It’s October — the season of beer steins and ghost stories. 🍺👻
This week, we raise a stein to New Jersey’s most misunderstood Germans: the Hessians.
Condemned by Jefferson as “foreign mercenaries,” these weren’t free-roaming soldiers for hire — they were Landeskinder of Hesse-Cassel, conscripted by law, shipped across the ocean, and despised on arrival.
In this episode, we dig into:
How Britain rented entire armies from German princes during the Revolution
Why “mercenary” was the wrong word — and why Jefferson knew it
The economics of war: what £450,000 meant in today’s money
The Protestant roots of Hesse-Cassel and its deal with King George III
The Battle of Red Bank (1777) and the discovery of Hessian remains in 2022
How many Hessians stayed behind — in life, and maybe in legend
And a reflection on how every wave of newcomers — Hessians, Irish, Italians, and modern immigrants — have faced the same suspicion, and still helped build this place we call home
Socials: https://linktr.ee/njhistorypodcast
📚 Sources
Declaration of Independence (1776), Thomas Jefferson.
Rodney Atwood, The Hessians: Mercenaries from Hessen-Cassel in the American Revolution (Cambridge, 1980).
Friederike Baer, Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford, 2022).
Charles W. Ingrao, The Hessian Mercenary State (Cambridge, 1987).
Edward J. Lowell, The Hessians and Other German Auxiliaries (1884).
Johannes Helbig, Die Hessen in Amerika (Cassel, 1867).
Alfred L. Shoemaker, The Pennsylvania Dutch and Their Cookery (1951).
UK National Archives, “British War Expenditures, 1775–1783.”
MeasuringWorth.com (currency conversions, 2024 equivalencies).