clay451

I mentioned last episode that the only other Founding Father who could really rival John Adam’s resume was Thomas Jefferson.  And you could kind of say that everything Adams did, Jefferson did too, and did it, well, better. Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com

Ok, we are back to the new world, after lingering in France for more than 50 years, so we’ve gone from France to America, and we’ve gone back in time just a bit, so we can catch up on what’s been happening in America while France was enjoying a quick Reign of Terror.  When we … Read more

Well, we’re still in France. In this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the most famous Frenchmen ever, Napoleon Bonaparte.  But I should start by pointing out that Napoleon, who eventually will become the Emperor of France, was not actually, well, French.  He was Corsican.  He was born on the Island of Corsica, … Read more

Well, last episode I tried to summarize the French Revolution, and I realized that there is no way to cover it in just one podcast episode, so here we are in part 2.  So in this episode, we’re going to look at the part of the French Revolution that is known as the Reign of … Read more

So in the New World, there’s a new country, with a new Constitution and a new central government.  This had never happened before, it was an astounding thing in world history, and that fact was not lost on the people of the Old World.  People all over Europe were watching what happened in America with … Read more

Well, you probably guessed from the title of the episode what this one is about.  It’s about the US Constitution, which starts with the amazing line, ‘We, the people.’  And though the US Constitution is being ignored and circumvented at many levels by our government today, it is still the very best design of a … Read more

Well, the colonists have gone and done it.  They have declared themselves independent of Great Britain, who has basically laughed off the Declaration of Independence, and is now ramping up their military to go whip those darn colonists back into line.   And like I said a couple of episodes ago, Great Britain was the … Read more

Ok, last episode, I talked about how the Declaration of Independence came to be drafted, and I decided that it was really such an important document that I needed to take an extra episode to explain some of the important ideas within the document, and how they shaped our modern world.   I should start … Read more

Well, it’s 1776.  Things are about to happen.  We just had the Boston tea party, Patrick Henry’s speech, and the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill.   The British have shelled and burned several colonial towns, including Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia.  These are their own colonies, and they have … Read more

At the end of the last episode, we left colonial Boston chafing under British military rule.  Now Boston was a big port, a very important commercial center of New England, but it wasn’t all of New England, and it wasn’t even a very big city.  In fact, Boston, at the time, was entirely on one … Read more