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The History of the Americans: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Jack Henneman
The history of the people who live in the United States, from the beginning.
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- 6 days ago31 min
#215 The Founding of Pennsylvania and Some Other Stuff
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? Subscribe to my Substack! Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans #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
- 3 weeks ago29 min
#214 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 2: Penn on Trial
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. Subscribe to my Substack! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans #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.
- 4 weeks ago41 min
#213 Sidebar: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence and Brief Notes on the Signers
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. Subscribe to my Substack! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans The Declaration of Independence (National Archives transcription)
- Jun 30, 202633 min
#212 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 1
[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 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.” Subscribe to my Substack! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Primary references for this episode David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life
- Jun 22, 20261h 4m
#211 Sidebar Conversation: Richard Bell on The American Revolution and the Fate of the World
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 you run 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. Subscribe to my Substack! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans
- Jun 1, 2026
#210 The Quakers Invade West New Jersey
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. Subscribe to my Substack! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans 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
- May 21, 202644 min
#209 What You Need to Know About English Politics in the 1680s 2: The Glorious Revolution
The "glorious revolution" of 1688-89 would change the terms of the English monarchy, and reverberate through American history.
- May 2, 202646 min
#208 What You Need to Know About English Politics in the 1680s 1: The Exclusion Crisis
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. Subscribe to my Substack! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans 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
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