The History of the Americans

Joe Kelly is professor of literature and the director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College of Charleston, and the author of Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin.  In addition to Marooned, in 2013 Joe published America’s Longest Siege:  Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Towards Civil War, which details the evolving ideology of slavery in America. He is also author of a study of the Irish novelist James Joyce, censorship, obscenity, and the Cold War (Our Joyce:  From Outcast to Icon). This conversation, which was great fun, covers a whole range of topics familiar to longstanding and attentive listeners, but with a new and provocative perspective.  We talk about John Smith, Sir Francis Drake – who literally takes up a chapter in Joe’s book – the Sea Venture wreck, the role of the commoners in the struggle to survive on Bermuda, and the political philosophy of Stephen Hopkins, the one man to spend years in Virginia and then go on to sail on the Mayflower as a Stranger among the Pilgrim Fathers.  Was Hopkins the moving force for or even the author of the Mayflower Compact, and the true original English-American political theorist?  Finally, we have it out over the fraught question, as between Jamestown and Plymouth, which of our founding mythologies most clearly reflects the American we have become?  Joe brings a new and fascinating perspective to that timeless argument. Buy the book!: Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

Welcome to the first "true crime" episode of the History of the Americans Podcast, the story of Oscar Hartzell and the Sir Francis Drake estate scam, perhaps the most audacious con of the 1920s, the great golden age of the confidence man. Hartzell swindled as many as 200,000 Midwesterners, many from my own state of Iowa, out of millions of dollars posing as the rightful heir to the lost estate of Sir Francis Drake. Eventually, it would drive him insane, at least as adjudged by the director of the behavioral clinic of the criminal court of Cook County, Illinois. Enjoy! X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Richard Rayner, "The Admiral and the Con Man," The New Yorker, April 15, 2002 (pdf, subscription necessary) Richard Rayner, Drake's Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," 1930 (pdf). Hartzell v. United States, Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, August 16, 1934.

William Pynchon, ancestor of the American novelist Thomas Pynchon, was the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, a successful fur trader, merchant, and magistrate, and at age 60 wrote the first of many books to be banned in Boston. Pynchon had come to Massachusetts with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and soon became one of the wealthiest merchant/traders in the colony. He founded Springfield on the main trail between the Dutch trading posts near Albany and Boston, and controlled the fur trade coming down the Connecticut River from the north. He had unusually modern opinions about the Indians and Indian sovereignty, opposed the Pequot War, and was a respected leader in New England, until he ran afoul of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the founder of the Connecticut River Towns. Their dispute would alter the map of New England forever. Pynchon was an independent thinker, especially in matters of economics and theology. In 1650, he published a book titled The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, and would be prosecuted for heresy. This episode is his story. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast The Other States of America Podcast (Apple podcast link) Selected references for this episode David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony

It is now 1648. In this episode, two tough guys, Johan "Big Belly" Printz of New Sweden and Peter "Peg Leg" Stuyvesant of New Netherland, escalate their competition to control the critical Delaware River, now an essential artery for the fur trade coming out of Susquehannock territory in Pennsylvania and points farther west. Sweden and Netherland were at peace in Europe, so there would be no shooting, but all sorts of guns would be pointed without pulling the trigger or lighting the match. Eventually, the Dutch would put together the largest European army in North America since Soto and Coronado in the 1540s, and put an end to New Sweden as a political entity, raising the Dutch flag over the forts at today's New Castle and Wilmington, Delaware. Along the way we hear the horrific story of the Katten, a Swedish ship full of settlers that ran aground just off Puerto Rico. Everybody survived the immediate crisis, only to fall into the hands of the Spanish and then the French on St. Croix. Folks, don't let that happen to you. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode New Sweden Part 2: The Tough Guys Arrive C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655 Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883.

We are back in New Sweden. In 1638, shortly after establishing Fort Christina at the site of today's Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Minuit would die in a hurricane on the way back to Sweden. The settlers left behind would go a year and half before another supply ship came, but they would survive with remarkable pluck. They were well-housed, because the Finns among them would introduce the log cabin to these shores, and they would trade effectively with the Lenape and Susquehannock nations. Then in 1643 a new governor would arrive, Johan Printz, a 400-pound giant of a man who would boot out the New English who tried to settle on the Delaware, and keep the pressure on the Dutch who also claimed both sides of that river. Under Printz's authoritarian and also competent administration, New Sweden would prosper, go on a building boom, and explore the interior of Pennsylvania, all in spite of very little help from home. The Dutch under Willem Kieft - we've met him before - wouldn't challenge New Sweden in this period because they were under pressure from the New English to the east and the Indian groups around Manhattan. Then, in 1647, Pieter Stuyvesant would arrive to govern New Netherland, and everything would change again. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode "The Founding of New Sweden" C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655 Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 "America's Oldest Log Cabin Is for Sale"

Your podcaster spent the weekend just passed in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. I learned a lot, but especially how transparently politicized so many professional historians seem have become. This episode recounts some of what I saw and heard, and concludes with my many thoughts on the greatest benefit of learning history, whether history should be "useable," and why deploying history for partisan political purposes, as is now happening widely and overtly, corrupts history absolutely. Along the way I suggest both philosophical and utilitarian reasons why overtly partisan historians are not doing their profession, or their students, any favors. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In podcast time, we’ve been knocking around the northeast of today’s United States for just about two years, starting with the Popham colony episodes back in December 2021.  The recent high water mark, as it were, is 1647 or so, with the recovery of Maryland by the Calverts after the plundering time.  We are not entirely caught up to that date, however.  We need to get back to see what happened to New Sweden since its first year in the late 1630s, and the New Haven colony, which extended its writ to New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, deserves a couple of episodes. In the 70+ timeline episodes since Martin Pring’s expedition of 1603 and Champlain’s St. Croix settlement in Maine, we’ve talked about English, Dutch, and French settlement and exploration in today’s United States as local stories, but we have not looked at the big picture, or at least not very often. Even I’m getting confused!  So in this episode we’ll do our best to bring it all together, which ought to make the next few episodes a bit easier to follow.  X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Map of Settlements on the Delaware Selected references for this episode Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 Hampton L. Carson, "Dutch and Swedish Settlements on the Delaware," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1909. Pavonia (Wikipedia) Zwaanendael Colony (Wikipedia)

While the first English Civil War rages, Leonard Calvert returns to the Chesapeake in September 1644, after having been away for a bit more than a year. He carries commissions from Charles I to seize "London" assets in Virginia and collect a duty on tobacco for the Crown. The Royalists who run the royal colony of Virginia refuse to support Calvert and their king because they are too busy fighting the Powhatans to divide their own ranks. Meanwhile, Richard Ingle and his ship Reformation return to the Chesapeake, where he learns that Leonard Calvert has threatened to hang him if he comes to Maryland. Ingle, however, bears a letter of marque from Parliament that he interprets as a license to steal from Catholics. So, naturally, this means war. A comical war, to be sure, and almost bloodless except for three Jesuits who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. But a war nonetheless. Ingle recruits some "rascally fellows," and essentially conquers Maryland with the support of the colony's Protestants. Leonard Calvert flees, and the Protestants install their own government at St. Mary's City. To all appearances, the Calverts had been expelled from Maryland. All appearances, it would turn out, would be deceiving. The Calverts would recover Maryland within 18 months, and Ingle would die a pauper. And so it is that the University of Maryland football team bears the Calvert family crest on its helmets. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode The "Plundering Time" of Maryland Part 1 Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646 Podcast: Rejects and Revolutionaries, “English Civil War 7: The Plundering Time”

This is the first of two episodes that recounts Maryland's "Plundering Time," when the English Civil War spilled into the Chesapeake. Protestants would rebel against Catholics, and Richard Ingle, a Protestant merchant-trader who had been the principal commercial link between the early Maryland colony and England, would loot the colony and almost put an end to the Calverts' rule there. This episode is the prelude to that ugly and also comical moment. It was, ultimately, a farce of impulsivity and ego that almost redrew the map of the future United States. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode That Time Maryland and Virginia Went to War Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646 Manfred Jonas, “The Claiborne-Calvert Controversy: An Episode in the Colonization of North America,” Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien, 1966. First English Civil War (Wikipedia) Podcast: Rejects and Revolutionaries, "English Civil War 7: The Plundering Time"

This episode will be easier to follow if you have recently listened to our previous Thanksgiving Sidebar, "Notes on Thanksgiving." Thanksgiving is less historically genuine than many Americans were led to believe.  The Thanksgiving story, as it was long taught in school, was constructed to achieve a purpose: the unification of an increasingly diverse country around a national story. It worked incredibly well. Italians, Irish, eastern Europeans, and other immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century learned a version of our national origin story in a celebration of community that brought the country together when it very much needed it. But that success came at a price – it could and did alienate at least some of our people who were descended from North America’s indigenous peoples, including especially tribes of New England.  The success of Thanksgiving in binding together an ever more diverse country and the alienation of people who do not celebrate the European settlement of North America is the story of this episode. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Sidebar: Notes on Thanksgiving (Encore Presentation) Elizabeth Pleck, "The Making of the Domestic Occasion: The History of Thanksgiving in the United States," Journal of Social History, Summer 1999. Jana Weiss, "The National Day of Mourning: Thanksgiving, Civil Religion, and American Indians," Amerikastudien / American Studies, 2018. Christopher Hitchens, "The Turkey Has Landed," The Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2005. Freedom from Want The Mayflower Compact Occupation of Alcatraz National Day of Mourning Red Power Movement The Nation, "Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?" James Lee West, "A Native American Reflects on Thanksgiving"