COLD CASE OF ARSON 1776: 5/8: The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution by Benjamin L. Carp
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Great-New-York-Fire-1776/dp/0300246951
New York City, the strategic center of the Revolutionary War, was the most important place in North America in 1776. That summer, an unruly rebel army under George Washington repeatedly threatened to burn the city rather than let the British take it. Shortly after the Crown’s forces took New York City, much of it mysteriously burned to the ground.
This is the first book to fully explore the Great Fire of 1776 and why its origins remained a mystery even after the British investigated it in 1776 and 1783. Uncovering stories of espionage, terror, and radicalism, Benjamin L. Carp paints a vivid picture of the chaos, passions, and unresolved tragedies that define a historical moment we usually associate with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
1860 Hell Gate NY
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:10.4 | Great New York fire of 1776, continuing a lost story of the American Revolution |
| 0:16.3 | with Professor Benjamin L. Karp, Professor of History at Brooklyn College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. |
| 0:22.8 | New York City, between the 20th of September 1776 and the 21st of September in the morning of 1776, |
| 0:33.4 | is burned by unknown cause. Accident or design becomes the debate still not settled 250 years later. |
| 0:42.4 | To look at a map of lower Manhattan, which is what the urban environment then described 250 years ago, |
| 0:49.7 | the burning from Whitehall slip where the ferry is up the west side through St. Paul's Church |
| 0:55.3 | all the way up past Trinity Church all the way up past St. Paul's. |
| 1:02.4 | And the east side of the town at that point was saved by luck, by wind, or by the offices of the British soldiers, the Crown soldiers at |
| 1:15.3 | the time. The Crown fleet was birthed mostly in the Merchant District on the east side. |
| 1:22.6 | We are now the next day, and there have been a number of people detained as accused arsonists. I go to one in |
| 1:29.3 | particular who looks to describe the hectic events of the summer of 1776 in New York. His name |
| 1:37.0 | Richard Brown. Professor Karp reports him paroled after he was captured in the Battle of Long Island at the end of August, |
| 1:45.9 | several weeks before. And he was captured on the 21st of September and immediately accused |
| 1:52.2 | of being an arsonist and executed for setting fires. What led many people to be detained is that |
| 2:00.0 | they were carrying what were called combustibles. |
| 2:02.3 | What were those, Professor? |
| 2:03.6 | Thank you. |
| 2:05.1 | Combustibles could be a lot of things. |
| 2:06.8 | It could be matches, and at the time, matches could be over a foot long, you know, flammable |
| 2:13.9 | materials kind of wrapped in rags, not like the small, you know, books of matches that we use nowadays. |
| 2:21.1 | They could be wooden sticks with turpentine on the end of them. |
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