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In October 1774, a congressional committee with Richard Henry Lee at the helm drafted a Petition to the King. The petition invited “royal attention” to colonial grievances in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the mounting crisis. That petition died in Parliament, starved of attention, but it wasn’t the last formal attempt by the Continental Congress to seek conciliation with the mother country. Another attempt in the summer of 1775, milder in tone, and with the Congress divided on the weight and wisdom of the measure, found its way to Lord Dartmouth. Tune in this month to hear the tale of the so-called Olive Branch Petition, a last-ditch diplomatic overture that failed to re-leash the dogs of war, leaving the path to independence wide open. Listen now to From Compulsion, Nothing.

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17 June 1775. The redoubt fortifying Breed’s Hill–not terribly far from the taller Bunker’s Hill–proved permeable to the advancing waves of better trained, better equipped British regulars. The British took Breed’s Hill, but paid a high price in men and perhaps an even higher price in emboldening colonial militia, who inflicted more than double the losses they sustained. ‘Bunker Hill’ was a point of no return for the colonies and Great Britain, but has often been returned to in memory and memorialization, typically as an opportunity for rededication to the ideals embodied in the colonists’ will to fight at Breed’s Hill. The legacy of ‘Bunker Hill’ was soon hammered out in letters, poetry, and art that mingled achievement and loss, an alloy perfected in the exaltation of the “godlike” hero-martyr Dr. General Joseph Warren.

Listen now to Wounds Too Deep!

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British General Charles Cornwallis said it best: “The Rivers of Virginia are advantageous to an invading army.” In the spring of 1781, the Royal Navy and loyalist privateers raided along the major and minor waterways of the Chesapeake. The April 1781 log of the British war sloop HMS Savage offers a glimpse of the destruction wrought along the Potomac to warehouses, manufacturing facilities, homes and outbuildings, and it counts 50 or more enslaved Africans and African Americans who escaped slavery aboard the marauding British ships. In April 1781, Richard Henry Lee was home at Chantilly overlooking the Currioman Bay, and from there he monitored British activity in the Potomac. Taking charge of the undermanned and ill-equipped Westmoreland County militia, Richard Henry organized local efforts to repel what he called a “contemptible collection of Pirates” and “freebooters.” Those efforts included a skirmish on April 9 he later described as a "very warm engagement." Tune in to Stratford Mail season 3, episode 2: A Very Warm Engagement to hear tales of the Potomac Raids of 1781!

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