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Who fired "the shot heard round the world"?
It’s 250 years since British troops clashed with American colonists at Lexington and Concord. George Goodwin reveals how one fateful day triggered the American Revolutionary War – and sparked a ferocious race to blame the other side
At 5am on 19 April 1775, two groups of British subjects faced each other across the town common of Lexington, 11 miles north-west of Boston, Massachusetts. One group was composed of local inhabitants, militiamen who would fight as Patriots. The other was of red-coated British troops under the immediate command of Marine Major John Pitcairn. The militiamen were certainly not there by chance: the plans of General Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, had been revealed to his opponents. Simmering tensions over London’s repeated assertions of control over its American colonies, dating back to the 1760s, had brought the two sides to this point. After a tense standoff, the Redcoats and militiamen traded fire. At the end of this brief but fateful exchange, eight Patriots lay dead. A bloody retreat Major Pitcairn and his men were just the vanguard of a 1,500-strong force under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith. The colonel had a clear mission that day: to seize Patriot-held cannon and munitions in nearby Concord, the main town in Middlesex County and the centre for mobilising the county militia regiments of 6,000 men. And so, shortly after the clash at Lexington, Smith’s Redcoats pushed on to Concord. Hostilities were resumed at Concord’s North Bridge at around 9am, shortly after the British had undertaken a largely fruitless search for weaponry to the west of the town. The intensity of the engagement now increased: colonist numbers had grown to around 400, with the local men now joined from surrounding areas by militia that included the elite Minutemen, whose name reflected their timely readiness for action. After both sides temporarily disengaged, Smith’s force reassembled in Concord itself and, at noon, continued along the road back to Boston. The retreat would last until after 7pm, with the regulars harried in a series of defensive engagements with an ever-increasing and finally vastly greater number of colonists. Among the Patriots were the Minutemen of the Danvers Company, who arrived from a full 30 miles away. They were in the thick of the action, as witnessed by the fact that seven of them were killed. That so many had come so far, and in such numbers, can be credited to Paul Revere’s pre-planned organisation of dozens of other riders to spread the alert when the alarm was raised, which had begun the previous evening. Redcoat casualties continued to mount during the day. In fact it wasn’t until mid-afternoon – when artillery under the command of Brigadier Earl Percy arrived from Boston – that they were given some protection. But for the organisational ability and cannon of Lord Percy, supported over the last few miles by the firepower of British ships anchored in the bay opposite Charlestown, the army’s casualty figures would have been far greater. As it was, according to the American Battlefield Trust, casualties amounted to a full fifth of Smith’s Redcoats, with an estimated 73 killed, 174 wounded and a further 53 missing or captured. In contrast, the casualties of the Patriots – 49 killed, 39 wounded and only five missing or captured – were far lower. From now on, the British army based at Boston would be contained in the town itself and to that proportion of the surrounding area that could be protected by its military and naval firepower. There could be no doubt as to who had won the battle. Furious propaganda war But there remained a question of immense importance. Quite simply, which of the two sides had been the aggressor? Who had fired the first shot? In an era in which the influence of newspapers was growing exponentially, the answer would sway opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. For the Patriots, there was no doubt that the British had been the aggressors. Pitcairn, they said, had shouted: “Disperse you rebels – damn you, throw down your arms and disperse.” Upon which, “The troops huzzaed and immediately one or two officers discharged their pistols, which were instantaneously followed by the firing of four or five of the soldiers, then there seemed to be a general discharge from the whole body. Eight of our men were killed and nine wounded.” In 1837, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Concord Hymn’ would capture the American Patriots’ spirit of resistance with the phrase “the shot heard round the world”. In 1775, the concerns of the Patriot leadership were more prosaic. They needed the Redcoats to be blamed for events at Lexington and Concord, and for Patriots to be seen as victims rather than aggressors. On the British side, Governor Gage needed the opposite to be believed. And so, within days of the battle, the governor’s office produced a one-page broadside entitled A Circumstantial Account of an Attack that Happened on the 19th April, on his Majesty’s Troops. Essentially a compilation of reports given to Gage by Smith, Pitcairn and Percy, it stressed how, in Smith’s words, “the troops [had been told they] should not fire unless fired upon” at Lexington. Furthermore, as the troops moved forward, Pitcairn had reinforced this with the message “on no account to fire, not even to attempt it without orders”. Finally, when faced by 200 men on Lexington Green, Pitcairn gave the instruction “not to fire”. Partly due to the turmoil in the town and partly because of the opposition of the majority of its newspapers to the British account, Gage was not able to publish his Circumstantial Account in the Boston press. Even the loyal Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Newsletter declared, albeit on the very next day after the running battle, “that we are not able to collect anything consistent or regular, and cannot therefore with certainty give our readers any further account of this shocking introduction to all the miseries of a Civil War”. But Gage hardly did much better with the papers outside Boston and beyond. Whereas the vast majority of the Thirteen Colonies’ 37 newspapers would support the colonists’ report, only five ran Gage’s Circumstantial Account, with some also including critical comment. That said, Gage’s primary audience lay across the Atlantic. Indeed, so keen was Gage to ensure that his account reached London before the colonists’ version of events that he ordered all mail-carrying ships be searched for Patriot propaganda. None was found. In contrast, Dr Joseph Warren, president of the revolutionary Massachusetts Provincial Congress, proceeded more slowly but also more surely, and took the time to assemble a full range of eyewitness reports. The vast majority of these were of course by dedicated Patriots, but there were also some from captured British soldiers. By far the most important of these was from the wounded Lieutenant Edward Gould, an officer of the King’s Own Regiment, whose account would have been widely seen as unimpeachable. Gould had been present at both Lexington and Concord and testified that the Redcoats opened fire at Concord. As for Lexington, he said he could not be certain that his own side had fired the first shot. However, his description of the Redcoats’ aggressive posture and the way they had “rushed on shouting and huzzaing, previous to the firing, which was continued by our troops so long as any of the provincials were to be seen” exactly matched other witness statements – and, incidentally, contradicted Pitcairn’s account. Gould’s words were presented as corroborative of other damning evidence that was first published as a condensed narrative report in the Essex Gazette of Salem on 25 April. The opening words of the report sum up its tone: “Last Wednesday, the 19th of April, the troops of his Britannic majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province, attended with circumstances of cruelty.” Race across the Atlantic On 25 April, a brig named the Sukey, with Gage’s full report on board, sailed for England. Yet Warren was not ready to follow suit, as local justices of the peace were still taking witness statements. These were to be added to the bundle of documents that would include the Essex Gazette account and a letter from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress addressed to “The inhabitants of Great Britain”. All were delivered on 27 April to Captain John Derby of Salem, who was commissioned to take the information across the Atlantic. Warren also included a personal note of instructions to Derby which contained a PS that was anything but an afterthought: “You are to keep this order a profound secret from every person on Earth.” On the night of 28–29 April, with the conditions suitable for avoiding detection by the patrolling Royal Navy, Derby sailed the Quero, his family’s fast trading yacht, out into the open sea. The brig Sukey was a common type of maritime vessel used both by the navy and commercially for coastal trading as well as oceanic navigation. It took the standard six weeks to cross the Atlantic. In contrast, Derby’s Quero was built for speed and completed the crossing and continued along the Channel as far as the Isle of Wight in less than a month. Surreptitiously landed ashore close to Southampton on the morning of Sunday 28 May, Derby hired the fastest (and most expensive) transport to London, the post chaise, and was in the capital by evening. There he reported to the Virginian Arthur Lee, who had recently succeeded Benjamin Franklin as Massachusetts’ official London representative. Warren’s instructions were clear. They commanded that the sensational material “be immediately printed and dispersed through every town in England, and especially communicated to the lord mayor, aldermen and council of the City of London, that they make such order thereon as they may think proper”. Lee was ideally placed to do this. He had extremely good newspaper contacts and knew exactly how to maximise press coverage, both in the capital and regions. As for the highly influential City of London, Lee was himself a sheriff and deputy to Lord Mayor John Wilkes, the radical who had joined the establishment and who was one of Lee’s closest friends. Knowing that Gage’s official version had not arrived, Lee set about establishing the ‘truth’ of the matter with a two-part publishing coup. The very next day, Monday 29 May, Lee’s favoured London Evening Post published a special ‘extraordinary’ edition. This gave full rein to most, but not all, of the Patriots’ account. However, knowing that the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, would use the government’s official London Gazette to attack the status and truth of the Patriots’ published statements, Lee deliberately set out to negate him by designing a piece to run alongside Dartmouth’s own in the following editions of the non-official newspapers. As Dartmouth became increasingly angry at the perception of a “false impression upon people’s minds”, the Sukey – carrying Gage’s report – still failed to arrive and the Patriot record of events went unchallenged. By the time Gage’s Circumstantial Account finally reached Dartmouth’s desk on 10 June, it was far too late. As early as Tuesday 30 May, Lord Germain, the very man who was soon to take over from Dartmouth as secretary of state for the colonies, acknowledged the immediate impact of the Patriots’ press campaign: “The news from America occasioned a great stir among us yesterday… the Bostonians are in the right to make the king’s troops the aggressors and claim a victory.” Lexington and Concord gave the Patriots a crucial advantage for the war that followed. In particular, initial perceptions created on 19 April 1775 formed the basis for a growing contempt for the British military leadership, centred on disapproval – on both sides of the argument and on both sides of the Atlantic – at the Redcoats’ perceived initial aggression and brutality in a losing cause. Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story. Listen to all episodes now That perception of British military failure continued for a year. Though Redcoats forced the evolving American army from the field at Bunker Hill in June 1775 (where both Pitcairn and Warren were killed), it was at the cost of disproportionately large casualties on the British side. This was followed, in March 1776, by the British evacuation of Boston – an event that the Americans could claim as a victory. The sense of military ineptitude among Britain’s leadership was etched all the deeper by the Americans having a counterpoint in the upright and gentlemanly General George Washington. From the moment he took command in July 1775 to the end of the conflict, the British press applauded the American leader, and were quick to compare him favourably to their own generals. Read more | From Bunker Hill to Yorktown: 9 battles that made the United States If the British Army was to win in America, it had needed to achieve victory swiftly and conclusively. By failing to do so, it not only entrenched the American Patriots’ belief but gave them time to organise and recover from defeats in 1776 and 1777 and to gain foreign support. For there was another group with an eye on events in America and with an acute awareness of public opinion in Britain: French and Spanish diplomats. After British military incompetence gifted the Americans victory in the defeat at Saratoga in late 1777, first France and then Spain would formally enter the war. The path towards American victory would then be firmly set. Historical record As to who actually fired first, so important a consideration in the battle’s aftermath, it is worth returning to Lieutenant Gould, the most senior of the captured British servicemen on 19 April. Though his signed statement had proved incredibly useful to the Patriots, Gould had said something altogether different to Brigadier Lord Percy during the battle itself. Percy noted that: “Between 1 and 2 o’clock in the afternoon I met with Lt Gould of the King’s Own Regiment, who was wounded and who informed me that the Grenadiers and Light Infantry had been attacked by the rebels about daybreak.” This information was in the draft version of Percy’s account to Gage, written the following day and thus dating from some days before Gould signed his affidavit to Patriot justices. Percy had then thought it not worth including Gould’s words to him in his finished letter, and the draft was just one of a number of documents that lay for many decades in a dust-encrusted box in the Duke of Northumberland’s Library at Alnwick Castle. On the draft’s eventual publication in 1902, the difference between it and the final letter was noticed and noted, yet the significance of the omission was not. This potentially critical piece of evidence was no longer considered of consequence. The obscuring dust of time had done its work. This article was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
What happened at the battles of Lexington and Concord?
When British troops went to seize arms stockpiled by American colonists at Concord, Massachusetts, they could have had little idea of their raid’s revolutionary ramifications. Julian Humphrys explains all…
Under cover of darkness, in the early hours of 19 April 1775, a force of British soldiers was on the move. General Thomas Gage, the British Commander in Boston, Massachusetts, had learned the American colonists were stockpiling weapons and ammunition at Concord, about 18 miles away. To nip any potential resistance in the bud, he ordered a surprise raid to seize the lot. What happened next at Lexington and Concord lit the spark of the American Revolution, and the events have been immortalised as "the shot heard round the world", a phrase coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 poem Concord Hymn. Find out below what happened during the battles, and the importance of the events of 19 April in the long conflict to come… What tensions led to the battles at Lexington and Concord? In 1775, Britain’s 13 American colonies ran along the east coast from Massachusetts in the north to Georgia in the south. Each was administered by a royal governor, his council and an elected colonial assembly. After defeating the French in North America in the early 1760s, in part during the Seven Years' War, Britain wanted to increase taxes in America and make the colonies pay for their own defence. Using the slogan ‘No taxation without representation’, the colonists argued that only their own assemblies, and not the British parliament, had a right to levy taxes. Tensions rose. December 1773 saw the colonists dump a cargo of British tea into the harbour, in protest of Britain’s attempt to tax imports – the Boston Tea Party. The government responded by closing the port of Boston, dissolving the colonial assembly and placing Massachusetts under military rule. Believing both their liberty and economic prosperity to be under threat, the colonists took action. They set up their own continental assembly, took over their local militias and started stockpiling military supplies. Lexington and Concord: quick facts Who fought? British regulars: 1,500, American colonial militia: 3,500 When? 19 April 1775, the date most often cited as the start of the American Revolutionary War Where? Middlesex County, Massachusetts, modern-day USA Why were the battles fought? A skirmish in response to a British bid to seize American militia supplies What was the result? Most sources agree that the battles ended in a British defeat Who was Paul Revere and why did he ride? Paul Revere was a silversmith and member of the group of colonists known as the Sons of Liberty who actively resisted British rule. He had been an influential figure in fanning the flames of revolution with his engraving depicting the 1770 Boston Massacre which was widely shared in the aftermath, and he was present at the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Thanks to Henry Longfellow’s poem of 1861, Paul Revere’s Ride, the messenger is best known for the part he played in warning Lexington of the impending arrival of the British in 1775. But there was much more to the extraordinary man’s life. A Boston silversmith of partly French descent, Revere dabbled in dentistry and was also an engraver, printing the new country’s first paper money. An active opponent of British rule, he took part in the Boston Tea Party. His military career was spectacularly unsuccessful. He was court-martialled (but acquitted) for his part in a disastrous expedition against the British in what is now Maine. After the war, he opened America’s first copper-rolling mill and eventually died, aged 83, in 1818. Twice married, he had fathered 16 children. What happened at Lexington and Concord? Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith was chosen to lead a flying column of British redcoats into the small town. Smith chose his men well. He selected the elite grenadiers (the toughest) and light infantry (the swiftest) from a number of regiments, building a force of about 700. To avoid a lengthy roundabout march out of Boston, Smith’s men were ferried across the Charles River in barges and, after wading ashore through waist-deep water, the soggy troops began their march on Concord at about 2am. Gage and Smith had hoped for secrecy and surprise, but they weren’t to get their way. As the redcoats approached, the ominous sound of church bells rang through the night; the people of Massachusetts knew something was up. Dr Joseph Warren, a Boston resident and a key opponent of the King’s rule, had been informed by a sympathiser within the British command (possibly Margaret, Gage’s American born wife) that a raid was going to take place. Warren sent two riders, tanner William Dawes and silversmith Paul Revere, to spread the word. To make doubly sure the message got through, two lanterns were lit in the tower of Boston’s Old North Church – a pre-arranged signal meaning the British were to cross the Charles River by boat. Dawes and Revere initially took different routes to Lexington, a few miles east of Concord, where two key revolutionary leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were staying. Concerned that the radicals might, in fact, be the true targets of the British raid, Revere and Dawes persuaded the two to flee. The messengers then set off for Concord, meeting a third rider, Samuel Prescott, on the way. There is, incidentally, no evidence to support the myth that Revere rode about shouting “The British are coming”. Indeed, if he had, it would been confusing, as colonial Americans at that time considered themselves British. In the event, only Prescott made it to Concord. Revere was captured by the British, while Dawes was thrown from his horse and had to walk to Lexington. Read more | How did the American Revolution begin? But the riders had done their job. Other messengers were now spreading the word and militiamen from all over the county were hurriedly mustering and heading to intercept the redcoats. By the time Britain’s Lieutenant Colonel Smith and his men had reached Menotomy (now Arlington), it was clear that the enemy had stirred up a hornet’s nest, and Concord was still more than ten miles away. Before heading on, Smith sent a message back to Gage calling for reinforcements. Gage duly ordered Lord Percy to take his brigade (about 800 men) to help the redcoats on the road to Concord but, thanks to a misunderstanding, there was a four-hour delay before Percy set off. Meanwhile, Smith’s column was cautiously approaching the town of Lexington. Learning that there might be opposition on the road ahead, Smith ordered Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines to take the light infantry into the town. The Sun was just beginning to rise as Pitcairn’s men entered the little town. There, drawn up on the green, were about 77 American militiamen, under the command of Captain John Parker. A veteran of the French and Indian Wars, Parker was dying of consumption and, in fact, had only five months to live. Initially neither side wanted to fight. Parker’s tiny force was heavily outnumbered and, knowing that most of the supplies at Concord had by now been hidden, he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice his men for no purpose. So he positioned his men carefully, in plain sight to make a point, but not actively seeking confrontation by blocking the road. In Parker’s eyes, if there was going to be any fighting, the British would have to start it. Pitcairn also wanted to avoid bloodshed. He called on Parker’s militia to disperse but, before they could, a shot rang out Who fired the first shot at Lexington? Nobody knows who fired that fateful shot but, in the ensuing confusion, the British fired a volley and charged with fixed bayonets. When the smoke cleared, eight militiamen lay dead on the green and a further ten had been wounded. One redcoat had been hurt. Soon after, Smith rode into Lexington. He was horrified to learn what had happened. Using a drummer to recall Pitcairn’s scattered troops, who were busy chasing the surviving militiamen, he reformed his column and pushed on to Concord. They arrived at about 7am. The colonists had, perhaps, 300 militiamen in Concord but, rather than fight there, they pulled back across a bridge to the north of the town where they waited for their reinforcements. The redcoats set about searching the town for the weapons and ammunition they had come to confiscate, unaware that much had already been spirited away. They did, however, find three large cannons, which they rendered unusable by destroying their trunnions (axles), as well as hoards of flour and musket balls, which they dumped in the town pond. Other supplies and pieces of equipment were set alight. But this was to have unexpected consequences. On seeing the billowing smoke, the colonial militia on the other side of the river assumed that the British had set fire to the town and, now about 500 strong, they began to advance towards the bridge that led back into Concord. The 100 light infantrymen guarding the bridge fired one volley at the militiamen. The Americans replied with a volley of their own – this took the lives of the first British soldiers to fall that day and, after the great poet Ralph Waldo Emerson coined the phrase, became known as the “shot heard round the world”. Outgunned, the Brits fell back. Smith’s men had been searching Concord for four hours, but now it was time to retreat. Some 2,000 militiamen were in the area, with more arriving every minute. The British formed up and set off on the return to Boston. It was then that their nightmare began. At first, the militiamen simply shadowed the British, but they now had sufficient numbers to inflict real damage. They began sniping at the redcoats from behind stone walls, houses, sheds, trees and bushes. In their scarlet coats, as opposed to the dull red of the ordinary soldiers, Smith’s officers made distinctive targets. With his men being picked off, Smith began to lose control. Many of his troops cast away their equipment to retreat more quickly as they ran the gauntlet of colonial fire. By the time it reached Lexington, the column was near to total collapse. Had it not been for Lord Percy who was waiting for them at Lexington with his brigade of redcoats and a couple of cannons, Smith’s men might not have made it back to Boston at all. Despite being short of ammunition, Percy covered the rest of the retreat with some skill, sending groups of men into the fields on each side of the Boston road to keep the colonists as far away as possible and using his two cannons whenever he could. Even so, the militiamen continued to harass the British. They were fired upon almost all the way back to the Charles River where, to the relief of the exhausted redcoats, the Royal Navy was waiting to ferry them to safety. The British had lost 73 killed, 174 wounded and 26 missing on the retreat. American casualties were about 90. Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story. Listen to all episodes now Who won at Lexington and Concord? Militarily, Lexington and Concord had been a minor defeat for the British, but it had been a major disaster politically. Smith’s raid had caused the very fighting it was intended to prevent and the B1ritish army had caused bloodshed on American soil. What’s more, the casualties suffered from an often unseen enemy, together with the belief that one of their comrades had been scalped, would lead them to commit a number of atrocities against the locals – a fact widely reported by their enemies. All this helped turn resentment into outright rebellion. And when it came to fighting, the colonists had proved that they could stand up to the redcoats, a fact not lost on Lord Percy: “Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken.” What happened after the battles at Lexington and Concord? Encouraged by their initial success, the American rebels surrounded Boston, where their army started to gain many new recruits. Despite winning a costly victory at Bunker Hill in June, the British were forced to abandon Boston the following March, although they balanced this with the capture New York by the end of the year. In July 1776, representatives of the 13 American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. The French joined the war in 1777, as allies of the Americans – they were later joined by both the Spanish and Dutch. Read more | From Bunker Hill to Yorktown: 9 battles that made the United States When the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, it was, effectively, the end of the fighting. In 1783, Britain formally recognised American Independence.
Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
Seven historians put forward their nominations for the most accomplished leader to have sat in the White House
George Washington In office: 1789–97 Party affiliation: none Nominated by: Thomas Kidd, historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale, 2022) George Washington was the first president in US history – and I’m nominating him as the best, too. I am basing this on his success as a leader, his ability to negotiate conflict in his administration, and most importantly the example he set for future presidents. Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War were enamoured with the ideal of the virtuous republican leader, in the model of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus. Washington was no perfect man, of course, and like many elite southern Americans he was a slaveholder. But in politics he came the closest to manifesting the republican ideal of any American president. Washington became president after serving as the commander of the Continental Army during the fight for independence from the British. His leadership of the army was not uniformly positive, but his tenacity ultimately led to a successful outcome. Many suspected he might simply remain in the position as a kind of benevolent autocrat, but he resigned from the army in late 1783, returning to his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. Befitting the respect that he commanded, Washington was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the US Constitution was drafted. Then he became the first president to be elected under that Constitution in 1789, in a unanimous vote of the electoral college. Washington dealt with major political conflicts in his administration, especially between the treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who bitterly disagreed over economic policy and the direction of the new republic. Washington was largely (if not completely) able to rise above the partisan bickering, and always believed that the republic and its leaders needed to manifest consensus for the public good. He assiduously reached out to minority religious groups, such as Jews, to assure them of their place in the republic. Washington was not constitutionally required to step down after his second term, but he did so once again to manifest the ideal of the public servant who did not want or need to hold onto power indefinitely. Read more | Did George Washington have wooden teeth? Abraham Lincoln In office: 1861–65 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Richard Carwardine, historian specialising in politics at the time of the American Civil War. His latest book is Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Alfred A Knopf, 2025) In his own era, Abraham Lincoln acquired a mythic status as the ‘Saviour of the United States’ and ‘Great Emancipator’. His death, from a shot fired on Good Friday, saw him canonised as the martyr of the glorious Union. Yet even stripping away the myth, most scholars still rank him the best American president. When Lincoln took office, seven slaveholding states had already launched a separate Confederacy. The American Civil War followed. Inexperienced in executive and military leadership, the wartime president faced sustained criticism but drew on formidable self-reliance and indomitable physical strength. He grew in office. Essential to his power were his tenacious nationalism, strategic wisdom, political shrewdness and skill in communication. The American republic’s unique mission, Lincoln insisted, lay in its ideological freight of liberty and equal opportunity. During the war, his nationalism fused with a deepening religious faith. He came to see that preserving the Union’s cargo demanded emancipating the enslaved, a constitutional amendment ending human bondage, and giving the vote to black soldiers. Read more | The Emancipation Proclamation: Abraham Lincoln's declaration that helped bring about the end of slavery Lincoln shrewdly calculated the Union’s strategic priorities: controlling the rich resources of the upper South; securing international support; pursuing a military plan that played to the Union’s strengths while exploiting the enemy’s limitations; and mobilising the human and natural resources of the country. Leadership demanded the deft handling of the levers of power. He controlled his party and broadened the coalition of Union loyalists. He mastered his cabinet and congress, though he was initially less confident with the military. A strong sense of self-worth meant he rarely stood on his dignity. Equally, his mental fortitude – forged through dark passages of depression – gave him resilience in extreme adversity. Sensitive to public opinion, Lincoln recognised that growing war-weariness threatened the Union cause. In the wiry prose of his memorable public addresses (he used no speechwriter), and in the skilful use of a natural sense of humour, he touched the nerve of ordinary people, believing in their educability through reason. Lincoln is the only president to have wrestled with civil war. Could any other have done it so well? Read more | Alternate history: what if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated? Teddy Roosevelt In office: 1901–09 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Jennifer Wright, popular historian and author of Glitz, Glam and Damn Good Time: Mamie Fish and the Gilded Age (Hachette, 2025) There were dull presidents… and then there was Teddy Roosevelt. If he had not been the president, he would merely have been one of the most interesting men to ever live. The 26th president was a cattle rancher, a taxidermist, a Brazilian explorer, an amateur boxer, a historian who wrote The Naval War of 1812, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his help in bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Admittedly, he did not end the American Civil War, like Lincoln. But Lincoln did not take a bullet to the chest and still finish a campaign speech, as Roosevelt did. Prior to being president, he was a war hero known for his prominent role with the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. This group of volunteer cavalrymen were comprised of anyone who could ride a horse well. That meant that polo-playing scions of New York families served alongside coal miners and Native Americans. The notion of a country in which all people could thrive, work together and have great open spaces in which to ride would go on to become defining aspects of Roosevelt’s presidency. After succeeding to office in 1901, he increasingly promoted the idea of “a square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor”. That meant breaking up some of the big business monopolies that had dominated the gilded age and mediating a coal worker strike to ensure the public’s interest was protected (Roosevelt was on the side of the workers). A square deal also meant protecting consumers. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt lobbied for congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection acts — the meat portion of that perhaps a nod to the fact that Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle [which depicted unsanitary standards in the US meat-packing industry] had been serialised the previous year before being published as a book in February 1906. Read more | 8 facts you might not know about the White House, home of the president of the United States It was also at Roosevelt’s behest that the Forest Service was created. Roosevelt, who is known as ‘the Conservation President’, was passionate about nature. He used his presidential powers to establish 230 million acres of public land that could not be exploited. His presidency was defined by the notion of creating an America wherein the common man might find prosperity, safety and pleasure. It’s not essential that a president’s personality matches his accomplishments. Plenty of dull presidents have accomplished great things. But Teddy Roosevelt was a rare case where the magnetism of the man matched the grandeur of the office. And look, your kid doesn’t go to bed hugging a James K Polk bear. Franklin D Roosevelt In office: 1933–45 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Iwan Morgan, emeritus professor of United States studies at University College London, and author of FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America (Bloomsbury, 2022) In guiding the US through the Great Depression and Second World War, Franklin D Roosevelt, or FDR as he was known, transformed the presidency, hitherto a relatively small institution, into the modern office that is the fount of national leadership. Having to overcome physical disability after polio left him paralysed from the waist down at age 39 made his achievements all the more remarkable. Assuming office in 1933 amid the US’s worst slump, FDR failed to effect full recovery until war spending renewed prosperity, but otherwise enjoyed unmatched domestic success. His New Deal programme rescued the banking system from meltdown, enabled industrial workers to form unions that bargained for better pay and conditions, and created a new welfare state. It forged a working-class coalition of urban, multi-ethnic voters that helped FDR to win an unprecedented four terms in office (a two-term constitutional limit was ratified in 1951) and transformed the Democrats into the majority party for the next half-century. Roosevelt’s judicial appointments precipitated a constitutional revolution whereby the Supreme Court eventually accepted federal regulation of private enterprise as valid. An outstanding communicator, he uplifted national spirits through his speeches and broadcasts. Finally, he formed a memorable political partnership with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose idealism offset his pragmatism. As wartime commander-in-chief, FDR set spectacularly high production goals for America’s defence industries that ensured the Allies were far better equipped than their Axis enemies. He overruled his generals’ plans for a 1943 invasion of France as premature, then prodded a reluctant Winston Churchill into agreeing the D-Day invasion in 1944. HistoryExtra Academy | Take our four-week course, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about the Normandy landings The driving force behind the creation of the United Nations Organisation in 1945, he nevertheless regarded great power collaboration as essential for sustainable peace. Accordingly, he accommodated Josef Stalin’s demands for Soviet control of eastern Europe to maintain good relations. For critics, this encouraged Stalin’s insatiable expansionism, but FDR saw no alternative with the region already under Red Army occupation. Roosevelt’s sudden death while still in office in 1945 meant that history would never know if he could have pre-empted the wartime alliance’s rapid disintegration and descent into Cold War. FDR’s record has some significant shortcomings, notably his limited advancement of African-American civil rights and his complicity in the worst federal abuse of citizen rights in history in signing an executive order in 1942 authorising relocation of approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Nevertheless, his positive accomplishments were arguably far more significant. They justify his remembrance as America’s greatest president. Lyndon Baines Johnson In office: 1963–69 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Clifford Williamson, a lecturer in modern British and American history at Bath Spa University “Power is where power goes,” was the mantra of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his early days as a New Deal bureaucrat and teacher through to his time as president of the US. LBJ, as he was often known, was a commanding and intimidating figure who handed out the ‘Johnson treatment’ in his pursuit of power and change in America. A tall man, he loomed over whoever he was seeking to impress, frighten or cajole into supporting him or his policies. He was a member of Congress from 1937 until 1961; he graduated from the House to the Senate in 1948 and became a majority leader in 1955. His time in Congress would be key to his effectiveness as a president who used procedure, patronage and his powers of persuasion to break the entrenched opposition of, in particular, the southern Democrats. LBJ was selected as the running mate to John F Kennedy in 1960, and was raised to the presidency following the assassination of JFK in November 1963. Almost immediately he proved his effectiveness by breaking the Congressional logjam over tax cuts – and, importantly, a Civil Rights Act which was passed in 1964. Read more | US civil rights movement: 5 landmark events In May he launched his ‘Great Society’, a wide-ranging legislative programme where he claimed, “no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled”. There then followed a slew of initiatives that rivalled in scope the New Deal of his hero, Franklin D Roosevelt, and in many cases surpassed it. Following the violent attacks on the peaceful Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, he would propose the 1965 Voting Rights Act that finally ended the poll taxes, literacy tests and Grandfather clauses that had hindered African-American political participation and enfranchisement. However, following a series of riots across the US (starting in Watts, Los Angeles in 1965), a growing white backlash would soon be palpable. It was something that not even the formidable political talents of LBJ could stem. The crisis was exacerbated by the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam, where it was becoming increasingly evident that the US had become embroiled in an unwinnable war, despite sending hundreds of thousands of US troops. Then, in 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese shocked the US by launching the Tet offensive, a major escalation in the conflict. In the face of spiralling opposition to the war among the American people, Johnson decided not to seek re-election in that year’s presidential election. It was a muted end to what had been a brilliant political career. Ronald Reagan In office: 1981–89 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Jeremy Black, author of books including The Cold War: A Military History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) and A Brief History of America (Robinson, 2024) Ability and achievement come in many forms. The innovators and the explorers of the possibilities of politics and government win the most praise. But it is also necessary to honour the stabilisers, and Ronald Reagan, the much-mocked elderly ex-Hollywood actor from California, was one of the greatest. America and the West were in grave difficulties at the end of the 1970s. The Vietnam War and Watergate had hollowed out confidence in American power and politics, and the two oil shocks of the 1970s had destabilised the economy and public finances, contributing to a sense of decline. At the end of the decade, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took this malaise further. What might have come next was a matter of hazard – and, indeed, in 1983, war between the Soviets and the west came very close. Detente had fallen and the Cold War reheated. Read more | Opinion: the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan Reagan proved an adept responder. Though castigated as a warmonger for his reference to a Soviet ‘evil empire’, and for the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles, he believed in negotiations from strength – a stance that eventually bore fruit in the move towards a reduction of tension from 1985. Just as Richard Nixon had reached out to Chairman Mao, so Reagan responded to Gorbachev. Earlier crises over Poland and Afghanistan were handled through measures short of war – so, for instance, the US supplied armaments to the Afghan resistance but didn’t commit ground troops. The same policy of subversion rather than invasion was employed in Central American countries such as Nicaragua. The fall of the Soviet system suggested that the pressure of trying to match American military expenditure and economic development was potent, more so than the repeated moves into war and use of troops frequently employed by presidents from 1991 onwards. In light of this, Reagan appears more viable as a model than contemporary criticism often allowed for. In domestic policy, Reagan pushed growth and deregulation. The American economy provided a clear contrast with the Soviet one, and was thus a more attractive partner for China. In social terms, Reagan was a libertarian, which would have jarred with the intolerance of many members of the modern Republican party. Charismatic, a great communicator, able to take the pulse of the nation, a good delegator, and a man with a heart… Reagan was an attractive head of state and an accomplished leader. Barack Obama In office: 2009–17 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Rebecca Brückmann, associate professor of history at Carleton College and author of Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood (University of Georgia Press, 2021) Barack Obama became the nation’s first African American president, 390 years after the first documented slave ship arrived in the continental British colonies. Obama’s identity should not eclipse his effectiveness: he oversaw the passage of urgent economic reforms and the first comprehensive healthcare law since Lyndon B Johnson signed the 1965 Medicare and Medicaid Act. Obama expanded civil rights, reconfigured US foreign policy, and emphasised the fight against climate change. Read more | American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know Obama’s 2008 ‘Yes We Can’ campaign centred his charisma and rhetorical skill. He tapped into widespread dissatisfaction with George W Bush’s administration amid the Iraq War and a worldwide economic recession, promoting a hopeful and inclusive vision of the country. Once elected, he confronted the longest economic downturn since the 1930s. One month after Obama took office, in addition to offering financial ‘bailouts’ for banks and the automotive industry, Congress passed an $800bn stimulus package, investing in infrastructure, education and renewable energy. By the time Obama left office, unemployment had been cut in half. The Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), his landmark achievement, outlawed health insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and halved the number of uninsured Americans. The Obama administration strengthened civil rights by bolstering equal pay provisions, repealing the anti-LGBTQ ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy, supporting marriage equality, and offering a path to work authorisations for undocumented minors. Confronted by an obstructionist Republican Congress that rebuffed attempts at bipartisan coalition building, the Obama administration increasingly relied on executive orders to effect political change. Obama raised the federal minimum wage, designated national monuments under an Indigenous commission, and cut federal greenhouse gas emissions. Obama’s foreign policy saw the continuation of his predecessors’ military interventionism in the Middle East, which made critics question the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2009. However, he re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba after 54 years, and he brokered a new agreement on nuclear weapons development in Iran. Most constructive of all was his spotlight on the climate crisis, which enabled the breakthrough 2016 Paris Agreement. In the face of racist threats, birtherist conspiracies and a conservative countermovement, Barack Obama was a remarkably effective president during socio-politically challenging times in the 21st century. Read more | Life after the White House: what the US presidents did next This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Andrew C McKevitt charts the forces behind the postwar weaponry boom which has seen US civilian gun ownership skyrocket
Today there are an estimated 450 million guns in civilian hands in the United States – ten times the number than at the end of the Second World War. But how did that conflict spark a weaponry boom? And what are the social and economic currents that have led the US to have more guns than people? Matt Elton speaks to Andrew C McKevitt, whose Cundill History Prize-shortlisted book Gun Country explores these questions. Andrew C McKevitt is the author of Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023). Buy it now from Amazon Find out more about the Cundill History Prize here
Why was Benjamin Franklin rumoured to be a serial killer?
A grisly discovery in the garden of an old Georgian townhouse in central London ignited tabloid speculation that its most famous resident had been a mass murderer
The short and emphatic answer is: no, Benjamin Franklin was not a serial killer. However, in 1998, a gruesome discovery of human bones was made on the grounds of a house in central London. The building at 36 Craven Street, a short walk from present-day Charing Cross station, was once home to the revered Founding Father. Inevitably, scurrilous rumours soon ran rife that Franklin himself was responsible. What exactly was discovered at Benjamin Franklin's former home? Following decades of neglect, the property at Craven Street underwent conservation in the late 1990s. But work came to a halt when a series of human and animal bones were unearthed at the back of the site. This area had originally been a garden some two centuries earlier. About 1,200 bones from an estimated 15 individuals were eventually recovered from a small pit. A coroner determined the bones were more than 100 years old, negating the need for a criminal inquest. Subsequent scientific analysis determined them to be over 200 years old. Why were there bones at 36 Craven Street? One crucial find among the pile of bones was the discovery of a turtle’s spine and traces of mercury. This gave a tangible link to William Hewson, one of the most capable anatomists of the late 18th century. In 1770, he had demonstrated the flow of mercury through a turtle to the Royal Society in London. Hewson was the son-in-law of Margaret Stevenson, the owner of 36 Craven Street and Benjamin Franklin’s landlady. Throughout this time, Hewson used Craven Street as an anatomy school, discarding the remnants of his experiments in the garden. Georgian London was an unsanitary and dangerous city with a high mortality rate. Although the bodies of convicts executed for murder were earmarked for dissection, the capital hosted a thriving illegal trade in cadavers, courtesy of so-called ‘resurrectionists’, also known as ‘body snatchers’. Read more | 10 dangers of Georgian London In May 1774, Hewson contracted septicaemia during a dissection and died. When Franklin wrote of news to his wife Deborah (who had remained in Philadelphia), he described the young surgeon in glowing terms as “an excellent young Man, ingenious, industrious, useful, and belov’d by all that knew him”. Why was Benjamin Franklin in London? Franklin is best known to posterity as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and later ambassador to France, securing the Franco-American alliance with his grandson, William Temple Franklin. But prior to the American Revolutionary War, the polymath had spent several years living in London as a colonial emissary of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Though born in Boston, Massachusetts, for nearly 16 years between 1757 and 1775 he resided at 36 Craven Street. As well as political matters, Franklin’s time in London saw him pursue many of his literary and scientific interests. It was in this period that he constructed a musical instrument – the glass armonica – which remains one of his most famous inventions. Read more | Benjamin Franklin’s greatest inventions – and famous kite experiment The polymath was also known to indulge in ‘air bathing’ at the house. This involved him sitting nude in front of an open window, confident that the airflow invigorated his health and wellbeing. Throughout his long stay in London, Franklin grew close to Margaret Stevenson and her daughter, Polly. When Polly married Hewson, it was Franklin who walked her down the aisle. He later became godfather to their first child, William. Even after the American Declaration of Independence, Franklin maintained a close correspondence with the family, and, Polly, who later emigrated to the new United States, was at his bedside when he died on 17 April 1790 in Philadelphia. Is 36 Craven Street still standing today? Today, 36 Craven Street holds the distinction as the only building left standing on either side of the Atlantic that Franklin once called home. It now hosts the Benjamin Franklin House museum.
Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July?
The Fourth of July is one of America’s biggest holidays, with today’s celebrations including fireworks and parades across the USA. But what exactly is Independence Day and what does it celebrate? Dr Tom Cutterham explains why Americans celebrate on the Fourth of July…
In July 1776, during the second year of the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), representatives from 13 North American colonies of the kingdom of Great Britain voted to declare themselves independent from the crown, forming the United States of America. Two days after the historic vote, on 4 July 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed – and each year since, Americans have celebrated. Though the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775, the colonies did not initially demand complete separation from British rule; instead they sought more autonomy within the British empire. However, British treatment of the American colonists as clear rebels and enemies over the opening months of the conflict leant weight to arguments for independence and, on 2 July 1776, in Philadelphia’s State House, representatives from 13 of Britain’s colonies in North America voted, at last, to publicly break their bonds with the mother country and its king, George III. Read more | Did George III read the Declaration of Independence? But 2 July is not the day that Americans celebrate every year. They chose instead 4 July, two days later, when Congressmen signed the finished version of the Declaration of Independence – a document that would announce their decision to the world. Drafted mostly by Thomas Jefferson, a prominent lawyer and planter from Virginia (and later the third president of the United States between 1801–09), the Declaration of Independence features the famous lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable rights” – among them “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The declaration also describes Native Americans as “merciless savages”and blames King George for inciting American slaves to insurrection. More than 240 years later, Americans still celebrate the day their rebel leaders put their signatures to Jefferson’s words. Here are five things you might not know about the history of Independence Day celebrations… The Declaration of Independence is a sacred document in the United States Not for nothing did the late historian Pauline Maier call her 1997 book about the declaration, American Scripture. Yet the document itself wasn’t always treated well; it barely survived the British burning of Washington DC in 1814. But during the Second World War, the Declaration of Independence was delivered to Fort Knox, Kentucky, under Secret Service protection. In 1952, the declaration was placed in aspecially designed, bullet-proof case in a “shrine” under the rotunda of the National Archives in Washington DC. At night, it is lowered into a concrete and steel-reinforced bunker. And every day, Americans file past and stare at it in reverence. There’s a share of the divine in the declaration’s text, too. Jefferson wasn’t known as the most pious Christian, but he included “nature’s god” in his text – by whose power “all men are created equal”. He also closed the text by invoking its signers’ “sacred honor” along with their lives and fortunes, which the American revolutionaries were putting on the line when they broke away from Great Britain. Read more | Jefferson vs Hamilton: the rise and fall of America's founding fathers The Declaration of Independence has had many imitators, at home and abroad The events of 4 July 1776 helped inspire colonial independence movements around the world – especially in South America, where revolution overthrew the Spanish empire in the first decades of the 19th century. Venezuela’s 1811 declaration of independence, for example, had clear echoes of Jefferson’s text, announcing that the provinces of Venezuela “are, and ought to be […] free, sovereign, and independent states.” Revolutionaries across the continent and elsewhere drew on the American example, as they asserted their right to self-government against European empires. In the United States itself, the declaration has also found many echoes in later political documents. “That all men are created equal”, wrote the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in his own 1833 declaration, was “the corner-stone” of America’s “temple of freedom”. Women’s rights activists, too, used the declaration’s words to promote their causeand to highlight inconsistencies in the United States’ implementation of freedom. “The history of mankind,” it was declared at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman.” Read more | American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know Jeremy Bentham was not impressed by the declaration’s logic Not many critics of independence responded directly to the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but the late 18th/early 19th-century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham certainly did. The utilitarian and future designer of the panopticon [a type of institutional building which represented a system of control] was thoroughly unconvinced by the logic of Jefferson and his co-authors. For one thing, if the “right to life, liberty, and happiness” was so “unalienable”, he asked, then what had justified the American invasion of Canada in 1775, with all the death and misery it caused? Bentham wasn’t a fan of the philosophy of natural rights, either: he called the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 “nonsense upon stilts”. When the Americans declared an unalienable right to liberty, he wondered if that meant “thieves are not to be restrained from theft, murderers from murder”. He wasn’t sure about all men being created equal, either. Wouldn’t that mean babies had the same power as full-grown adults? Pure mumbo-jumbo, Bentham reckoned – not to mention a threat to government of any kind. Frederick Douglass attacked the declaration’s hypocrisies The British weren’t the only ones to find fault with the Declaration of Independence. Frederick Douglass had escaped slavery as a young man and turned himself into a leader of the abolition movement, when he was asked to speak at an Independence Day celebration in 1852. With President Millard Fillmore in the audience, Douglass proceeded to denounce the hypocrisy of a nation that proclaimed “all men are created equal” while treating more than 10 per cent of its population as slaves. Read more | Why is America haunted by its past? “Could I reach the nation’s ear,” stormed Douglass, “I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke… the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.” Today, too, institutional racism and other forms of systematic inequality may seem to undermine the claims of Jefferson’s visionary preamble. Perhaps the Fourth of July will become a moment to remember the promises left unfulfilled, as well as the achievements of American liberty. Read more | Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would" Now every Fourth of July, Monticello welcomes new citizens Independence Day is celebrated in all sorts of ways across the United States – many of them involving barbeque, beer, and a healthy dose of patriotic red, white and blue. At Jefferson’s mountaintop home in Virginia – Monticello – they have a special tradition of their own. For more than 50 years now they’ve held a naturalisation ceremony on Independence Day, admitting people from all over the world to become citizens of the United States. When the nation came into being on 4 July 1776, no one had been born a citizen. The declaration was a revolutionary document: it aimed to overthrow tyranny and create a new government through the power of collective action. For all its flaws, it can still today be an inspiration.
Your guide to the 1776 American Declaration of Independence
The ground-breaking document that laid the foundations for the modern-day United States promised freedom from the yoke of English tyranny, but not equal rights for all…
What is the Declaration of Independence? Approved by Congress on 4 July 1776, the Declaration of American Independence stated that America’s 13 colonies were to be “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”. Signed by delegates from all 13 American colonies – Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Bay Colony (including Maine), New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations – it became one of the founding documents of the US government, alongside the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Read more | Your guide to the American War of Independence What events led to its creation? For 12 years leading up to the Declaration’s approval, America had been resisting attempts by Britain to impose heavy taxes on the colonies to pay for expensive wars against France. The colonies saw these taxes as unjust, and initially peaceful protests broke into rebellion with the destruction of a shipment of tea in Boston – an event popularly known as the Boston Tea Party – in response to the unpopular Tea Act of May 1773. The British parliament imposed a number of acts that effectively ended self-government and other historic rights in Massachusetts, and closed the port of Boston. American patriots set up a shadow government, and 12 colonies joined them, forming a Continental Congress. In April 1775, hostilities broke out into armed conflict, the movement for independence gathered momentum, and the Declaration was adopted in July 1776. Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story. Listen to all episodes now Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? On 7 June 1776, Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion that proposed America sever ties with Britain and establish a confederation to unite its 13 colonies. A committee of five men, comprising Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Robert Livingston, prepared a document to outline the justifications for independence. Read more about the Founding Fathers of the United States of America What does the Declaration actually say? As well as declaring the 13 British colonies of North America to be independent, the 1,320-word document contains a list of 27 specific grievances against King George III and the British crown, including interfering with the colonies’ right to self-government, introducing legislation without the colonies’ consent, and imposing taxes that prevented free trade. But it is the document’s liberating preamble that most people remember about the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Read more | Did George III support the slave trade? Does the Declaration advocate freedom for all? Not for everyone. The document contains very illiberal attitudes to black slaves and Native Americans, the latter of whom are referred to as “merciless Indian Savages” who, the document claims, had been encouraged by the British crown to fight against the Patriots. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/07/GettyImages-1371473698-ff93323-e1719830464255.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Photograph of the Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress" title="Photograph of the Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress. It did not advocate for freedom for all. (Photo by: HUM Images/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Why is 4 July a US national holiday? Although independence was formally declared on 2 July 1776, the final text wasn’t approved by Congress until 4 July, a date now celebrated annually. The first 4 July celebration took place in 1777, marked by 13 gunshots, one for each of the liberated colonies. Read more | Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July? 8 key facts about the Declaration of Independence Within the Committee of Five, Thomas Jefferson assumed the role of lead author. The other four — John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R Livingston — made only minor, verbal suggestions. The committee spent 17 days writing the declaration – from 11–28 June 1776. The text of the declaration can be divided into five sections: the introduction; the preamble; the indictment of George III; the denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion. The finished draft was forwarded to Congress on 1 July 1776, but a number of amendments and deletions were made before the text was ratified – including the removal of Jefferson's lengthy condemnation of slavery. The deletion was designed to appease delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, says the New York Public Library (NYPL). One of the most widely held misconceptions about the declaration is that it was signed on 4 July 1776 by all the delegates in attendance, says the US National Archives and Records Administration. In fact the document was signed on 2 August after being engrossed (prepared in a large, clear hand), most likely by Pennyslvanian Timothy Matlack. Delegates did indeed vote to adopt the declaration on 4 July, however. Jefferson was troubled by the alterations to his text, says the NYPL, so in July 1776 he made several copies of the complete text, highlighting where changes were made, and sent them to five or six friends. Of these copies, only two complete versions are known to have survived: one is owned by the NYPL, and a second is now owned by the American Philosophical Society. The Massachusetts Historical Society owns a fragment of another copy. It has been suggested, though never proved, that the NYPL’s copy of the Declaration of Independence is the one Jefferson sent to his former law professor and mentor, George Wythe. A handful of delegates who voted for the adoption of the declaration on 4 July never signed it, despite an order of Congress on 19 July that the engrossed document “be signed by every member of Congress”. Non-signers included Robert R Livingston, one of the Committee of Five (who wrote the declaration), who thought the declaration was premature, and John Dickinson, who hoped for reconciliation with Britain. This guide was first published by BBC History Revealed in 2016
Historian George Goodwin discusses the life and legacy of the polymath and founding father of the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin
One of the founding fathers of the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin is a towering figure in 18th-century history. Although he is widely remembered for his role in the American War of Independence, his influence stretches far beyond that. Elinor Evans spoke to historian and author George Goodwin about the life and legacy of the polymath, from his groundbreaking scientific experiments to his vital contributions to America's independence struggle.
Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
Jane Austen’s lifetime coincided with near-constant conflict and bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic
The American Revolutionary War (1775–83) Born eight months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jane Austen entered a world on the brink of seismic change. Although the conflict that ended with the independence of 13 North American colonies from British rule did not affect her directly, its geopolitical legacy shaped the world in which she came of age. During the 1760s and 1770s, colonists in North America grew increasingly frustrated with taxation by Britain, and by its legislative supremacy over their lives. In 1773, the Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to America – and levied taxes on that tea, payable to the British Government. In response, colonists disguised as Mohawk Native Americans boarded British ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbour – a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. Westminster responded by passing the Intolerable Acts, ending local self- government and commerce in Boston. Tensions boiled over in April 1775, when British troops in Massachusetts attempted to confiscate weapons in Lexington and Concord. When they met resisting local militia, the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired – marking the start of the Revolutionary War. The following year, on 4 July 1776, delegates from 13 colonies assembled in Philadelphia declared their independence and established the United States of America. Over the next five years, on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, the colonists – led by figures including George Washington – fought for liberty and self-governance. And, with support from France and other European powers, the tide turned in their favour. Signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain formally recognised the US as an independent nation, ending the conflict. But the ideals championed in that war opened the era of the Atlantic Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) On 22 August 1791, the French colony of Saint- Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, was shaken by an uprising. Inspired by the French Revolution, more than 100,000 enslaved Africans overthrew the oppressive regime, leaving many of its 8,000 plantations in ruins and more than 1,000 Europeans dead. The colony was the most lucrative in the Caribbean, producing around half of the world’s coffee and sugar, so in 1792 Paris dispatched a 6,000-strong force to pacify it. Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, in 1793 British and Spanish troops arrived on the island, exacerbating the turmoil as these European powers recruited people to their war aims. Amid this chaos, Toussaint L’Ouverture – who had been born into slavery on Saint-Domingue – emerged as a figurehead. In 1796/97, he became deputy governor and then commander-in- chief of the French forces and, after expelling the British and Spanish, he established a new regime over much of Hispaniola, assuming dictatorial powers and launching efforts to revive its damaged economy. In 1802, another French expedition ousted L’Ouverture and whisked him to France, where he died in captivity a year later. When Napoleon restored slavery in Saint-Domingue, the revolution erupted afresh and, led by the formerly enslaved Jean-Jacques Dessalines, revolutionary forces decisively expelled the French. On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti – the first led by people of colour –was declared, galvanising the international anti-slavery movement. Just three years later, Britain’s Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was signed into law. Though Austen’s views on the Haitian Revolution aren’t known, many in her circle supported abolitionism. And both her brother Francis and the fictional Captain Wentworth in Persuasion were present at the Napoleonic battle of Santo Domingo (the Spanish colony on Hispaniola) in 1806, so Jane was clearly familiar with events on the island. The French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) Having provided support for the American independence cause, France's King Louis XVI grappled with a mounting economic crisis. In 1789, hunger and widespread discontent sparked revolution: on 14 July, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, reviled symbol of royal tyranny. But the movement's pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity - and the revolutionary government's aspiration to spread these principles beyond France's borders - spooked Europe's monarchies. Over time, factionalism and infighting split the revolutionaries. In an effort to rally national unity, the government targeted France's historic enemies, and in April 1792 declared war on Austria. Later, Louis and his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, were toppled and executed. A series of coalitions formed by European powers including Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia aimed to contain and reverse the revolutionary changes in France in wars spanning much of the next decade. These conflicts spread revolutionary and nationalist ideals, and pioneered strategies such as national conscription. But their most significant legacy would be the meteoric rise of a Corsican corporal, Napoleon Bonaparte. After a decade of turmoil, the 1802 Treaty of Amiens was signed by France and Britain, bringing to an end the Revolutionary Wars - though not auguring a lasting peace with France. The Austen family wasn't untouched by these events. Of Jane's brothers, Henry joined the Oxfordshire Militia, while Francis and Charles enlisted in the Royal Navy. Jane was horrified by a description by her cousin (and, later, sister-in-law) Eliza de Feuillide of her first husband's guillotining in 1794, during the bloody period of the French Revolution known as the Terror. Like her contemporaries, Jane eagerly followed events. She even sported an Egyptian-style 'Mamalouc' cap to a ball honouring Lord Nelson's victory over the French at the battle of the Nile. Did you know? Winston Churchill, musing on Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, once quipped: "What calm lives they had... No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic Wars" The Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) Jane Austen’s career as a writer reached its zenith during the series of wars involving Napoleonic France. Her most famous novels were penned as those conflicts raged and, though war itself is absent from her stories, the military characters she created, and the references to everyday hardship in her books, attest to her lived reality. Two of her brothers were fighting in the Royal Navy, and the threat of a French invasion of England remained credible until Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in October 1805. Napoleon Bonaparte was a skilled military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution. After seizing power in 1799, Napoleon – who later crowned himself Emperor of the French – aimed to establish an empire and exert his influence globally. Through military campaigns, he drove a rapid expansion of French territory, conquering numerous European nations and bringing them under his rule. His military victories – including in battles at Austerlitz in 1805 and Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 – demonstrated his tactical brilliance and reshaped the political landscape of the continent. Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria and other nations joined forces in coalitions pushing back against Napoleonic France. A series of battles and campaigns followed, notably the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, and the Russian campaign of 1812. Despite his military prowess, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia proved disastrous, and led to his first abdication in April 1814, followed by exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The following year, while European statesmen were gathered in Vienna to establish a new continental order, Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed in southern France. Arriving in Paris in March 1815, he resumed hostilities – culminating in French defeat at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815 by a combined British and Prussian force led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Napoleon was subsequently exiled once more, to the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, marking the end of the Napoleonic era and decades of warfare. The War of 1812 (1812–15) In a letter dated 2 September 1814, Jane Austen wrote: “I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.” Despite her reticence in discussing many of the global events that defined her era, the coincidence of this scathing verdict with a conflict then raging in North America is perhaps telling. So-called ‘War Hawks’ in Congress asserted that Britain’s presence in Canada posed a threat to the US, and called for military action. Tensions had arisen as a direct result of two decades of near-constant warfare between Britain and France. Factors that frustrated the US included impressment (forced recruitment) into the Royal Navy of American sailors believed to be deserters; competing Anglo-French trade restrictions imposed on neutral powers such as the US; and British support for Native American resistance to US expansion westwards across North America. So, on 18 June 1812, the US declared war on Britain, launching a conflict that would last nearly three years. Despite initial American naval victories, the British were able to maintain blockades of key US ports. On 24 August 1814, in retaliation for American attacks on York (modern-day Toronto), British soldiers burned public buildings in Washington DC – including the White House and the Capitol. War fatigue and economic stresses forced both sides to the negotiating table, and on 24 December 1814 the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Even so, the distances involved delayed ratification of the treaty by Congress until 16 February 1815 – after US victory at the battle of New Orleans on 8 January. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen – reading time 6 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
George Robert Twelves Hewes: the shoemaker who became a patriot
On the wintry evening of 16 December 1773, a Boston shoemaker stood up against British oppression and became a patriot
Having hastily disguised themselves as Mohawk Native Americans – using coal dust to darken their skin and wearing feathers in their hair – a band of American patriots marched to Boston Harbor. On that cold evening of 16 December 1773, they climbed aboard three British ships docked there, calmly subdued the crews and dumped all 342 chests of tea from the holds into the water. Causing £18,000 in losses (over a million dollars today), the Boston Tea Party was an audacious protest against British taxes imposed on the American colonies. It was also one of three defining events to occur in Boston in the prelude to the American Revolutionary War, along with an event dubbed a massacre, and brutal act of tarring-and-feathering. And one man was at the centre of all of them... Who was George Robert Twelves Hewes? George Robert Twelves Hewes, born to a large Bostonian family in 1742, was always poor. Since being apprenticed to a shoemaker at the age of 14, Hewes remained in that lowly profession his whole life – his efforts to escape in his youth by enlisting in the army were thwarted by his short stature, standing at 5’1’’. So he bought his own shop, where he struggled to support his wife, Sally, and growing family, sonmuch so that he spent time in debtors’ prison. Despite his personal trials, however, Hewes couldn’t ignore Boston’s volatile political climate for long. The Massachusetts town had long been a hotbed of resentment against British taxation, with tensions flaring between colonists and the several thousand British soldiers stationed there. Hewes and the Boston Massacre Tensions came to a head on 5 March 1770, when a mostly unarmed mob, including Hewes in its number, was fired upon outside Boston’s Customs House. The scene on a snowy Kings Street was chaos, with five people fatally shot. Hewes, who sustained an injury to the shoulder by being hit with the butt of a gun, was standing next to James Caldwell when he was killed and caught his body as it fell. The events of that night were labelled the ‘Boston Massacre’, and were recounted countless times as a powerful anti-British propaganda tool. Involvement in the Boston Tea Party From then, Hewes was a devoted member of the Patriot movement, so was an eager volunteer for the Tea Party nearly four years later, a protest that reacted to the passing of the 1773 Tea Act. On 16 December 1773, the men involved were split into three boarding crews, one for each ship, and Hewes’ loyalty – or “whistling talent” as he claimed – was rewarded with his appointment to ‘boatswain’ (a de facto officer) of the party on the Dartmouth. It was Hewes who demanded the keys from the ship’s captain and supervised the dumping. He even reprimanded a fellow Patriot caught trying to smuggle tea in his coat. A member of his party later praised Hewes’s leadership by declaring, “In the heat of conflict, the small man with the large name had been elevated from a poor shoemaker to Captain Hewes.” Not long after the destruction of the tea, Hewes was, again, a central character in a major political and widely publicised incident in Boston. In January 1774, Hewes witnessed customs official John Malcolm (a much hated Bostonian and staunch Loyalist) threatening a young boy with his cane. When Hewes intervened, Malcolm struck him instead and “wounded him deeply on the forehead”. Hewes had a scar the rest of his life. "The attack was reported and, that same night, Malcolm was dragged from his house, stripped, then tarred and feathered. The violent and extremely painful punishment, reported in many newspapers, was yet more evidence to the British Parliament that the situation in Boston was getting out of control, leading them to pass punitive laws in an attempt to restore order. What they got was a revolution as Americans decided to end British rule and fight for independence. Hewes and the Revolution During the eight-year American Revolutionary War, Hewes served as a privateer (hoping to make money from seized booty) and militiaman, while still providing for his family. His experiences weren’t exactly eventful, but Hewes remained a revolutionary through and through. When the war was won in 1783, he was proud to say he had gone from subject under a monarchy to an equal citizen in a new nation – and it was a transformation he had been part of from the start. Yet his story was nearly lost as Hewes fell back into obscurity, and poverty, after the war. He was in his 90s when ‘discovered’ and hailed to be one of the last living members of the Tea Party. He was hurled to fame after two biographies were written about him and, in 1835, Hewes – named the “venerable patriot” – was cheered as guest of honour at the Fourth of July celebrations in his former home town of Boston. On the podcast | The American Revolutionary War: everything you wanted to know