In this episode, John discusses how the War of 1812 continued and ultimately came to a conclusion. John talks about the campaigns of 1813 and the British offensives of 1814, how things continued to linger in a position of stalemate and how the U.S. managed to survive despite a serious financial crisis and the capital city of Washington D.C. being burned to the ground by the British. John covers the American triumphs at Fort McHenry and Lake Champlain, as well the resounding victory of the United States against British forces at the Battle of New Orleans that actually took place after the war was technically over!

Also in this episode, John talks about the revolt of the Federalists against the war and how it manifested in the Hartford Convention and why that proved to be political suicide for the Federalist Party. John goes through the peace negotiations and how the American representatives at the meetings in Ghent managed to get fairly favorable terms from Great Britain. Finally, John closes by discussing the legacy of the War of 1812 on the United States for the next generation of Americans who would continue to build the country up in its aftermath.

In this episode, John covers the first year of the War of 1812 and why it was such a struggle for the United States. John begins by talking about how the Madison Administration and the Congress prepared—or rather, did not—for the war against Great Britain. John discusses the state of the land and sea forces as the U.S. went to war, what Madison and Congress chose to do to prosecute the war and why they made the choices that they did.

John goes on to break down the planned invasion of Canada in 1812, how those who planned it and executed it conceived of it, why everyone was so convinced it would be so easy and why they were all very, very wrong. John goes through the war at sea as well, including surprising American victories against the vaunted British Royal Navy and the ways in which the blockade the British attempted to institute was ineffective. John further discusses the war on the frontier against Native Americans, and the severe difficulties that the U.S. had in financing the war. Finally, John discusses the Baltimore riots of 1812 and the presidential election that took place that year, in spite of the war.

In this episode, John explains how it is that the United States, less than 30 years after fighting Great Britain to become and independent country, wound up fighting the British once again. John begins by discussing James Madison as a presidential figure: how he became president, what he wanted to achieve and how he differed from the first three presidents. John also breaks down the issues that Madison had to deal with during his term that didn’t involve Great Britain and France messing with American shipping and trade, including the annexation of Florida, congressional and party factionalism and maintaining national unity in the face of growing sectionalism.

John then concentrates on the titanic struggle between Great Britain and France and how the United States found itself caught in the middle. He covers the ways that the U.S. tried to stand up for itself as a sovereign country, short of war, what was entailed in the so-called “restrictive regime”, and why it was so difficult for the American government to control its destiny in the early 1800s. Finally, John details how it was the U.S. came to declare war against Great Britain in the summer of 1812, despite the fact that the British really did not want war and attempted to placate the U.S. in a number of ways in the weeks and months before the declaration was issued.

In this episode, John stacks up the lives and careers of two of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. John goes into a lot of detail about the endeavors and accomplishments that make both men the legendary historical heavyweights that they are. He talks about their impact on American governance, American economics, American culture, American religion and the trajectory of American society from independence onward.

But John also deals with the many shortcomings and foibles of both men. John explains why he is more “Team Hamilton” than “Team Jefferson” because of they way that they each felt and wrote and talked about human nature, the purpose and operation of government and how they envisioned the future of the United States. John confesses why he sympathizes so much more with Hamilton than with Jefferson, despite both men being titans of American history who have a great many character flaws between them.

In this episode, John explores the mass religious movement in the United States referred to as The Second Great Awakening. John discusses the origin of this explosion of religious growth and diversification and why it was that it occurred in the aftermath of the American Revolution. John talks about how the movement defied expectations of the Founding Fathers, who anticipated a more secular society after the Revolution, and how it demonstrated another dichotomy between the elites and the “middling sort”, in much the same way the divergence between Federalists and Democratic Republicans did.

John also goes through some of the prominent leaders of the Second Great Awakening and how the leadership of this movement defied the typical leadership of religious sects up to this point. He covers the various ways in which the Second Great Awakening was a grassroots movement that eschewed the role of traditional clergy in the Congregationalist or Episcopalian denominations. Finally, John talks about the way that the Second Great Awakening reflected a larger movement for more democratic input in American institutions.

In this episode, John focuses on slavery in the United States in the years after the American Revolution. John investigates why it is that slavery did not die out, as most of the Founding Fathers expected it would in the 1780s and 1790s. John talks about the reasons why so many Americans believed that slavery was on its way out in America, not the least of which was the fact that slavery absolutely did not comport with the ideals on which the United States was founded as an independent country.

John explores the social, economic and political factors that led, not only to the continued existence of slavery in the U.S., but to the rapid and widespread expansion of slavery, despite many states having explicitly abolished the institution within their borders. The growth of the so-called “Cotton Kingdom”, the market revolution within the U.S. and the continuing evolution and development of industrialization both in America and in Europe were factors in slavery’s expansion. Finally, John discusses the immense power and wealth of the “Planter Aristocracy” of the Deep South and the ways in which the Haitian Revolution and Gabriel’s Rebellion led to a backlash against freeing slaves, which had picked up steam after the success of the American Revolution.

In this episode, John discusses the important events and decisions of Thomas Jefferson’s second term as the third U.S. President. John begins by talking about the Sally Hemings affair, which was actually brought to public attention in a very direct way for the first time about halfway through Jefferson’s first term. John explains how and why it was that Jefferson’s decades-long relationship with one of his slaves became a national story, why it matters when considering Jefferson’s legacy and how it was that Jefferson dealt with it all when it became a public scandal.

John then dives into Jefferson’s troubled second term, which went nowhere near as smoothly as his first term. John talks about the administration’s decision to break with Great Britain, even as the U.S. was benefiting tremendously from trade facilitated in part by the detente achieved with Britain through the Jay Treaty. John explains how things got ugly really fast for American ships and seamen in 1805, how the Napoleonic Wars figured into this situation and what the American government chose to do about it. Finally, John discusses how Jefferson decided to start a trade war with Britain and France, why it failed and what the results were from the American perspective.

In this episode, John reviews through what he has learned so far doing the show. John covers a variety of topics that he has gone into detail on in previous episodes, stretching all the way back to the very first How the Hell Did We Get Here. John starts out by talking about the Pre-Columbian period and the years between Columbus and the settlement of Jamestown, before discussing all the things he learned about the colonial period that he did not know before he started researching for the show, including the plantation of Ireland, how it affected English settlement of North America, Oliver Cromwell’s Western Design, and other lesser known historical tidbits.

John goes on to cover the American Revolution, the creation of the U.S. Constitution after the Articles of Confederation showed itself to be unworkable, and the ways that the experiment in democratic republicanism brought about unexpected problems and benefits. John Also talks about the first three presidential administrations and the things he learned that went on during those administrations. There’s also a pretty spicy assessment of the Trump administration before he gets to the history stuff, so don’t say we didn’t warn you!