's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/322RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons' Runaway Slave, Ona Judge🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution's African American Soldiers🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore's New World🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation and the American Revolution in Virginia🎧 Episode 440: Jefferson's Cut Grievances and the British Monarchy's Role in SlaverySUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
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Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence contained 28 grievances against King George III — not 27.

The final grievance, the one Congress cut before signing, accused the British king of waging cruel war against human nature by trafficking enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, forcing slavery onto unwilling American colonists, and then inciting those same enslaved people to rise up and kill their enslavers.

Did King George III and the British monarchy actually bear responsibility for slavery in the 13 colonies? Or was Jefferson's grievance a strategic sleight of hand — an attempt to pin a uniquely American system onto the crown he wanted to escape?

Historian Brooke Newman, author of The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery, joins us to find out. She traces the British monarchy's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade from Queen Elizabeth I through King George III, examines what Jefferson got right and what he got wrong, and delivers her verdict on one of the most explosive what-ifs in United States history.

Brooke's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/440 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:24 Episode Welcome and Jefferson's Cut Grievance00:03:15 Guest Introduction: Brooke Newman00:04:58 Jefferson's Claim and Brooke's Research Origins00:09:28 Timeline of Monarchies and Terminology00:12:03 England Enters the Slave Trade under Elizabeth I00:17:41 Crown Investments and Royal African Company00:30:15 Colonies Structured for Slavery00:37:02 Logistics of the Slave Trade by Revolution00:47:01 King George III's Views on Slavery00:52:20 Virginia's 1772 Slave Trade Ban and Royal Veto00:57:35 Dunmore's Proclamation: Not a Royal Act01:01:17 Was George III to Blame? Jefferson's Strategy01:04:26 Time Warp: If George III Abolished Slavery01:10:56 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft🎧 Episode 206: Christian Slavery🎧 Episode 351: Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland🎧 Episode 360: Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of Happiness🎧 Episode 438: The American Revolution and the Fate of the WorldSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
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