The History of the Americans

Who were the Pilgrims, and how was it that they settled in the Netherlands, only to sail on the Mayflower for the lower Hudson River? And having done that, what was it like on board, and how was it t...

This episode starts at the end of the story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth by looking at the famous “Mayflower Compact,” and how Americans have spoken and written about it for more than 200 years. Was i...

This year’s Independence Day “Sidebar” episode is about 18 year-old Daniel Webster’s first public speech, on the 4th of July, 1800, in front of an audience of good citizens in Hanover, New Hampshire. ...

This episode examines the arrival of the first Africans – Angolans, specifically – in English North America on a privateer called the White Lion. We look at the much-debated status of the new arrival...

The year 1619 is a famous one in the history of Virginia. There were two big moments — the introduction of the “Great Charter,” which brought representative government to the future United States for...

This episode looks at the kidnapping of Squanto – Tisquantum – in 1614, along with 26 other Wampanoags, in the context of the extraordinarily robust trade between northern Europeans and the tribes alo...

It is 1614. John Smith of Jamestown fame is now looking for a new gig, and he sets his gimlet eye on the northeast coast of North America. He travels the coast in a small boat, and by 1616 has produc...

On May 30, 1931, the Saturday after Memorial Day, the beleaguered President Herbert Hoover addressed a crowd of 20,000 people under sweltering heat at Valley Forge. This episode looks at that speech ...

We are on the road to Plymouth. There are several strands that weave together in 1620, when the Pilgrims on the Mayflower land at an abandoned Indian village known as Patuxet, at a site John Smith ha...

Samuel de Champlain returns to New France in 1615, and leads an alliance of Huron and Algonquin tribes into western New York State to attack Onondaga, the heavily fortified heart of Iroquois territory...