Getting Hammered®

n February of 1776, John Adams has taken one of many hard trips from Braintree, Mass. to Philadelphia to rejoin the Continental Congress. In this short letter to his wife, he tells of his travels, his worries, and his hopes for the colonies and their future.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While George Washington was doing military work, a small group of leaders including Ben Franklin and John Jay were on the Committee of Secret Correspondence, which did diplomatic and foreign intelligence work in the service of the American cause. In this missive, Ben Franklin recaps the failed Canada campaign Washington referenced to John Hancock and offers an account of a Canadian visitor to Congress, who sounds like an intelligence asset, and his report on political reasons the campaign isn't working in Canada and how it could be helped. Turns out, it never did catch on north of the border.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In February of 1776, John Adams has taken one of many hard trips from Braintree, Mass. to Philadelphia to rejoin the Continental Congress. In this short letter to his wife, he tells of his travels, his worries, and his hopes for the colonies and their future.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Feb. 9. 1776, George Washington sounds like he's had it up to here with the short deployments of Continental Army soldiers. Americans had philosophical reasons for keeping citizen soldiers on short time, viewing a standing army with suspicion. But in this correspondence, Washington politely but insistently lays out the many problems he's had with them. The Continental Army would later move to 1-3 year stints as the war went on.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices