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This one has a paywall. 5/mo. or 60/yr. gets you two BAD HISTORY posts per month and access to the archive, which has gotten big. "The Taking of Fort Ticonderoga: A Comedy" williamhogeland.substack.com/p/the-taking...

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Free preview on BAD HISTORY: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/john-adams...

Want to read a great artist, read Charlotte Bronte. Want to read a great artist ripping apart a lesser artist, read Charlotte Bronte on Jane Austen.

New prize for 2025: Best Article about Alice Monroe.

"This is a work of nonfiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."

What made thirteen clocks strike at once? As John Adams knew, they didn't--and the process that made them seem to, which he had a big hand in, was secretive, bullying, illegal, and had nothing to do with persuasion. For the 250th,read about it: www.amazon.com/Declaration-...

In the context of an article in the Times by Alissa Wilkinson, on whether AI will make documentary films untrustworthy, I think the answer is No, since they're not trustworthy anyway--unlocking this, on that: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/down-the-m...

Part Two, a free post on BAD HISTORY: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/did-the-ir...

The real question is why we'd want to blame the Iroquois for Franklin's loony-tune 1754 plan of union.

If you write books, or engage in any other art form, it's likely that you'll also need to have a job of some kind.

For your Thanksgiving fighting pleasure, no paywall: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/did-the-ir...

People argue about what finally brought the people of the thirteen colonies together, but my conclusion, from the story I tell in Declaration, is that nothing did. "A union of former colonies entered history in confusion about the nature and purpose of its independence."

Remembering DOGE: It's not that they failed to drain the swamp -- they are the swamp. Free post, from April: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/trumps-sha...

You all should read the piece but isn't that portrait invaluable, like Trump interviews from the '80s when he hadn't yet perfected the character and still used big words

This is the kind of thing I find funny: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/sidebar-be...

Get out of here if you don't know.

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I started reading Autumn of the Black Snake by William Hogeland, and it’s astounding how many royal governors, army officers, colonial legislators, etc. in the 1760’s were involved in dubious land schemes in the current Midwest

Everything I needed to find out about the American Revolution is in this book. www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Sch...

Those poor schmucks got one month's pay from Robert Morris before Yorktown. The most powerful American throughout the war, the whole time he'd dedicated all revenues, such as they were, to paying interest to rich bondholders, not soldiers.

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Truth, Ruth.

One of the ways to look at the American Revolution from various Native pov is that it *was not* an explosive, history-changing kind of thing but an accelerating episode in an ongoing thirty-year war. The Shawnee pov would totally undermine the "globally most- important-event-ever" vibe.

This is the impossible truth. (It affects books too.)

As I remember it, *this* is the key point. The anti-Catholic thing played, obviously, especially for the Samuel Adams type, but wiping out a generational speculation in land was what revved up Virginians like Washington, drew them (certainly him!) to the cause, made the Quebec Act intolerable.

I will say working with Claire and Paul on that sequence was a pleasure. Total pros, handled being relegated to voiceover with a lot of grace, tough fact that not everybody has the stuff for on-camera. Coyote, I don't know, possibly a bit one-note (?), but nice collab all around.

There's a book about what really happened to bring about the Declaration of Independence. And it's pretty wild! www.amazon.com/Declaration-...

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This was an excellent event.

Weird typo in the title now gone: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/in-a-natio...

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Why I'm done with Hamilton and Jefferson, and with engaging with mainstream scholarship on them, and am instead writing a romp about Burr: open.substack.com/pub/williamh...

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Defining the opposition party (in real life quite lame and ineffectual) as demonically criminal is a throwback to the earliest days of the republic.

I've always thought this story would make a great dark comedy--and if that's what they're up to, I'll be surprised.

This is an excellent distinction.

Judge April Perry, getting it precisely wrong, when enjoining Trump: "Not even Alexander Hamilton could have envisioned one state's militia to be used against another state's residents because the president wants to punish those with views other than his own."

Free preview of my latest paying-subscriber exclusive on BAD HISTORY: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/trump-the-...

This is a deeply disturbing article.

"can seem deeply uncool"

Jeffrey Rosen lead, in the Atlantic: "Shays’s Rebellion filled Alexander Hamilton with dread." No, he and his cohort were psyched that finally people might listen to them and create a national government with powers to suppress popular dissent from laws enriching the rich at the expense of the poor.

Free preview of my latest paying-subscriber exclusive on BAD HISTORY: williamhogeland.substack.com/p/trump-the-...

Presidents have gone over the heads of governors before on this issue--rarely, but they have--but not to violate the law, which is what the judge has ruled Trump is doing.

A problem is that President Washington got a bad-faith bite at precisely this apple in 1794. Edmund Randolph, then Secretary of State, objected to the rubberstamp certification by Justice Wilson, to no avail. John Yoo and others have looked there when defending the unitary executive concept.

"Landed" is active; "was pushed" is passive.

A BAD HISTORY paying-subscriber exclusive: "A Martyr to the Cause: Politics, Rage, and Mourning."https://williamhogeland.substack.com/p/a-martyr-to-the-cause