In episode two of the Founding Fathers' Legacy Series, Former Washington D.C Mayor Sharon Pratt examines the world of revolutionary America, learning more about the political, social, and economic environment the Founding Fathers operated in.

Sharon Pratt speaks with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian and award-winning author of "The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution" about the early, unsettling period for our new nation, the competing ideas and symbolic importance of the new nation's capital. She also speaks with Dr. Woody Holton, the McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, about the decision to break from Great Britain and the outsize role of Virginians in the Revolution and then the new republic.

Next episode, we will hear more about these contradictions as we explore life at Montpelier – the lifelong home of our fourth president, “the father of the Constitution," James Madison.