Cavalcade of America

- Season 1

(1952)

A dramatization of how Benjamin Franklin delayed a conference between Lord Howe and John Adams until the spring rainy season commenced, allowing General Washington to extricate his troops from Long Island under the cover of a storm.

The Revolutionary War story of Lydia Darragh, American patriot and Philadelphia widow, who by her cleverness gained information instrumental in an American victory.

The story cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney and the beginning of interchangeable parts for rifles.

Young Nathaniel Hawthorne is prodded to greater literary efforts by an ambitious woman.

The story of how Samuel Morse, after many hardships, gained recognition for the first telegraph.

Nurse Clara Louis Maas volunteers to be bitten by a dreaded mosquito so that the research on yellow fever can go on.

John Honeyman, American patriot, pretends to be a Tory in order to gain information that will mean Washingtons victory over the Hessians.

The career of Andrew Johnson, who, starting as a tailor, became the 17th President of the United States.

The story of Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy, and Sarah Taylor, daughter of the future president of the United States. Their love was fated to end in tragedy.

Story of Abe Lincoln and his love for Ann Rutledge.

A historical drama portraying the misunderstanding between Sam Houston and his wife, Eliza, which resulted in Houston's resignation of the governorship of Tennessee.

Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, uses himself as a guinea pig and is inoculated with the germs of small pox in a heroic effort to establish control of the disease.

A pre-Revolutionary War drama. The freedom of the press is upheld through the trial and acquittal of John Peter Zenger, a New York newspaper publisher imprisoned for printing the truth about corruption of the British administration.

A story about Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith, and his long struggle to invent and perfect the electric motor. Setting: Brandon, Vt., in the 1830's.

A comedy-drama about an elderly German baker who persuades 123 Hessian soldiers to desert the British Army during the American Revolution.

John Paul Jones undertakes the first hostile invasion of England since 1066 as he endeavors to prove to all the world that the American Navy and the American government are to be reckoned with.

English law in 1790 forbade taking written information on the cotton spinning machine from the country. Samuel Slater, however, memorized the plans and went to America to try to build a machine from memory.

Dramatizes the events which led to the decision of the pirate Jean Lafitte to join Andrew Jackson in the defense of New Orleans against the English forces in 1814.

Dramatizes John Adams' difficult and unpopular decision to defend eight English soldiers who participated in a Boston riot prior to the Revolution.

In 1866, Teddy Roosevelt goes west to begin anew after great personal tragedies and, undaunted by a blizzard, pursues and captures three outlaws in the Dakota Bad Lands.