NYC: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." 6/8: 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
🗓️ 18 March 2024
⏱️ 8 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.”
1800 BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Benjamin Karb. |
| 0:27.0 | Brooklyn College, Coney Graduate Center, but most importantly, the author of the new book The Great Fire of 1776. The burning of New York between |
| 0:35.3 | September 20th and September 21st 1776, Washington has now retreated to the |
| 0:40.9 | north of the city. There will be battles fought over these next weeks. |
| 0:44.8 | Washington loses every battle and he wins the war. That's a story we tell ourselves |
| 0:49.8 | 250 years later. It does, however, do a deal to explain what is now about to begin, which |
| 0:56.3 | we call here in the 21st century information war. This is the wonderful part of your book, |
| 1:01.6 | professor, without our understanding of information This is the wonderful part of your book, Professor. |
| 1:02.8 | Without our understanding of information war, |
| 1:05.6 | we might have ended with the unresolved aspect |
| 1:09.0 | of the fire, who died, who was hanged, |
| 1:12.0 | and that's all very sad and tragic |
| 1:14.0 | but the information war seems to have been a focus of major names right away. |
| 1:19.0 | George Washington knows that he can be accused of this but most importantly to me |
| 1:25.0 | Robert Morris and Benjamin Franklin what were they in the information war that |
| 1:31.0 | followed? Yeah they are members of a congressional committee called the Committee of Secret Correspondence. |
| 1:37.0 | One of their major duties was that they were in touch with their emissaries in France, you know, trying to secure aid of various kinds |
| 1:46.9 | from potential allies in Europe. |
| 1:50.1 | And so they write an important letter to their emissary, Silas Dean, updating him on a variety of pieces of news, |
| 1:55.7 | but they mention the fire and they say, you know, and they're basically saying to him, hey, |
| 2:00.3 | make sure you get the message out that even though the British are accusing us of |
| 2:03.6 | having done this that there is no way that we could have done it and that in fact |
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