“Midnight Alarms, Continental Dreams: Congresses, Common Sense, and the War that Forged a Contradictory Freedom, 1774–1783”

In this episode of APUSH for ALL, we journey from the First Continental Congress through Yorktown, tracing how protests turned into revolution. We explore Lexington and Concord’s “shot heard ’round the world,” the debates of the Second Continental Congress, and the explosive impact of Paine’s Common Sense and Jefferson’s Declaration. Along the way, we follow Washington’s struggling army, Franklin’s diplomacy, and the war’s brutal civil conflicts. But beyond battlefield victories, we wrestle with contradictions—Native nations dispossessed, enslaved people promised freedom yet denied it, women pressing for rights. How revolutionary was the Revolution? Tune in to find out.