The History of the Americans

This factoid-rich episode is a major rewriting of one of the earliest and most popular episodes of the podcast, Introduction to the Columbian Exchange, which originally aired on February 12, 2021 and then again in a revised form as episode #166 on October 11, 2024. This version includes lots of new aspects of the Columbian Exchange, and more recent scholarship on several of the topics discussed in the old episodes.

The supercontinent known as Pangaea (Pangea if you are reading most American textbooks) began to split apart around 200 million years ago, near the beginning of the dinosaur era, and the new Atlantic Ocean entirely divided the eastern and western hemispheres about 75 million years ago. Biological life on the two continents probably began evolving separately about 100 million years ago.

That biological diversity enabled by the breaking up of Pangaea has been an enormous boon for homo sapiens as a species in the more than five centuries since October 12, 1492, and also the cause of much suffering for individual humans in both the Americas and the Old World, Africa particularly.

I learned a lot in the rewriting of this – such as the correct scholarly spelling for the name of the supercontinent of old is “Pangaea” – and I hope you do too.

And listen to the end for the controversial takes!

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#166 Introduction to the Columbian Exchange (Revised)

Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)

Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition

Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650

Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas”

Rodrigo Barquera and others, “Ancient genomes reveal a deep history of Treponema pallidum in the Americas,” Nature, December 18, 2024 (subscription required).

Jorge R. Díaz-Valderrama and others, “The History of Cacao and Its Diseases in the Americas,” Phytopathology, September 14, 2020.

It is the 1670s. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, having returned from exploring south of Lake Erie, made common cause with the flamboyant and visionary new governor of New France, Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac. Together they hatch a plan to get permission from Louis XIV to build a string of forts in the Great Lakes region and explore and settle the Mississippi River Valley. La Salle travels to France twice, and enlists the King’s first minister, the great Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to support a mission to find the mouth of the Mississippi so that France might establish a base there for the purpose of better harrassing Spain. Along the way La Salle builds a huge fort at the eastern end of Lake … Ontario, survives the second of five assassination attempts, and Frontenac demonstrates a great flair for diplomacy with the Iroquois.

Oh, and the Jesuits have it out for them.

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#217 Introduction to René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Anka Muhlstein, La Salle: Explorer of the North American Frontier

Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard, “Colbert, La Salle, and the Search for Empire,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2020.

It is time to get back to New France and the exploration of the middle of this beautiful country of ours. Our vehicle will René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, known to both his contemporaries and to history as “La Salle.” You’ve heard his name, especially if you live within driving distance of the Mississippi, but do you know what he actually did? This and the next few episodes tell La Salle’s remarkable story.

We are back in New France, along the St. Lawrence River, now in the 1660s. The episode begins with an introduction to the geopolitics of North America from the French perspective, then pivots to La Salle’s early life and first years in New France, where he had received a grant of land on roughly the site of Montreal’s international airport. Finally, we conclude with his first journey of discovery, an attempt – perhaps fulfilled – to discover the Ohio River, of which he had heard from Seneca Iroquois who wintered with him in 1668-69. This voyage mattered, because it might have established French claims to the Pittsburgh area, the ambiguity of which was, along with George Washington, the catalyst for the French and Indian War. Sadly, those claims were ambiguous because the French national archives had misplaced the relevant narratives, and they only resurfaced in the 19th century. Archivists matter!

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Anka Muhlstein, La Salle: Explorer of the North American Frontier

Robert S. Weddle, “Tarnished Hero: A La Salle Overview,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Oct. 2009.

Richard Gross, “La Salle’s Claim and the Ohio River Valley,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Spring 2020.

It is the spring of 1681. The “exclusion crisis,” an insurgency in Parliament proposing to exclude the king’s brother, James, Duke of York, from the line of succession, was reaching its climax. Even so, on March 4 King Charles II found time to grant William Penn a vast territory extending from the west bank of the Delaware River to a longitude equal to the then western border of Maryland. It was now William Penn’s role, as sole proprietor of Pennsylvania, to fill it up with people. He would do a remarkable job, especially under the challenging circumstances, relying heavily on his … pen. Along the way he would write a practical and moral defense of English colonialism at a time when many of the movers and shakers in London were arguing against it.

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life

Jean R. Soderlund (Editor), William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History

Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History

Richard S. Dunn, “William Penn and the Selling of Pennsylvania, 1681-1685,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Oct. 14, 1983

With Sir William Penn’s passing in 1671, and his deathbed admonition that his son stay true to himself, young William Penn was both financially independent and liberated from worrying that his own activism on behalf of the Quakers would hurt his family. William now owned lands that generated income of around 2000 pounds a year, or roughly the wages of 100 laborers of the time.

Penn was a pious son of privilege who used his social, material, and intellectual advantages to advance his family’s business interests and the interests of Quakers, both as individuals and as a religious community. He would get tossed in jail at least once more for his religion, and he would use that time writing defenses of the Quakers and their theology that irritated the established church and its supporters to no end. By the second half of the 1670s he had written more than fifty books and pamphlets on religion and political theory, most of which would vex the English elites in general and local authorities in specific cases.

And, yet, by 1681 Penn would persuade King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York, to give him, as sole proprietor, an area of 34 million acres, the last land on the eastern seaboard of North America controlled by England.

How the heck did that happen?

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#212 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 1

#214 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 2: Penn on Trial

#210 The Quakers Invade West New Jersey

Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life

Jean R. Soderlund (Editor), William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History

Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History

William Penn returned from Ireland in August 1670, and soon found himself arrested, along with fellow Quaker William Mead, for preaching to a crowd in public in violation of “the common law,” an ambiguity that would play out during their momentous trial. The trial would end in their acquittal, notwithstanding egregious intimidation of the jury by the judge, the Lord Mayor Sir Samuel Starling. Among other exciting moments, Starling threw the principled foreman of the jury, Edward Bushel, in jail. Bushel’s suit for a writ of habeas corpus would lead to a verdict that established an inviolate principle in Anglo-American law, that judges may not intimidate juries.

Penn and Mead were acquitted under the glare of remarkable publicity for the day, and the case would establish Penn as a nationally famous advocate for Dissenting religion.

After his acquittal, Penn finally made it home to visit his dying father, Sir William Penn, with whom he reconciled in a poignant father-son moment.

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#212 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 1

#208 What You Need to Know About English Politics in the 1680s 1: The Exclusion Crisis

Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life

Julius J. Marke, “The Trial of William Penn,” Litigation, Fall 1979.

Robert and Marilyn Aitken, “Bushell’s Case,” Litigation, Winter 2010.

The purpose of this episode is very simple: If you find yourself driving in your car with others this weekend (or on some future Fourth of July) and you and your passengers – perhaps they are your children and now they are a captive audience at your mercy – might enjoy hearing the Declaration of Independence and knowing just a little bit about the heroic signers of it, play this episode!

For those of you too down-to-earth to say “semiquincentennial,” happy 250th Fourth everybody, and please pass this around to anybody who you think might be interested in it.

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The Declaration of Independence (National Archives transcription)

[Announcement: From November 4 through 6, 2026, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is hosting its inaugural Soapbox free speech conference in Philadelphia, the city where so many of America’s defining debates over liberty began. I and the wife of the pod will be there and would love to hoist one with listeners of the History of the Americans. More compellingly, there will be several far more famous podcasters for whom free speech is an important value. Were he able to attend, William Penn would be there too, probably as a keynote speaker.

Soapbox will bring together leading writers, comedians, scholars, and others for three days of lively debate and thought-provoking conversations about free expression, history, law, culture, and current events. Learn more and grab early-bird tickets before July 4 at http://soapbox.fire.org/, link in the episode notes. Listeners of The History of the Americans Podcast can use promo code HISTORY in all caps to save an additional $50 on their tickets. I hope to see you there.]

This episode is about William Penn, founder of three American colonies, before he founded them. The best way to describe the story to be told here is with a quotation from David Hackett Fischer, in his book Albion’s Seed:

[The] “Delaware culture area” developed not by some random process of social selection, but from the conscious will and purpose of its Quaker founders. The leading role was played by one founder in particular, William Penn, who served Pennsylvania, Delaware, and also West Jersey as lawgiver, social planner, organizer, tireless promoter, and regulator of the immigration process. The cultural history of this region cannot be understood without knowing something about the mind and character of this extraordinary man.

William Penn was a bundle of paradoxes – an admiral’s son who became a pacifist, an undergraduate at Oxford’s Christ Church who became a pious Quaker, a member of Lincoln’s Inn who became an advocate of arbitration, a Fellow of the Royal Society who despised pedantry, a man of property who devoted himself to the welfare of the poor, a polished courtier who preferred the plain style, a friend of kings who became a radical Whig, and an English gentlemen who became one of Christianity’s great spiritual leaders.

This episode and the next will explore the mind and character “of this extraordinary man.”

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Primary references for this episode

David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America

Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life

Richard Bell, Rick to his friends and podcast hosts, is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He is the author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. His new book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, published by Penguin, recently won the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award.

The wife of the pod and I saw Rick speak to a small group in Austin in the beginning of April, and his talk stimulated me to buy and read his new and very timely book on the global history of the American Revolution. I enjoyed it very much, insofar as it is packed with the sort of interesting stories that are the stock-in-trade of the History of the Americans Podcast, and of course recommend that yourun out and buy it!

In our conversation we discuss two of the fourteen chapters in the book, one on the grassroots antiwar movement that emerged in Great Britain early in the war, and the other on Spain’s remarkable contribution to the ultimate patriot victory. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I had fun doing it.

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This is the story of the division of the colony of New Jersey into East New Jersey and West New Jersey, and the bizarre legal and financial machinations that resulted ultimately in the settlement of the region by Quakers in the second half of the 1670s. Fundamentally, those machinations were between two somewhat disreputable Quakers, John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge. Their longstanding quarrel would threaten to spill out into non-Quaker circles, so William Penn intervened to arbitrate between them and save the Friends from embarrassment. It was this intervention that would first involve Penn in North American colonization, and just a few years down the road would result in the founding of Pennsylvania.

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Useful prerequisite episodes:

#167 Ohhhh! Whaddabout New Jersey?

#171 New Jersey Is Revolting!

Primary references for this episode

John E. Pomfret, The Province Of West New Jersey 1609-1702 (Out of print – best found in libraries)

The concessions and agreements of the proprietors, freeholders and inhabitants of the province of West New-Jersey, in America

Introduction to and summary of the West Jersey Concessions

Quintipartite Deed

The "glorious revolution" of 1688-89 would change the terms of the English monarchy, and reverberate through American history.

Heading as we are into the 1680s on the timeline of the History of the Americans, it will be useful for all of us to know a few basic things about English politics in the 1680s, including especially the “exclusion crisis” of 1679-1681 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Both had a big impact on our own history.

Along the way we learn more about John Locke, how the acquittal of William Penn transformed the law in England and ultimately the United States, the actual conspiracy between the English King Charles II and Louis XIV of France, the origin of the words "Tory" and "Whig" at the moment that the English invented political parties, the role of infant mortality in the politics of a monarchy, and the awful, but hilarious, "Popish Plot" conspiracy theory that shaped English politics in 1679-81.

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689

The Popish Plot (Wikipedia entry, which goes much deeper than the podcast)

Optional prerequisite episode: #146 Oliver’s Army: What You Need to Know About the English Civil Wars

Going down a rabbit hole while learning about the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, I started reading about something I have wondered about – how and when did the Indians of the American West acquire horses and learn to use them rather than eat them? The answer is not what you think, or at least not what I thought before I did this work.

The story begins with the discovery of silver in Mexico, which I did not see coming.

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Primary references for this episode

William Taylor, et. al., "Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies," Science, 30 March 2023.

Jack D. Forbes, "The Appearance of the Mounted Indian in Northern Mexico and the Southwest, to 1680," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Summer, 1959.

It is August, 1680 in New Mexico. The rebelling Pueblo Indians have sprung their ambush and quickly killed 400 Spaniards. About 2500 survivors have concentrated in two groups, at the government buildings in Santa Fe, and 70 miles to the south at Isleta Pueblo. Each has reason to believe that everybody else has died, and they are alone. The Indians beseige Santa Fe, but Governor Antonio de Otermín leads a successful defense. Still, they are isolated and out of food, and determine to retreat to the recently established mission at El Paso. The southern group, under Lieutenant Garcia at Isleta, make the same decision. This is the history of that harrowing retreat, another amazing story of survival in the European settlement of today's United States.

It is also the only time in American history that rebelling indigenous peoples entirely expelled an established European settlement from their territory. The Spaniards would, of course, eventually reconquer New Mexico, but not until 1692.

The settlement of the New Mexican refugees at El Paso would make it - for the moment - the third most populous settlement of Europeans in North America, and the functional beginning of the eventual New Spanish territory, Mexican state, Republic, and American State of Texas.

Maps of the Pueblo Revolt

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

John L. Kessell, Pueblos, Spaniards, and the Kingdom of New Mexico

Charles Wilson Hackett, “The Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico in 1680,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, October 1911.

Charles Wilson Hackett, "The Retreat of the Spaniards from New Mexico in 1680, and the Beginnings of El Paso, I," The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, October 1912.

Charles Wilson Hackett, "The Retreat of the Spaniards from New Mexico in 1680, and the Beginnings of El Paso, II," The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, January 1913.

In August 1680, an alliance of Puebloan peoples, led by a mysterious religious man named Po'pay (also spelled Popé), launched a surprise attack that forced the Spanish entirely out of New Mexico 82 years after they had first settled it. Po'pay’s rebellion would combine elements that will remind longstanding listeners of King Philip’s War in New England and Opechancanough’s surprise attack in Virginia in March 1622. Unlike the Wampanoags and the Pamunkeys, however, Po'pay would achieve his war aims.

Along the way we examine the causes of the revolt, the preparations for the ambush, and the terrible first days setting up the siege of Santa Fe, which will be taken up next time.

Maps of the Pueblo Revolt

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#98 A Kingdom of God on the Rio Grande

Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

John L. Kessell, Pueblos, Spaniards, and the Kingdom of New Mexico

Charles Wilson Hackett, "The Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico in 1680," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, October 1911.

Herbert E. Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest

Andrew L. Knaut, The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

David Roberts, The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards

In 1677, the longtime residents of the old and remote county of Albemarle in northern Carolina, a collection of cranks and dissidents who had fled from Maryland and Virginia and were used to living free of interference from the Carolina proprietors and the Crown's tax collectors, revolted against new attempts to collect duties on tobacco. Quite astonishingly, they succeeded! And not without some history comedy along the way.

In the long history of the Americans, it is easy to ignore Culpeper’s Rebellion. Virtually all surveys of American history do. Albemarle was small, a literal backwater, and not even the most important part of Carolina. Historians of North Carolina, however, see it as a truer reflection of the American Revolution, a century later, than the other colonial upheavals of the 1670s. The Albemarle rebels were an early example, in their democratic tax-avoiding free-trading don’t-tread-on-me resistance, of ideas that would later be taken up throughout English North America.

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#158 The Free County of Albemarle

#160 The Official Founding of North Carolina

Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729

Noeleen McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713

Hugh F. Rankin, Upheaval in Albemarle: the Story of Culpeper's Rebellion, 1675-1689

Twenty-five year-old bookseller Henry Knox, his 19 year-old brother Will, and teamsters led by John Becker, Sr., move a long "noble train" of 59 pieces of salvaged artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Cambridge. The route crossed frozen rivers and the not-dreamlike Berkshire Mountains under unbelievably arduous conditions. As word spread, crowds of Americans would turn out to cheer them on, and serve them cider and whiskey.

The artillery, when hoisted to the commanding heights of Dorchester above Boston, would drive the British from their long occupation of that city, and they would never return.

It is a story of initiative, ingenuity, tenacity, survival, and charismatic leadership, and was perhaps the first miracle of many that would bless the American Revolution.

Map of the Noble Train's route (not reflecting all the river crossings discussed in the episode):

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

William Hazelgrove, Henry Knox’s Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller’s Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution

Thomas M. Campeau, Major, U.S. Army, “The Noble Train of Artillery: A Study Comparison of Current Doctrinal Concepts of the Mission Command Philosophy in History.” (Master’s thesis, pdf)

Exactly 250 years ago, a rotund twenty-five year-old Boston bookseller named Henry Knox was riding his horse between Springfield and Worcester Massachusetts, on his way to George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge. Washington’s ragtag, ill-equipped Continental Army had kept the British garrison under General Thomas Gage bottled up in Boston and Charlestown since the summer of 1675.

Washington had a whole load of problems, including insufficient arms for his men, many with expiring enlistments that threatened to shrink his force by half or more. He also had almost no artillery, just 12 small cannon that Henry Knox, among others, had learned to operate while training with the local militia.

Geographically, the Boston of that era was essentially a bubble of land connected to the mainland by an incredibly narrow neck at Roxbury. Two hills loomed over the city from across the water – Breed’s Hill in Charlestown to Boston’s north, which the British had captured at great cost in the summer, and Dorchester Heights, to Boston’s south, which the British had not captured.

This is why it was very important – world historically important – that Henry Knox, on that day exactly 250 years ago, was commanding a convoy of artillery comprising 58 pieces and weighing more than 60 tons, pulled on purpose-built sleds by teams of oxen and horses all the way from Fort Ticonderoga, 300 miles away, over rivers and the Berkshires, during the coldest winter in memory. Within just a few days those guns would be in Cambridge, and not long after that, on the sixth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, would be entrenched on Dorchester Heights and open fire on the city and ships below. Henry Knox’s big guns would drive the British from Boston, for good.

The tale of that “noble train” of artillery, as Knox famously referred to it, is one of the more astonishing stories of military innovation, indefatigable perseverance, and inspired leadership in a war that had more than its share of such moments. It was also among the most important, because it came at a desperate period when the Americans needed a victory or the entire project of the Revolution might have fallen apart.

Map of Boston in 1775:

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

William Hazelgrove, Henry Knox's Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller's Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution

Thomas M. Campeau, Major, U.S. Army, "The Noble Train of Artillery: A Study Comparison of Current Doctrinal Concepts of the Mission Command Philosophy in History." (Master's thesis, pdf)

Alexander C. Flick, "General Henry Knox's Ticonderoga Expedition," The Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association, April 1928.

In the last episode on the Timeline, “Bacon’s Aftermath 1: Diplomacy and Conspiracy 1677-1685,” we looked at the political and geopolitical aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion. This time we tackle the changes inside Virginia’s society and economy in the years following Bacon’s Rebellion, some of which may have been because of the Rebellion, and others of which probably would have happened anyway.

The first half of the episode looks at the governorship of Thomas, Lord Culpeper, and his deft efforts to give effect to the Crown's desire “to substitute the benevolent despotism of the king for the rapacious local despotism that had brought on one rebellion and threatened to bring on another.” In the second half, we consider the rise of Black slavery in Virginia and the decline of indentured servitude in the quarter century following Bacon's Rebellion, the economic foundations of the shift, and the untended and somewhat surprising social consequence that by the early 18th century Virginia was a much more stable society than it had been when it had depended on English indentured servants.

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Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom

John C. Coombs, "The Phases of Conversion: A New Chronology for the Rise of Slavery in Early Virginia," The William and Mary Quarterly, July 2011.

"An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves" (Virginia, 1705)

Matthew Restall is an historian and author of over forty books, focusing on the Spanish Conquest era in the Americas; on Aztec and Maya history; on the history of colonial Mesoamerica, primarily Yucatan but including Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize; on the historical African diaspora in the Americas; and on the history of popular music. Matthew is most recently the author of The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus, the topic of and inspiration for this conversation. Finally, he is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, at Pennsylvania State University.

We discussed the phenomenon of “Columbiana,” the vast mythology that has befogged the history and biography of Christopher Columbus, the man, almost entirely for purposes that he himself would not have understood. His book, which I quite recommend, addresses nine such “lives” and the historical mysteries around them. We touch on the four of those that I thought would most appeal to longstanding and attentive listeners – his early life and his pitching for the funding for the “Enterprise of the Indies” – which are the first two lives, and the curious resurrection of Columbus in the 19th century as the founding “grandfather” of the United States, followed by his last “life” – so far – as the great hero of Italian-Americans. This last leads to a discussion of the perception of Columbus today. Along the way we go down numerous rabbit holes, including that there is, even today, a direct descendant of Columbus who bears the title "Admiral of the Ocean Sea."

Other relevant links

Matthew Restall, The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus

History Impossible Podcast, "War for the Frontiers of History and America (w/ Jack Henneman of The History of the Americans)": Apple and Spotify

Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus

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