Stratford Mail

The Last Adieu

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2122197/fan_mail/new] 250 years ago today a fuse was lit in Virginia, where a rogue assembly approved a set of earth-shaking instructions for its delegates in the Continental Congress. The detonation took time, time to traverse the miles from Williamsburg to Philadelphia, time to persuade and prepare the people and their representatives to risk a new political adventure, and time to drag the holdouts across the line. Join us this month on Stratford Mail as we recall the last adieu to the British Crown and count down to the 250th anniversary of Virginia and Richard Henry Lee’s resolution on independence.    To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate [https://www.stratfordhall.org/donate/], and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail. Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org [https://stratfordmail.org/], for enhanced content.

Choice Spirits

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2122197/fan_mail/new] 260 years ago, a merchant on the banks of the Rappahannock River threatened to undermine strategic non-compliance with the Stamp Act. He needed stamped paper to offload a cargo of perishable grain. He intended only to obey the law. Many in the community viewed that law as a violation of their constitutional rights and liberty. The Lee brothers stepped forward to express and enforce the will of the community on this recalcitrant merchant. Organizing a heavily armed private militia, the Lees rode on Hobbs Hole and made a public example of the man. Richard Henry Lee drafted the manifesto of this militia, the Leedstown Resolves, the first organized, armed, and publicly signed association of resistance in the American colonies and a founding document of our enduring American experiment.   To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate [https://www.stratfordhall.org/donate/], and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail. Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org [https://stratfordmail.org/], for enhanced content.

Take Nobody's Word

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2122197/fan_mail/new] In 1662, the Royal Society [https://royalsociety.org/] of London adopted a motto that promised a revolution: Nullius in verba [https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-january-2024/the-humanity-of-horace/]—or, on the word of no one. It was a bold renunciation of authority in favor of evidence, yet behind this polished veneer of the Enlightenment lay a messier reality marked by class-coded science and imperial gatekeeping. Even as Society president Sir Isaac Newton [https://www.newton.ac.uk/about/isaac-newton/] modeled dispassionate inquiry, the institution came to operate as a passionate apparatus for elite privilege and British expansion. Fellowship in the Society opened channels into an international fraternity of gentlemen-scientists and into the inner sanctums of British imperial power. As crisis ripened between Britain and its North American colonies, America’s first celebrity leaned on this scientific brotherhood to achieve political reform, while another American patriot rejected it as collusion with the imperial fist.     To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate [https://www.stratfordhall.org/donate/], and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail. Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org [https://stratfordmail.org/], for enhanced content.

From Compulsion, Nothing

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2122197/fan_mail/new] In October 1774, a congressional committee with Richard Henry Lee at the helm drafted a Petition to the King. The petition invited “royal attention” to colonial grievances in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the mounting crisis. That petition died in Parliament, starved of attention, but it wasn’t the last formal attempt by the Continental Congress to seek conciliation with the mother country. Another attempt in the summer of 1775, milder in tone, and with the Congress divided on the weight and wisdom of the measure, found its way to Lord Dartmouth. Tune in this month to hear the tale of the so-called Olive Branch Petition, a last-ditch diplomatic overture that failed to re-leash the dogs of war, leaving the path to independence wide open. Listen now to From Compulsion, Nothing. To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate [https://www.stratfordhall.org/donate/], and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail. Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org [https://stratfordmail.org/], for enhanced content.

Wounds Too Deep

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2122197/fan_mail/new] 17 June 1775. The redoubt fortifying Breed’s Hill–not terribly far from the taller Bunker’s Hill–proved permeable to the advancing waves of better trained, better equipped British regulars. The British took Breed’s Hill, but paid a high price in men and perhaps an even higher price in emboldening colonial militia, who inflicted more than double the losses they sustained. ‘Bunker Hill’ was a point of no return for the colonies and Great Britain, but has often been returned to in memory and memorialization, typically as an opportunity for rededication to the ideals embodied in the colonists’ will to fight at Breed’s Hill. The legacy of ‘Bunker Hill’ was soon hammered out in letters, poetry, and art that mingled achievement and loss, an alloy perfected in the exaltation of the “godlike” hero-martyr Dr. General Joseph Warren.    Listen now to Wounds Too Deep!            To support Stratford Mail or donate to Stratford Hall, please navigate to www.stratfordhall.org/donate [https://www.stratfordhall.org/donate/], and let them know in the comment section you wish to support Stratford Mail. Don't you dare forget to follow Stratford Mail, and visit us at Stratford Hall Historic Preserve! Check out our standalone website, StratfordMail.org [https://stratfordmail.org/], for enhanced content.