NYC: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." 7/8: 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
⏱️ 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.”
1776 EVACUATING FROM LONG ISLAND
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a CVS, I on the World. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Benjamin Carver |
| 0:08.9 | Bookin College of the Coney Graduate Center, his new book The Great New York Fire of 1776, a lost story of the American |
| 0:16.4 | Revolution. |
| 0:17.4 | This is like an inquiry hundreds of years later. |
| 0:20.6 | All the principals, all their children, all the looking at facts that can be gathered to ask accident or design in the burning of a city where I |
| 0:37.7 | note as the professor did this city was a leading part of the trade for the North Atlantic. |
| 0:44.7 | Prospering. |
| 0:46.0 | Boston and Philadelphia, identified as rebel cities, |
| 0:49.7 | were envious of New York, and men who know New England were the Continental Army, |
| 0:56.4 | men in Philadelphia where the Congress were responsible for the raising |
| 1:01.9 | of the Pennsylvania regiments that will, and Maryland regiments |
| 1:05.1 | that will be responsible for fighting the war as it goes forward. |
| 1:09.3 | We're inquiring about who ordered this, if it was ordered and what to make of the accusations afterwards |
| 1:18.4 | that continue. |
| 1:19.8 | Three captains and this helps a deal because the professor identifies these men and their |
| 1:26.4 | fates as not persuasive, it's all circumstantial. |
| 1:32.1 | Unless you get a video of somebody setting a match |
| 1:34.3 | to Trinity Church you're not going to get anything stronger than circumstantial. |
| 1:40.1 | We begin with Captain Amos Fellows. |
| 1:43.2 | He is jailed immediately afterwards, and he suffers grievously in jail. |
| 1:50.4 | Many of the prisoners who were on either prison barges or in jails afterwards died of disease. |
| 1:56.7 | Who was Amos Fellows and how does he contribute or puzzle us to this day, Professor. |
... |
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