Was the early United States a “Christian nation?” Did most of its citizenry accept God and the Bible as the moral authority that bound them together as one nation? Scholars have taken a binary stance on these questions. Some argue that early America was a thoroughly religious place and that even those who didn’t attend church were on the same basic page as those who did. While others argue early America boasted an increasingly secularized society. Christopher Grasso, a professor of history at William & Mary and the author of Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War, challenges and complicates these two ideas by offering a third explanation: the religious landscape of early America was a continuum where many people experienced both faith and doubt over the course of their lives. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/214

How do historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past? Good biographies rely on telling the lives of people using practiced historical methods of thorough archival research and the sound interrogation of historical sources. But what does this practice of historical methods look like? In this final episode of the Omohundro Institute’s Doing History series about biography, Erica Dunbar, the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University and author of Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge, takes us into the archives to show us how she recovered the life of Ona Judge from the archives. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/212

For 34 years, John Marshall presided as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his service, Marshal transformed the nation’s top court and its judicial branch into the powerful body and co-equal branch of government we know it as today. The Doing History: Biography series continues as Joel Richard Paul, a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings Law School and author of Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times, joins us to explore the life of John Marshall and how he wrote his biography. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/210

Biography. Since the earliest days of the United States, and even before the thirteen colonies came together to forge a nation, Americans have been interested in biography. But why? What is it about the lives of others that makes the past so interesting and fun to explore? This episode marks the start of the Omohundro Institute’s 4-episode Doing History series about biography. This series will take us behind-the-scenes of biography and how historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/209