https://theageofjacksonpodcast.com/enHistoryCopyright Daniel Gullottahttps://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/ce4640bc4cb0ac7488367c03afdc852f.jpghttps://theageofjacksonpodcast.com/Tue, 09 Jan 2024 01:18:17 +0000Daniel GullottaDaniel Gullottaageofjacksonpodcast@gmail.comA Podcast on Antebellum America (ca.1812 - ca.1845) hosted by Daniel N. Gullotta and sponsored by Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​.trueepisodichttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/149-the-tormented-rise-of-abolition-in-andrew-jackson-s-america-with-j-d-dickey--49033694
The principal targets of mob violence were abolitionists and black citizens, who had begun to question the foundation of the U.S. economy — chattel slavery — and demand an end to it. Led by figures like William Lloyd Garrison and James Forten, the anti-slavery movement grew from a small band of committed activists to a growing social force that attracted new followers in the hundreds, and enemies in the thousands. Even in the North, abolitionists faced almost unimaginable hatred, with newspaper publishers, businessmen with a stake in the slave trade, and politicians of all stripes demanding they be suppressed, silenced or even executed.

Carrying bricks and torches, guns and knives, mobs created pandemonium, and forced the abolition movement to answer key questions as it began to grow: Could nonviolence work in the face of arson and attempted murder? Could its leaders stick together long enough to build a movement with staying power, or would they turn on each other first? And could it survive to last through the decade, and inspire a new generation of activists to fight for the cause?

J.D. Dickey reveals the stories of these Black and white men and women persevered against such threats to demand that all citizens be given the chance for freedom and liberty embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Their sacrifices and strategies would set a precedent for the social movements to follow, and lead the nation toward war and emancipation, in the most turbulent era of our republic of violence.
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J. D. Dickey is the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Mud, a history of the troubled rise of Washington, D.C., in the nineteenth century, Rising in Flames: Sherman’s March and the Fight for a New Nation and American Demagogue, both published by Pegasus Books.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/49033694Fri, 11 Mar 2022 21:00:19 +0000Daniel GullottaThe 1830s were the most violent time in American history outside of war. Men battled each other in the streets in ethnic and religious conflicts, gangs of party henchmen rioted at the ballot box, and assault and murder were common enough as to seem...
The principal targets of mob violence were abolitionists and black citizens, who had begun to question the foundation of the U.S. economy — chattel slavery — and demand an end to it. Led by figures like William Lloyd Garrison and James Forten, the anti-slavery movement grew from a small band of committed activists to a growing social force that attracted new followers in the hundreds, and enemies in the thousands. Even in the North, abolitionists faced almost unimaginable hatred, with newspaper publishers, businessmen with a stake in the slave trade, and politicians of all stripes demanding they be suppressed, silenced or even executed.

Carrying bricks and torches, guns and knives, mobs created pandemonium, and forced the abolition movement to answer key questions as it began to grow: Could nonviolence work in the face of arson and attempted murder? Could its leaders stick together long enough to build a movement with staying power, or would they turn on each other first? And could it survive to last through the decade, and inspire a new generation of activists to fight for the cause?

J.D. Dickey reveals the stories of these Black and white men and women persevered against such threats to demand that all citizens be given the chance for freedom and liberty embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Their sacrifices and strategies would set a precedent for the social movements to follow, and lead the nation toward war and emancipation, in the most turbulent era of our republic of violence.
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J. D. Dickey is the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Mud, a history of the troubled rise of Washington, D.C., in the nineteenth century, Rising in Flames: Sherman’s March and the Fight for a New Nation and American Demagogue, both published by Pegasus Books.]]>3776falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/148-william-hunter-a-british-soldier-s-son-who-became-an-early-american-with-eugene-a-procknow--48948371https://api.spreaker.com/episode/48948371Fri, 04 Mar 2022 13:39:17 +0000Daniel GullottaIn June 1798, President John Adams signed the now infamous Alien & Sedition Acts to suppress political dissent. Facing imminent personal risks, a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor ran the first editorial denouncing the law's attempt to stifle the...3105falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/147-john-leland-a-jeffersonian-baptist-in-early-america-with-eric-c-smith--48691412
Leland also stood among eighteenth-century Virginia's most powerful anti-slavery advocates, and convinced one wealthy planter to emancipate over 400 of his slaves. Though among the most popular Baptists in America, Leland's fierce individualism and personal eccentricity often placed him at odds with other Baptist leaders. He refused ordination, abstained from the Lord's Supper, and violently opposed the rise of Baptist denominationalism. In the first-ever biography of Leland, Eric C. Smith recounts the story of this pivotal figure from American Religious History, whose long and eventful life provides a unique window into the remarkable transformations that swept American society from 1760 to 1840.
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Eric C. Smith is the Senior Pastor of Sharon Baptist Church in Savannah, Tennessee, and a historian of American Baptists and early American religion. He is also the author of Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America (OUP, 2020) and Order & Ardor: The Revival Spirituality of Oliver Hart and the Regular Baptists of Eighteenth-Century South Carolina (USC Press, 2018). He and his wife, Candace, have three children.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/48691412Fri, 11 Feb 2022 16:53:43 +0000Daniel GullottaJohn Leland (1754-1841) was one of the most influential and entertaining religious figures in early America. As an itinerant revivalist, he demonstrated an uncanny ability to connect with a popular audience, and contributed to the rise of a...
Leland also stood among eighteenth-century Virginia's most powerful anti-slavery advocates, and convinced one wealthy planter to emancipate over 400 of his slaves. Though among the most popular Baptists in America, Leland's fierce individualism and personal eccentricity often placed him at odds with other Baptist leaders. He refused ordination, abstained from the Lord's Supper, and violently opposed the rise of Baptist denominationalism. In the first-ever biography of Leland, Eric C. Smith recounts the story of this pivotal figure from American Religious History, whose long and eventful life provides a unique window into the remarkable transformations that swept American society from 1760 to 1840.
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Eric C. Smith is the Senior Pastor of Sharon Baptist Church in Savannah, Tennessee, and a historian of American Baptists and early American religion. He is also the author of Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America (OUP, 2020) and Order & Ardor: The Revival Spirituality of Oliver Hart and the Regular Baptists of Eighteenth-Century South Carolina (USC Press, 2018). He and his wife, Candace, have three children.]]>3553falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/146-the-evolution-of-american-equality-with-michael-a-bellesiles--48592758
On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood in front of a crowd in Rochester, New York, and asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” The audience had invited him to speak on the day celebrating freedom, and had expected him to offer a hopeful message about America; instead, he’d offered back to them their own hypocrisy. How could the Constitution defend both freedom and slavery? How could it celebrate liberty with one hand while withdrawing it with another? Theirs was a country which promoted and even celebrated inequality.

From the very beginning, American history can be seen as a battle to reconcile the large gap between America’s stated ideals and the reality of its republic. Its struggle is not one of steady progress toward greater freedom and equality, but rather for every step forward there is a step taken in a different direction. In Inventing Equality, Michael Bellesiles traces the evolution of the battle for true equality—the stories of those fighting forward, to expand the working definition of what it means to be an American citizen—from the Revolution through the late nineteenth century. He identifies the systemic flaws in the Constitution, and explores through the role of the Supreme Court and three Constitutional amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—the ways in which equality and inequality waxed and waned over the decades.
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MICHAEL BELLESILES, once a visiting professor at Trinity College in Connecticut and a professor of history at Emory University, is the author of numerous books on American history―including 1877 and A People’s History of the U.S. Military. Bellesiles received his BA from the University of California–Santa Cruz and his PhD from the University of California at Irvine. He lives in Connecticut.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/48592758Fri, 04 Feb 2022 21:34:51 +0000Daniel GullottaThe evolution of the battle for true equality in America seen through the men, ideas, and politics behind the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed at the end of the Civil War. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood in front of a crowd in...
On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood in front of a crowd in Rochester, New York, and asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” The audience had invited him to speak on the day celebrating freedom, and had expected him to offer a hopeful message about America; instead, he’d offered back to them their own hypocrisy. How could the Constitution defend both freedom and slavery? How could it celebrate liberty with one hand while withdrawing it with another? Theirs was a country which promoted and even celebrated inequality.

From the very beginning, American history can be seen as a battle to reconcile the large gap between America’s stated ideals and the reality of its republic. Its struggle is not one of steady progress toward greater freedom and equality, but rather for every step forward there is a step taken in a different direction. In Inventing Equality, Michael Bellesiles traces the evolution of the battle for true equality—the stories of those fighting forward, to expand the working definition of what it means to be an American citizen—from the Revolution through the late nineteenth century. He identifies the systemic flaws in the Constitution, and explores through the role of the Supreme Court and three Constitutional amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—the ways in which equality and inequality waxed and waned over the decades.
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MICHAEL BELLESILES, once a visiting professor at Trinity College in Connecticut and a professor of history at Emory University, is the author of numerous books on American history―including 1877 and A People’s History of the U.S. Military. Bellesiles received his BA from the University of California–Santa Cruz and his PhD from the University of California at Irvine. He lives in Connecticut.]]>3618truefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/145-cronyism-in-early-america-with-patrick-newman--47963598-
Patrick is Assistant Professor of Economics at Florida Southern College. He completed his PhD in the Department of Economics at George Mason University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/47963598Fri, 17 Dec 2021 14:45:48 +0000Daniel GullottaCronyism: Liberty versus Power in America 1607-1849 describes the evolution of political favor seeking in early American history, from the colonial era to the Mexican War. Newman argues that cronyism emerged from the perennial clash between the forces...-
Patrick is Assistant Professor of Economics at Florida Southern College. He completed his PhD in the Department of Economics at George Mason University.]]>3324falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/144-the-young-america-movement-and-the-transformation-of-the-democratic-party-with-yonatan-eyal--47871237-
Trained as an historian of nineteenth-century America, Dr. Eyal joined the Graduate School as its inaugural Director of Graduate Studies in 2015. He has served as a history professor and published a book and numerous articles and reviews on the politics of Jacksonian and Civil War America. An award-winning educator, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the American Revolution, the Civil War and Reconstruction and topics in American political and intellectual history.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/47871237Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:24:49 +0000Daniel GullottaThe phrase 'Young America' connoted territorial and commercial expansion in the antebellum United States. During the years leading up to the Civil War, it permeated various parts of the Democratic party, producing new perspectives in the realms of...-
Trained as an historian of nineteenth-century America, Dr. Eyal joined the Graduate School as its inaugural Director of Graduate Studies in 2015. He has served as a history professor and published a book and numerous articles and reviews on the politics of Jacksonian and Civil War America. An award-winning educator, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the American Revolution, the Civil War and Reconstruction and topics in American political and intellectual history.]]>4434falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/143-the-bible-the-constitution-and-historical-consciousness-in-antebellum-america-with-jordan-t-watkins--47560132-
Jordan T. Watkins is an assistant professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. Previously, he was a coeditor at The Joseph Smith Papers Project.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/47560132Fri, 19 Nov 2021 16:29:50 +0000Daniel GullottaIn the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on...-
Jordan T. Watkins is an assistant professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. Previously, he was a coeditor at The Joseph Smith Papers Project.]]>4310falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/142-free-people-of-color-in-the-south-with-warren-e-milteer-jr--47444272These people were both privileged and victimized, both celebrated and despised, in a region characterized by social inconsistency. Milteer's analysis of the way wealth, gender, and occupation intersected with ideas promoting white supremacy and discrimination reveals a wide range of social interactions and life outcomes for the South's free people of color and helps to explain societal contradictions that continue to appear in the modern United States.
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Warren E. Milteer Jr. is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/47444272Fri, 12 Nov 2021 15:53:43 +0000Daniel GullottaOn the eve of the Civil War, most people of color in the United States toiled in bondage. Yet nearly half a million of these individuals, including over 250,000 in the South, were free. In Beyond Slavery's Shadow, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. draws from...These people were both privileged and victimized, both celebrated and despised, in a region characterized by social inconsistency. Milteer's analysis of the way wealth, gender, and occupation intersected with ideas promoting white supremacy and discrimination reveals a wide range of social interactions and life outcomes for the South's free people of color and helps to explain societal contradictions that continue to appear in the modern United States.
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Warren E. Milteer Jr. is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885.]]>3757falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/141-elijah-lovejoy-and-the-fight-for-a-free-press-in-the-age-of-slavery-with-ken-ellingwood--46666160
First to Fall illuminates this flawed yet heroic figure who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for free press rights in a time when the First Amendment offered little protection for those who dared to critique America’s “peculiar institution.”

Culminating in Lovejoy’s dramatic clashes with the pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois—who were destroying printing press after printing press—First to Fall will bring Lovejoy, his supporters and his enemies to life during the raucous 1830s at the edge of slave country. It was a bloody period of innovation, conflict, violent politics, and painful soul-searching over pivotal issues of morality and justice.

In the tradition of books like The Arc of Justice, First to Fall elevates a compelling, socially urgent narrative that has never received the attention it deserves. The book will aim to do no less than rescue Lovejoy from the footnotes of history and restore him as a martyr whose death was not only a catalyst for widespread abolitionist action, but also inaugurated the movement toward the free press protections we cherish so dearly today.
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An award-winning journalist, Ken Ellingwood has been posted in the San Diego, Mexico City, Jerusalem, and Atlanta bureaus of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of the critically acclaimed (and prescient) work of investigative journalism Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border. He currently lives in Abu Dhabi.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/46666160Fri, 24 Sep 2021 11:53:36 +0000Daniel GullottaThe history of the fight for free press has never been more vital in our own time, when journalists are targeted as “enemies of the people.” In this brilliant and rigorously researched history, award-winning journalist and author Ken Ellingwood...
First to Fall illuminates this flawed yet heroic figure who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for free press rights in a time when the First Amendment offered little protection for those who dared to critique America’s “peculiar institution.”

Culminating in Lovejoy’s dramatic clashes with the pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois—who were destroying printing press after printing press—First to Fall will bring Lovejoy, his supporters and his enemies to life during the raucous 1830s at the edge of slave country. It was a bloody period of innovation, conflict, violent politics, and painful soul-searching over pivotal issues of morality and justice.

In the tradition of books like The Arc of Justice, First to Fall elevates a compelling, socially urgent narrative that has never received the attention it deserves. The book will aim to do no less than rescue Lovejoy from the footnotes of history and restore him as a martyr whose death was not only a catalyst for widespread abolitionist action, but also inaugurated the movement toward the free press protections we cherish so dearly today.
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An award-winning journalist, Ken Ellingwood has been posted in the San Diego, Mexico City, Jerusalem, and Atlanta bureaus of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of the critically acclaimed (and prescient) work of investigative journalism Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border. He currently lives in Abu Dhabi.]]>4113falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/140-constitutionalism-in-the-american-revolution-with-gordon-s-wood--46460535
In this new book, eminent historian Gordon S. Wood distills a lifetime of work on constitutional innovations during the Revolutionary era. In concise form, he illuminates critical events in the nation's founding, ranging from the imperial debate that led to the Declaration of Independence to the revolutionary state constitution making in 1776 and the creation of the Federal Constitution in 1787. Among other topics, he discusses slavery and constitutionalism, the emergence of the judiciary as one of the major tripartite institutions of government, the demarcation between public and private, and the formation of states' rights.

Here is an immensely readable synthesis of the key era in the making of the history of the United States, presenting timely insights on the Constitution and the nation's foundational legal and political documents.
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Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. He is the author of many books, including The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association; The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize; The American Revolution: A History; The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin; Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, which was a New York Times bestseller; Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (OUP, 2009), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the American History Book Prize from the New-York Historical Society; and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He is a regular reviewer for the New York Review of Books.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/46460535Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:02:17 +0000Daniel GullottaThe half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, and...
In this new book, eminent historian Gordon S. Wood distills a lifetime of work on constitutional innovations during the Revolutionary era. In concise form, he illuminates critical events in the nation's founding, ranging from the imperial debate that led to the Declaration of Independence to the revolutionary state constitution making in 1776 and the creation of the Federal Constitution in 1787. Among other topics, he discusses slavery and constitutionalism, the emergence of the judiciary as one of the major tripartite institutions of government, the demarcation between public and private, and the formation of states' rights.

Here is an immensely readable synthesis of the key era in the making of the history of the United States, presenting timely insights on the Constitution and the nation's foundational legal and political documents.
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Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. He is the author of many books, including The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association; The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize; The American Revolution: A History; The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin; Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, which was a New York Times bestseller; Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (OUP, 2009), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the American History Book Prize from the New-York Historical Society; and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He is a regular reviewer for the New York Review of Books.]]>3455falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/139-israelite-indians-and-religious-nationalism-in-early-america-with-matthew-w-dougherty--46260475
Some white Protestants, Mormons, American Jews, and Indigenous people constructed nationalist narratives around the then-popular idea of “Israelite Indians.” Although these were minority viewpoints, they reveal that the story of religion and nationalism in the early United States was more complicated and wide-ranging than studies of American “chosen-ness” or “manifest destiny” suggest. Telling stories about Israelite Indians, Dougherty argues, allowed members of specific communities to understand the expanding United States, to envision its transformation, and to propose competing forms of sovereignty. In these stories both settler and Indigenous intellectuals found biblical explanations for the American empire and its stark racial hierarchy.

Lost Tribes Found goes beyond the legal and political structure of the nineteenth-century U.S. empire. In showing how the trope of the Israelite Indian appealed to the emotions that bound together both nations and religious groups, the book adds a new dimension and complexity to our understanding of the history and underlying narratives of early America.
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Matthew W. Dougherty is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the history of Christianity at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/46260475Fri, 27 Aug 2021 12:35:25 +0000Daniel GullottaThe belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled “lost tribes of Israel”—Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE—took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost...
Some white Protestants, Mormons, American Jews, and Indigenous people constructed nationalist narratives around the then-popular idea of “Israelite Indians.” Although these were minority viewpoints, they reveal that the story of religion and nationalism in the early United States was more complicated and wide-ranging than studies of American “chosen-ness” or “manifest destiny” suggest. Telling stories about Israelite Indians, Dougherty argues, allowed members of specific communities to understand the expanding United States, to envision its transformation, and to propose competing forms of sovereignty. In these stories both settler and Indigenous intellectuals found biblical explanations for the American empire and its stark racial hierarchy.

Lost Tribes Found goes beyond the legal and political structure of the nineteenth-century U.S. empire. In showing how the trope of the Israelite Indian appealed to the emotions that bound together both nations and religious groups, the book adds a new dimension and complexity to our understanding of the history and underlying narratives of early America.
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Matthew W. Dougherty is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the history of Christianity at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.]]>4141falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/138-sarah-josepha-hale-and-the-making-of-the-modern-american-woman-with-melanie-kirkpatrick--46203335
There is hardly an aspect of nineteenth-century culture in which Hale did not figure prominently as a pathbreaker. She was one of the first editors to promote American authors writing on American themes. Her stamp of approval advanced the reputations of Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. She wrote the first antislavery novel, compiled the first women’s history book, and penned the most recognizable verse in the English language, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Americans’ favorite holiday―Thanksgiving―wouldn’t exist without Hale. Re-imagining the New England festival as a patriotic national holiday, she conducted a decades-long campaign to make it happen. Abraham Lincoln took up her suggestion in 1863 and proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving.

Most of the women’s equity issues that Hale championed have been achieved, or nearly so. But women’s roles in the “domestic sphere” are arguably less valued today than in Hale’s era. Her beliefs about women’s obligations to family, moral leadership, and principal role in raising children continue to have relevance at a time when many American women think feminism has failed them. We could benefit from re-examining her arguments to honor women’s special roles and responsibilities.

Lady Editor re-creates the life of a major nineteenth-century woman, whose career as a writer, editor, and early feminist encompassed ideas central to American history.
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Melanie Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. She is the author of Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience and Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad. She has lived in Tokyo, Toronto, Hong Kong and Manhattan and now resides in rural Connecticut.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/46203335Mon, 23 Aug 2021 12:38:44 +0000Daniel GullottaFor half a century Sarah Josepha Hale was the most influential woman in America. As editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, Hale was the leading cultural arbiter for the growing nation. Women (and many men) turned to her for advice on what to read, what to...
There is hardly an aspect of nineteenth-century culture in which Hale did not figure prominently as a pathbreaker. She was one of the first editors to promote American authors writing on American themes. Her stamp of approval advanced the reputations of Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. She wrote the first antislavery novel, compiled the first women’s history book, and penned the most recognizable verse in the English language, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Americans’ favorite holiday―Thanksgiving―wouldn’t exist without Hale. Re-imagining the New England festival as a patriotic national holiday, she conducted a decades-long campaign to make it happen. Abraham Lincoln took up her suggestion in 1863 and proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving.

Most of the women’s equity issues that Hale championed have been achieved, or nearly so. But women’s roles in the “domestic sphere” are arguably less valued today than in Hale’s era. Her beliefs about women’s obligations to family, moral leadership, and principal role in raising children continue to have relevance at a time when many American women think feminism has failed them. We could benefit from re-examining her arguments to honor women’s special roles and responsibilities.

Lady Editor re-creates the life of a major nineteenth-century woman, whose career as a writer, editor, and early feminist encompassed ideas central to American history.
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Melanie Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. She is the author of Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience and Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad. She has lived in Tokyo, Toronto, Hong Kong and Manhattan and now resides in rural Connecticut.]]>3065falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/137-identities-of-sexual-restraint-in-early-america-with-kara-m-french--46080307Against Sex makes clear that in assessing the history of sexuality, an expansive view of sexual practice that includes abstinence and restraint can shed important new light on histories of society, culture, and politics.
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Kara French is associate professor of history at Salisbury University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/46080307Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:40:21 +0000Daniel GullottaHow much sex should a person have? With whom? What do we make of people who choose not to have sex at all? As present as these questions are today, they were subjects of intense debate in the early American republic. In this richly textured history,...Against Sex makes clear that in assessing the history of sexuality, an expansive view of sexual practice that includes abstinence and restraint can shed important new light on histories of society, culture, and politics.
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Kara French is associate professor of history at Salisbury University.]]>3619falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/136-c-span-s-presidential-historians-survey-with-thomas-balcerski--45999452https://api.spreaker.com/episode/45999452Sat, 07 Aug 2021 00:29:37 +0000Daniel GullottaWhen C-SPAN conducted our first Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership in 2000, we worked with a team of nationally recognized historians to establish the survey's framework: Douglas Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford and Richard Norton Smith. They...4039falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/135-the-science-of-abolition-with-eric-herschthal--45355079
Looking beyond the science of race, The Science of Abolition shows how Black and white scientists and abolitionists drew upon a host of scientific disciplines—from chemistry, botany, and geology, to medicine and technology—to portray slaveholders as the enemies of progress. From the 1770s through the 1860s, scientists and abolitionists in Britain and the United States argued that slavery stood in the way of scientific progress, blinded slaveholders to scientific evidence, and prevented enslavers from adopting labor‑saving technologies that might eradicate enslaved labor.

While historians increasingly highlight slavery’s centrality to the modern world, fueling the rise of capitalism, science, and technology, few have asked where the myth of slavery’s backwardness comes from in the first place. This book contends that by routinely portraying slaveholders as the enemies of science, abolitionists and scientists helped generate that myth.
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Eric Herschthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/45355079Fri, 18 Jun 2021 13:28:42 +0000Daniel GullottaIn the context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders’ scientific justifications of racism. But abolitionists were equally adept at using scientific ideas to discredit slaveholders. Looking beyond the science of race, The...
Looking beyond the science of race, The Science of Abolition shows how Black and white scientists and abolitionists drew upon a host of scientific disciplines—from chemistry, botany, and geology, to medicine and technology—to portray slaveholders as the enemies of progress. From the 1770s through the 1860s, scientists and abolitionists in Britain and the United States argued that slavery stood in the way of scientific progress, blinded slaveholders to scientific evidence, and prevented enslavers from adopting labor‑saving technologies that might eradicate enslaved labor.

While historians increasingly highlight slavery’s centrality to the modern world, fueling the rise of capitalism, science, and technology, few have asked where the myth of slavery’s backwardness comes from in the first place. This book contends that by routinely portraying slaveholders as the enemies of science, abolitionists and scientists helped generate that myth.
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Eric Herschthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications.]]>3670falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/134-nativists-catholics-and-citizen-soldiers-in-the-philadelphia-1844-riots-with-zachary-m-schrag--45260755
For these men, it was Irish Catholics they claimed would upend morality and murder their neighbors, steal their jobs, and overturn democracy. The nativists burned Catholic churches, chased and beat people through the streets, and exchanged shots with a militia seeking to reinstate order.

In the aftermath, the public debated both the militia’s use of force and the actions of the mob. Some of the most prominent nativists continued their rise to political power for a time, even reaching Congress, but they did not attempt to stoke mob violence again.

Today, in an America beset by polarization and riven over questions of identity and law enforcement, the 1844 Philadelphia Riots and the circumstances that caused them demand new investigation.

At a time many envision America in flames, The Fires of Philadelphia shows us a city—one that embodies the founding of our country—that descended into open warfare and found its way out again.
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Zachary M. Schrag is the author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro; Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences and The Princeton Guide to Historical Research.He has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Gerald Ford Foundation, and the Library of Congress and has been awarded the Society for American City and Regional Planning History’s John Reps Prize. He is the director of the Masters Program in History at George Mason University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/45260755Fri, 11 Jun 2021 13:16:56 +0000Daniel GullottaAmerica is in a state of deep unrest, grappling with xenophobia, racial, and ethnic tension a national scale that feels singular to our time. But it also echoes the earliest anti-immigrant sentiments of the country. In 1844, Philadelphia was set...
For these men, it was Irish Catholics they claimed would upend morality and murder their neighbors, steal their jobs, and overturn democracy. The nativists burned Catholic churches, chased and beat people through the streets, and exchanged shots with a militia seeking to reinstate order.

In the aftermath, the public debated both the militia’s use of force and the actions of the mob. Some of the most prominent nativists continued their rise to political power for a time, even reaching Congress, but they did not attempt to stoke mob violence again.

Today, in an America beset by polarization and riven over questions of identity and law enforcement, the 1844 Philadelphia Riots and the circumstances that caused them demand new investigation.

At a time many envision America in flames, The Fires of Philadelphia shows us a city—one that embodies the founding of our country—that descended into open warfare and found its way out again.
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Zachary M. Schrag is the author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro; Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences and The Princeton Guide to Historical Research.He has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Gerald Ford Foundation, and the Library of Congress and has been awarded the Society for American City and Regional Planning History’s John Reps Prize. He is the director of the Masters Program in History at George Mason University.]]>3372falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/133-joseph-smith-for-president-in-the-election-of-1844-with-spencer-w-mcbride--45082696
Though Joseph Smith's run for president is now best remembered—when it is remembered at all—for its gruesome end, the renegade campaign was revolutionary. Smith called for the total abolition of slavery, the closure of the country's penitentiaries, and the reestablishment of a national bank to stabilize the economy. But Smith's most important proposal was for an expansion of protections for religious minorities. At a time when the Bill of Rights did not apply to individual states, Smith sought to empower the federal government to protect minorities when states failed to do so.

Spencer W. McBride tells the story of Joseph Smith's quixotic but consequential run for the White House and shows how his calls for religious freedom helped to shape the American political system we know today.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/45082696Fri, 28 May 2021 20:14:51 +0000Daniel GullottaBy the election year of 1844, Joseph Smith, the controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had amassed a national following of some 25,000 believers. Nearly half of them lived in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, where Smith...
Though Joseph Smith's run for president is now best remembered—when it is remembered at all—for its gruesome end, the renegade campaign was revolutionary. Smith called for the total abolition of slavery, the closure of the country's penitentiaries, and the reestablishment of a national bank to stabilize the economy. But Smith's most important proposal was for an expansion of protections for religious minorities. At a time when the Bill of Rights did not apply to individual states, Smith sought to empower the federal government to protect minorities when states failed to do so.

Spencer W. McBride tells the story of Joseph Smith's quixotic but consequential run for the White House and shows how his calls for religious freedom helped to shape the American political system we know today.]]>3728falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/132-american-republics-a-continental-history-of-the-united-states-1783-1850-with-alan-taylor--44948408
In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers through strategic alliances with the other continental powers. The system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive, its vigorous internal trade in Black Americans separating parents and children, husbands and wives. Bitter party divisions pitted elites favoring strong government against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. Violence was both routine and organized: the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas, and much of Mexico, and forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. At the end of the period the United States, its conquered territory reaching the Pacific, remained internally divided, with sectional animosities over slavery growing more intense.

Taylor’s elegant history of this tumultuous period offers indelible miniatures of key characters from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. It captures the high-stakes political drama as Jackson and Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster contend over slavery, the economy, Indian removal, and national expansion. A ground-level account of American industrialization conveys the everyday lives of factory workers and immigrant families. And the immersive narrative puts us on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Quebec, and the Cherokee capital, New Echota.

Absorbing and chilling, American Republics illuminates the continuities between our own social and political divisions and the events of this formative period.
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Alan Taylor has twice won the Pulitzer Prize in History, most recently for The Internal Enemy, also a National Book Award finalist. He is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44948408Fri, 21 May 2021 12:32:18 +0000Daniel GullottaFrom a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent. In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a...
In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers through strategic alliances with the other continental powers. The system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive, its vigorous internal trade in Black Americans separating parents and children, husbands and wives. Bitter party divisions pitted elites favoring strong government against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. Violence was both routine and organized: the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas, and much of Mexico, and forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. At the end of the period the United States, its conquered territory reaching the Pacific, remained internally divided, with sectional animosities over slavery growing more intense.

Taylor’s elegant history of this tumultuous period offers indelible miniatures of key characters from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. It captures the high-stakes political drama as Jackson and Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster contend over slavery, the economy, Indian removal, and national expansion. A ground-level account of American industrialization conveys the everyday lives of factory workers and immigrant families. And the immersive narrative puts us on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Quebec, and the Cherokee capital, New Echota.

Absorbing and chilling, American Republics illuminates the continuities between our own social and political divisions and the events of this formative period.
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Alan Taylor has twice won the Pulitzer Prize in History, most recently for The Internal Enemy, also a National Book Award finalist. He is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville.]]>3542falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/131-the-war-of-1812-in-the-west-with-david-kirkpatrick--44811884
In The War of 1812 in the West: From Fort Detroit to New Orleans, David Kirkpatrick chronicles the near catastrophic loss of the Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois Territories, the bitter fight against both Tecumseh’s Confederation and the Creek Nation, and the slow recovery and ultimate victory of American forces—a large portion of which was supplied by Kentucky—from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Battles such as River Raisin, Thames River, Fort Meigs, and New Orleans are placed in context to show how they secured America’s frontier and opened territory to the west to new settlement following the war.
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DAVID KIRKPATRICK serves as the Genealogy/ Reference Librarian at Mercer County (Kentucky) Public Library and has spent more than a decade working as an archivist for the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. He has a BA in history from the University of Louisville and an MA in history from Western Kentucky University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44811884Fri, 14 May 2021 12:18:11 +0000Daniel GullottaThe spring of 1812 found the young American republic on edge. The British Navy was impressing American seamen with impunity at an alarming rate while vicious attacks on frontier settlements by American Indians armed with British weapons had left a...
In The War of 1812 in the West: From Fort Detroit to New Orleans, David Kirkpatrick chronicles the near catastrophic loss of the Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois Territories, the bitter fight against both Tecumseh’s Confederation and the Creek Nation, and the slow recovery and ultimate victory of American forces—a large portion of which was supplied by Kentucky—from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Battles such as River Raisin, Thames River, Fort Meigs, and New Orleans are placed in context to show how they secured America’s frontier and opened territory to the west to new settlement following the war.
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DAVID KIRKPATRICK serves as the Genealogy/ Reference Librarian at Mercer County (Kentucky) Public Library and has spent more than a decade working as an archivist for the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. He has a BA in history from the University of Louisville and an MA in history from Western Kentucky University.]]>3677falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/130-earthquakes-prophecy-and-the-remaking-of-early-america-with-jonathan-todd-hancock--44679163Through varied peoples' efforts to come to grips with the New Madrid earthquakes, Hancock reframes early nineteenth-century North America as a site where all of its inhabitants wrestled with fundamental human questions amid prophecies, political reinventions, and war.
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Jonathan Todd Hancock is an associate professor of history at Hendrix College.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44679163Fri, 07 May 2021 12:36:32 +0000Daniel GullottaThe New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–12 were the strongest temblors in the North American interior in at least the past five centuries. From the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a broad cast of thinkers...Through varied peoples' efforts to come to grips with the New Madrid earthquakes, Hancock reframes early nineteenth-century North America as a site where all of its inhabitants wrestled with fundamental human questions amid prophecies, political reinventions, and war.
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Jonathan Todd Hancock is an associate professor of history at Hendrix College.]]>4053falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/129-how-domestic-slave-traders-shaped-america-with-joshua-d-rothman--44572764
In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation.
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Joshua D. Rothman is a professor of history and chair of the department of history at the University of Alabama. He is the author of two prize-winning books, Flush Times and Fever Dreams and Notorious in the Neighborhood. He lives in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44572764Fri, 30 Apr 2021 13:22:17 +0000Daniel GullottaSlave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men—who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South—were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth...
In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation.
-
Joshua D. Rothman is a professor of history and chair of the department of history at the University of Alabama. He is the author of two prize-winning books, Flush Times and Fever Dreams and Notorious in the Neighborhood. He lives in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.]]>4948falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/128-america-s-first-civil-rights-movement-with-kate-masur--44458467
Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.
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Kate Masur is a professor of history at Northwestern University. A finalist for the Lincoln Prize, she is the author of An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44458467Fri, 23 Apr 2021 18:47:53 +0000Daniel GullottaThe half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights...
Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.
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Kate Masur is a professor of history at Northwestern University. A finalist for the Lincoln Prize, she is the author of An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.]]>3962falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/127-john-c-fremont-and-the-violent-election-of-1856-with-john-bicknell--44358217
The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward-facing unimagined horrors, a terrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War. Frémont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln’s victory four years later.
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John Bicknell is the author of America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation. He has written and edited for Watchdog.org, Congressional Quarterly, and Roll Call, and was senior editor of 2016 and 2018 Almanac of American Politics. He lives in Virginia.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44358217Fri, 16 Apr 2021 12:39:16 +0000Daniel GullottaThe 1856 presidential race was the most violent peacetime election in American history. War between proslavery and antislavery settlers raged in Kansas; a congressman shot an Irish immigrant at a Washington hotel; and another congressman beat a US...
The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward-facing unimagined horrors, a terrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War. Frémont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln’s victory four years later.
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John Bicknell is the author of America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation. He has written and edited for Watchdog.org, Congressional Quarterly, and Roll Call, and was senior editor of 2016 and 2018 Almanac of American Politics. He lives in Virginia.]]>2839falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/126-the-radical-significance-of-the-free-exercise-of-religion-with-jack-n-rakove--44272084
He finds that, as denominations and sects multiplied, Americans became much more tolerant of the free expression of rival religious beliefs. During the Revolutionary era, he explains, most of the new states moved to disestablish churches and to give constitutional recognition to rights of conscience. These two developments explain why religious freedom originally represented the most radical right of all. No other right placed greater importance on the moral autonomy of individuals, or better illustrated how the authority of government could be limited by denying the state authority to act. Together, these developments made possible the great revival of religion in 19th-century America.

As Rakove explains, America's intense religiosity eventually created a new set of problems for mapping the relationship between church and state. He goes on to examine some of our contemporary controversies over church and state not from the vantage point of legal doctrine, but of the deeper history that gave the U.S. its own approach to religious freedom. In this book, he tells the story of how American ideas of religious toleration and free exercise evolved over time, and why questions of church and state still vex us.
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Jack N. Rakove is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies Emeritus at Stanford University. He is the author of six books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America, finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44272084Fri, 09 Apr 2021 14:41:04 +0000Daniel GullottaToday, Americans believe that the early colonists came to the New World in search of religious liberty. What we often forget is that they wanted religious liberty for themselves, not for those who held other views that they rejected and detested. Yet,...
He finds that, as denominations and sects multiplied, Americans became much more tolerant of the free expression of rival religious beliefs. During the Revolutionary era, he explains, most of the new states moved to disestablish churches and to give constitutional recognition to rights of conscience. These two developments explain why religious freedom originally represented the most radical right of all. No other right placed greater importance on the moral autonomy of individuals, or better illustrated how the authority of government could be limited by denying the state authority to act. Together, these developments made possible the great revival of religion in 19th-century America.

As Rakove explains, America's intense religiosity eventually created a new set of problems for mapping the relationship between church and state. He goes on to examine some of our contemporary controversies over church and state not from the vantage point of legal doctrine, but of the deeper history that gave the U.S. its own approach to religious freedom. In this book, he tells the story of how American ideas of religious toleration and free exercise evolved over time, and why questions of church and state still vex us.
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Jack N. Rakove is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies Emeritus at Stanford University. He is the author of six books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America, finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.]]>3516falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/125-the-reverse-underground-railroad-toward-slavery-with-richard-bell--44061705
Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

Impeccably researched and breathlessly paced, Stolen tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America.
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Richard Bell teaches Early American history at the University of Maryland. He has received several teaching prizes and major research fellowships including the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. His first book, We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States, was published in 2012. He is also the author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/44061705Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:01:37 +0000Daniel GullottaPhiladelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and...
Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

Impeccably researched and breathlessly paced, Stolen tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America.
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Richard Bell teaches Early American history at the University of Maryland. He has received several teaching prizes and major research fellowships including the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. His first book, We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States, was published in 2012. He is also the author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home.]]>3999falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/124-abraham-lincoln-and-the-anti-slavery-constitution-with-james-oakes--43961313
Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action―in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade―they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad.

President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.
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James Oakes is one of our foremost Civil War historians and a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize for his works on the politics of abolition. He teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43961313Fri, 19 Mar 2021 12:25:33 +0000Daniel GullottaThe long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery...
Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action―in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade―they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad.

President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.
-
James Oakes is one of our foremost Civil War historians and a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize for his works on the politics of abolition. He teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.]]>2680falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/123-the-disillusionment-of-america-s-founders-with-dennis-c-rasmussen--43857552
As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings.

A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.
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Dennis C. Rasmussen is professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His books include The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton).]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43857552Fri, 12 Mar 2021 14:10:02 +0000Daniel GullottaAmericans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had...
As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings.

A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.
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Dennis C. Rasmussen is professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His books include The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton).]]>3621falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/123-broken-hearts-lost-souls-and-sexual-tumult-in-nineteenth-century-america-with-christine-leigh-heyrman--43751673
At its center–and the center of a love triangle–Martha Parker, a gifted young New England woman, smart, pretty, ambitious, determined to make the most of her opportunities, aspiring to become an educator and a foreign missionary.

Late in 1825, Martha accepted a proposal from a schoolmaster, Thomas Tenney, only to reject him several weeks later for a rival suitor, a clergyman headed for the mission field, Elnathan Gridley. Tenney’s male friends, deeply resentful of the new prominence of women in academies, benevolent and reform associations, and the mission field, decided to retaliate on Tenney’s behalf by sending an anonymous letter to the head of the foreign missions board impugning Martha’s character. Tenney further threatened Martha with revealing even more about their relationship, thereby ruining her future prospects as a missionary. The head of the board began an inquiry into the truth of the claims about Martha, and in so doing, collected letters, diaries, depositions, and firsthand witness accounts of Martha’s character.

The ruin of Martha Parker’s hopes provoked a resistance within evangelical ranks over womanhood, manhood, and, surprisingly, homosexuality, ultimately threatening to destroy the foreign missions enterprise.
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CHRISTINE LEIGH HEYRMAN is the Robert W. and Shirley P. Grimble Professor of American History at the University of Delaware.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43751673Fri, 05 Mar 2021 13:45:47 +0000Daniel GullottaFrom the winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize in History, a lost episode rediscovered after almost two hundred years; a thwarted love triangle of heartbreak–two men and a woman of equal ambition–that exploded in scandal and...
At its center–and the center of a love triangle–Martha Parker, a gifted young New England woman, smart, pretty, ambitious, determined to make the most of her opportunities, aspiring to become an educator and a foreign missionary.

Late in 1825, Martha accepted a proposal from a schoolmaster, Thomas Tenney, only to reject him several weeks later for a rival suitor, a clergyman headed for the mission field, Elnathan Gridley. Tenney’s male friends, deeply resentful of the new prominence of women in academies, benevolent and reform associations, and the mission field, decided to retaliate on Tenney’s behalf by sending an anonymous letter to the head of the foreign missions board impugning Martha’s character. Tenney further threatened Martha with revealing even more about their relationship, thereby ruining her future prospects as a missionary. The head of the board began an inquiry into the truth of the claims about Martha, and in so doing, collected letters, diaries, depositions, and firsthand witness accounts of Martha’s character.

The ruin of Martha Parker’s hopes provoked a resistance within evangelical ranks over womanhood, manhood, and, surprisingly, homosexuality, ultimately threatening to destroy the foreign missions enterprise.
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CHRISTINE LEIGH HEYRMAN is the Robert W. and Shirley P. Grimble Professor of American History at the University of Delaware.]]>3181falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/122-john-c-calhoun-american-heretic-with-robert-elder--43650465
Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.
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Robert Elder is an assistant professor of history at Baylor University, where his research focuses on the American South, and the author of The Sacred Mirror: Evangelicalism, Honor, and Identity in the American South, 1790-1860. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and lives in Woodway, Texas.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43650465Fri, 26 Feb 2021 13:56:42 +0000Daniel GullottaJohn C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of...
Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.
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Robert Elder is an assistant professor of history at Baylor University, where his research focuses on the American South, and the author of The Sacred Mirror: Evangelicalism, Honor, and Identity in the American South, 1790-1860. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and lives in Woodway, Texas.]]>4476falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/121-tecumseh-and-tenskwatawa-the-shawnee-brothers-who-defied-a-nation-with-peter-cozzens--43543467
Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. Detailed research of Native American society and customs provides a window into a world often erased from history books and reveals how both men came to power in different but no less important ways.

Cozzens brings us to the forefront of the chaos and violence that characterized the young American Republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, disregarding their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.
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Peter Cozzens is the author or editor of sixteen acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the Indian Wars of the American West, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Lincoln Prize. In 2002 he was awarded the American Foreign Service Association's highest honor, the William R. Rivkin Award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. He lives in Kensington, Maryland.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43543467Fri, 19 Feb 2021 14:03:13 +0000Daniel GullottaThe first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States. Until...
Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. Detailed research of Native American society and customs provides a window into a world often erased from history books and reveals how both men came to power in different but no less important ways.

Cozzens brings us to the forefront of the chaos and violence that characterized the young American Republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, disregarding their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.
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Peter Cozzens is the author or editor of sixteen acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the Indian Wars of the American West, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Lincoln Prize. In 2002 he was awarded the American Foreign Service Association's highest honor, the William R. Rivkin Award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. He lives in Kensington, Maryland.]]>3382falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/120-politics-and-memory-in-the-american-revolution-with-michael-d-hattem--43419768-
Michael D. Hattem is Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. He has taught history at Knox College and Lang College at The New School.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43419768Fri, 12 Feb 2021 14:59:19 +0000Daniel GullottaIn Past and Prologue, Michael Hattem shows how colonists’ changing understandings of their British and colonial histories shaped the politics of the American Revolution and the origins of American national identity. Between the 1760s and 1800s,...-
Michael D. Hattem is Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. He has taught history at Knox College and Lang College at The New School.]]>4154falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/119-the-unmanifest-future-of-the-jacksonian-united-states-with-thomas-richards-jr--43303716
Though their goals and methods varied, Richards argues that these groups had a common mindset: they were not expansionists. Instead, they hoped to form new, independent republics based on the "American values" that they felt were no longer recognized in the United States: land ownership, a strict racial hierarchy, and masculinity.

Exposing nineteenth-century Americans' lack of allegiance to their country, which at the time was plagued with economic depression, social disorder, and increasing sectional tension, Richards points us toward a new understanding of American identity and Americans as a people untethered from the United States as a country. Through its wide focus on a diverse array of American political practices and ideologies, Breakaway Americas will appeal to anyone interested in the Jacksonian United States, US politics, American identity, and the unpredictable nature of history.
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Thomas Richards, Jr. earned his PhD in American history from Temple University. He is a history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43303716Fri, 05 Feb 2021 15:23:46 +0000Daniel GullottaMost Americans know that the state of Texas was once the Republic of Texas―an independent sovereign state that existed from 1836 until its annexation by the United States in 1846. But few are aware that thousands of Americans, inspired by Texas, tried...
Though their goals and methods varied, Richards argues that these groups had a common mindset: they were not expansionists. Instead, they hoped to form new, independent republics based on the "American values" that they felt were no longer recognized in the United States: land ownership, a strict racial hierarchy, and masculinity.

Exposing nineteenth-century Americans' lack of allegiance to their country, which at the time was plagued with economic depression, social disorder, and increasing sectional tension, Richards points us toward a new understanding of American identity and Americans as a people untethered from the United States as a country. Through its wide focus on a diverse array of American political practices and ideologies, Breakaway Americas will appeal to anyone interested in the Jacksonian United States, US politics, American identity, and the unpredictable nature of history.
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Thomas Richards, Jr. earned his PhD in American history from Temple University. He is a history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy.]]>3406falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/118-the-true-crime-story-of-amelia-norman-in-old-new-york-with-julie-miller--43184097
On the evening of November 1, 1843, a young household servant named Amelia Norman attacked Henry Ballard, a prosperous merchant, on the steps of the new and luxurious Astor House Hotel. Agitated and distraught, Norman had followed Ballard down Broadway before confronting him at the door to the hotel. Taking out a folding knife, she stabbed him, just missing his heart.

Ballard survived the attack, and the trial that followed created a sensation. Newspapers in New York and beyond followed the case eagerly, and crowds filled the courtroom every day. The prominent author and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child championed Norman and later included her story in her fiction and her writing on women's rights.

The would-be murderer also attracted the support of politicians, journalists, and legal and moral reformers who saw her story as a vehicle to change the law as it related to "seduction" and to advocate for the rights of workers. Cry of Murder on Broadway describes how New Yorkers, besotted with the drama of the courtroom and the lurid stories of the penny press, followed the trial for entertainment. Throughout all this, Norman gained the sympathy of New Yorkers, in particular the jury, which acquitted her in less than ten minutes.

Miller deftly weaves together Norman's story to show how, in one violent moment, she expressed all the anger that the women of the emerging movement for women's rights would soon express in words.
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Julie Miller is the author of Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City. She taught in the history department at Hunter College, City University of New York, before moving to Washington, DC.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43184097Fri, 29 Jan 2021 15:41:32 +0000Daniel GullottaIn Cry of Murder on Broadway, Julie Miller shows how a woman's desperate attempt at murder came to momentarily embody the anger and anxiety felt by many people at a time of economic and social upheaval and expanding expectations for equal rights....
On the evening of November 1, 1843, a young household servant named Amelia Norman attacked Henry Ballard, a prosperous merchant, on the steps of the new and luxurious Astor House Hotel. Agitated and distraught, Norman had followed Ballard down Broadway before confronting him at the door to the hotel. Taking out a folding knife, she stabbed him, just missing his heart.

Ballard survived the attack, and the trial that followed created a sensation. Newspapers in New York and beyond followed the case eagerly, and crowds filled the courtroom every day. The prominent author and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child championed Norman and later included her story in her fiction and her writing on women's rights.

The would-be murderer also attracted the support of politicians, journalists, and legal and moral reformers who saw her story as a vehicle to change the law as it related to "seduction" and to advocate for the rights of workers. Cry of Murder on Broadway describes how New Yorkers, besotted with the drama of the courtroom and the lurid stories of the penny press, followed the trial for entertainment. Throughout all this, Norman gained the sympathy of New Yorkers, in particular the jury, which acquitted her in less than ten minutes.

Miller deftly weaves together Norman's story to show how, in one violent moment, she expressed all the anger that the women of the emerging movement for women's rights would soon express in words.
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Julie Miller is the author of Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City. She taught in the history department at Hunter College, City University of New York, before moving to Washington, DC.]]>3450falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/117-latter-day-saints-and-the-american-apocalypse-with-christopher-james-blythe--43069288
In Terrible Revolution, Christopher James Blythe examines apocalypticism across the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly as it took shape in the writings and visions of the laity. The responses of the church hierarchy to apocalyptic lay prophecies promoted their own form of separatist nationalism during the nineteenth century. Yet, after Utah obtained statehood, as the church sought to assimilate to national religious norms, these same leaders sought to lessen the tensions between themselves and American political and cultural powers. As a result, visions of a violent end to the nation became a liability to disavow and regulate. Ultimately, Blythe argues that the visionary world of early Mormonism, with its apocalyptic emphases, continued in the church's mainstream culture in modified forms but continued to maintain separatist radical forms at the level of folk-belief.
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Christopher James Blythe is a research associate at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. He is the editor of the Journal of Mormon History and was a documentary editor at the Joseph Smith Papers from 2015 to 2018.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/43069288Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:28:08 +0000Daniel GullottaThe relationship between early Mormons and the United States was marked by anxiety and hostility, heightened over the course of the nineteenth century by the assassination of Mormon leaders, the Saints' exile from Missouri and Illinois, the military...
In Terrible Revolution, Christopher James Blythe examines apocalypticism across the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly as it took shape in the writings and visions of the laity. The responses of the church hierarchy to apocalyptic lay prophecies promoted their own form of separatist nationalism during the nineteenth century. Yet, after Utah obtained statehood, as the church sought to assimilate to national religious norms, these same leaders sought to lessen the tensions between themselves and American political and cultural powers. As a result, visions of a violent end to the nation became a liability to disavow and regulate. Ultimately, Blythe argues that the visionary world of early Mormonism, with its apocalyptic emphases, continued in the church's mainstream culture in modified forms but continued to maintain separatist radical forms at the level of folk-belief.
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Christopher James Blythe is a research associate at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. He is the editor of the Journal of Mormon History and was a documentary editor at the Joseph Smith Papers from 2015 to 2018.]]>3393falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/116-george-washington-and-the-creation-of-an-american-institution-with-lindsay-m-chervinsky--42843462
On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries―Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph―for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Washington was on his own.

Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections, and constitutional challenges―and finding congressional help lacking―Washington decided he needed a group of advisors he could turn to. He modeled his new cabinet on the councils of war he had led as commander of the Continental Army. In the early days, the cabinet served at the president’s pleasure. Washington tinkered with its structure throughout his administration, at times calling regular meetings, at other times preferring written advice and individual discussions.

Lindsay M. Chervinsky reveals the far-reaching consequences of Washington’s choice. The tensions in the cabinet between Hamilton and Jefferson heightened partisanship and contributed to the development of the first party system. And as Washington faced an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body to summon as needed, greatly expanding the role of the president and the executive branch.
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Lindsay M. Chervinsky is Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College, Senior Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, and Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/42843462Fri, 08 Jan 2021 13:48:56 +0000Daniel GullottaThe US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet―the delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected the idea. So how did George Washington create one of the most powerful bodies in the federal government? On November 26,...
On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries―Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph―for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Washington was on his own.

Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections, and constitutional challenges―and finding congressional help lacking―Washington decided he needed a group of advisors he could turn to. He modeled his new cabinet on the councils of war he had led as commander of the Continental Army. In the early days, the cabinet served at the president’s pleasure. Washington tinkered with its structure throughout his administration, at times calling regular meetings, at other times preferring written advice and individual discussions.

Lindsay M. Chervinsky reveals the far-reaching consequences of Washington’s choice. The tensions in the cabinet between Hamilton and Jefferson heightened partisanship and contributed to the development of the first party system. And as Washington faced an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body to summon as needed, greatly expanding the role of the president and the executive branch.
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Lindsay M. Chervinsky is Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College, Senior Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, and Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University.]]>3417falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/115-political-dissent-and-the-making-of-the-american-presidency-with-nathaniel-c-green--42075724
Beginning with the public debate over whether to ratify the Constitution in 1787 and concluding with Andrew Jackson’s own contentious presidency, Nathaniel C. Green traces the origins of our conception of the president as the ultimate American: the exemplar of our collective national values, morals, and “character.” The public divisiveness over the presidency in these earliest years, he contends, forged the office into an incomparable symbol of an emerging American nationalism that cast white Americans as dissenters—lovers of liberty who were willing to mobilize against tyranny in all its forms, from foreign governments to black “enemies” and Indian “savages*#8221;—even as it fomented partisan division that belied the promise of unity the presidency symbolized. With testimony from private letters, diaries, newspapers, and bills, Green documents the shaping of the disturbingly nationalistic vision that has given the presidency its symbolic power.

This argument is about a different time than our own. And yet it shows how this time, so often revered as a mythic “founding era” from which America has precipitously declined, was in fact the birthplace of the president-centered nationalism that still defines the contours of politics to this day. The lessons of The Man of the People contextualize the political turmoil surrounding the presidency today. Never in modern US history have those lessons been more badly needed.
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Nathaniel C. Green is a professor of history at Northern Virginia Community College.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/42075724Fri, 20 Nov 2020 15:17:24 +0000Daniel GullottaDonald Trump’s election has forced the United States to reckon with not only the political power of the presidency, but also how he and his supporters have used the office to advance their shared vision of America: one that is avowedly nationalist and...
Beginning with the public debate over whether to ratify the Constitution in 1787 and concluding with Andrew Jackson’s own contentious presidency, Nathaniel C. Green traces the origins of our conception of the president as the ultimate American: the exemplar of our collective national values, morals, and “character.” The public divisiveness over the presidency in these earliest years, he contends, forged the office into an incomparable symbol of an emerging American nationalism that cast white Americans as dissenters—lovers of liberty who were willing to mobilize against tyranny in all its forms, from foreign governments to black “enemies” and Indian “savages*#8221;—even as it fomented partisan division that belied the promise of unity the presidency symbolized. With testimony from private letters, diaries, newspapers, and bills, Green documents the shaping of the disturbingly nationalistic vision that has given the presidency its symbolic power.

This argument is about a different time than our own. And yet it shows how this time, so often revered as a mythic “founding era” from which America has precipitously declined, was in fact the birthplace of the president-centered nationalism that still defines the contours of politics to this day. The lessons of The Man of the People contextualize the political turmoil surrounding the presidency today. Never in modern US history have those lessons been more badly needed.
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Nathaniel C. Green is a professor of history at Northern Virginia Community College.]]>3660falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/114-the-jefferson-bible-with-peter-manseau--41825410
Completed in 1820 and rediscovered by chance in the late nineteenth century after being lost for decades, Jefferson's cut-and-paste scripture has meant different things to different people. Some have held it up as evidence that America is a Christian nation founded on the lessons of the Gospels. Others see it as proof of the Founders' intent to root out the stubborn influence of faith. Manseau explains Jefferson's personal religion and philosophy, shedding light on the influences and ideas that inspired him to radically revise the Gospels. He situates the creation of the Jefferson Bible within the broader search for the historical Jesus, and examines the book's role in American religious disputes over the interpretation of scripture. Manseau describes the intrigue surrounding the loss and rediscovery of the Jefferson Bible, and traces its remarkable reception history from its first planned printing in 1904 for members of Congress to its persistent power to provoke and enlighten us today.
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Peter Manseau is the author of the narrative history One Nation Under Gods, the documentary history Melancholy Accidents, the novel Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, the memoir Vows, and the travelogue Rag and Bone; he is also the co-author, with Jeff Sharlet, of Killing the Buddha. His writing appears regularly in publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He holds a doctorate from Georgetown University, and is the Curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian Institution.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/41825410Fri, 06 Nov 2020 12:33:22 +0000Daniel GullottaIn his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, Jefferson hoped to reconcile Christian tradition with...
Completed in 1820 and rediscovered by chance in the late nineteenth century after being lost for decades, Jefferson's cut-and-paste scripture has meant different things to different people. Some have held it up as evidence that America is a Christian nation founded on the lessons of the Gospels. Others see it as proof of the Founders' intent to root out the stubborn influence of faith. Manseau explains Jefferson's personal religion and philosophy, shedding light on the influences and ideas that inspired him to radically revise the Gospels. He situates the creation of the Jefferson Bible within the broader search for the historical Jesus, and examines the book's role in American religious disputes over the interpretation of scripture. Manseau describes the intrigue surrounding the loss and rediscovery of the Jefferson Bible, and traces its remarkable reception history from its first planned printing in 1904 for members of Congress to its persistent power to provoke and enlighten us today.
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Peter Manseau is the author of the narrative history One Nation Under Gods, the documentary history Melancholy Accidents, the novel Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, the memoir Vows, and the travelogue Rag and Bone; he is also the co-author, with Jeff Sharlet, of Killing the Buddha. His writing appears regularly in publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He holds a doctorate from Georgetown University, and is the Curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian Institution.]]>2596falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/113-the-whigs-america-with-joseph-w-pearson--41715832Passionate political disagreement is as old as the American Republic, and the antebellum era -- the thirty years before the Civil War -- was as rife with partisan discord as any in our history. From 1834 to 1856, the Whigs battled their opponents, the Jacksonian Democrats, for offices, prestige, and power. The partisan expression of America's rising middle class, the Whigs boasted such famous members as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William Henry Seward, and the party supported tariffs, banks, internal improvements, moral reform, and public education.

In The Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson explores a variety of topics, including the Whigs' understanding of the role of the individual in American politics, their perceptions of political power and the rule of law, and their impressions of the past and what should be learned from history. Long dismissed as a party bereft of ideas, Pearson provides a counterbalance to this trend through an attentive examination of writings from party leaders, contemporaneous newspapers, and other sources. Throughout, he shows that the party attracted optimistic Americans seeking achievement, community, and meaning through collaborative effort and self-control in a world growing more and more impersonal.

Pearson effectively demonstrates that, while the Whigs never achieved the electoral success of their opponents, they were rich with ideas. His detailed study adds complexity and nuance to the history of the antebellum era by illuminating significant aspects of a deeply felt, shared culture that informed and shaped a changing nation.
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Joseph W. Pearson is an associate professor of history at Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/41715832Fri, 30 Oct 2020 13:15:11 +0000Daniel Gullotta[Warning: There was some corruption of the audio file and some parts of the interview are missing]. Passionate political disagreement is as old as the American Republic, and the antebellum era -- the thirty years before the Civil War -- was as rife...Passionate political disagreement is as old as the American Republic, and the antebellum era -- the thirty years before the Civil War -- was as rife with partisan discord as any in our history. From 1834 to 1856, the Whigs battled their opponents, the Jacksonian Democrats, for offices, prestige, and power. The partisan expression of America's rising middle class, the Whigs boasted such famous members as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William Henry Seward, and the party supported tariffs, banks, internal improvements, moral reform, and public education.

In The Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson explores a variety of topics, including the Whigs' understanding of the role of the individual in American politics, their perceptions of political power and the rule of law, and their impressions of the past and what should be learned from history. Long dismissed as a party bereft of ideas, Pearson provides a counterbalance to this trend through an attentive examination of writings from party leaders, contemporaneous newspapers, and other sources. Throughout, he shows that the party attracted optimistic Americans seeking achievement, community, and meaning through collaborative effort and self-control in a world growing more and more impersonal.

Pearson effectively demonstrates that, while the Whigs never achieved the electoral success of their opponents, they were rich with ideas. His detailed study adds complexity and nuance to the history of the antebellum era by illuminating significant aspects of a deeply felt, shared culture that informed and shaped a changing nation.
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Joseph W. Pearson is an associate professor of history at Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky.]]>2943falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/112-stephen-douglas-jefferson-davis-and-the-struggle-for-american-democracy-with-michael-e-woods--41602982Operating on personal, partisan, and national levels, Woods traces the deep roots of Democrats' internal strife, with fault lines drawn around fundamental questions of property rights and majority rule. Neither belief in white supremacy nor expansionist zeal could reconcile Douglas and Davis's factions as their constituents formed their own lines in the proverbial soil of westward expansion. The first major reinterpretation of the Democratic Party's internal schism in more than a generation, Arguing until Doomsday shows how two leading antebellum politicians ultimately shattered their party and hastened the coming of the Civil War.
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Michael E. Woods is an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee and director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson project.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/41602982Fri, 23 Oct 2020 13:38:15 +0000Daniel GullottaAs the sectional crisis gripped the United States, the rancor increasingly spread to the halls of Congress. Preston Brooks's frenzied assault on Charles Sumner was perhaps the most notorious evidence of the dangerous divide between proslavery...Operating on personal, partisan, and national levels, Woods traces the deep roots of Democrats' internal strife, with fault lines drawn around fundamental questions of property rights and majority rule. Neither belief in white supremacy nor expansionist zeal could reconcile Douglas and Davis's factions as their constituents formed their own lines in the proverbial soil of westward expansion. The first major reinterpretation of the Democratic Party's internal schism in more than a generation, Arguing until Doomsday shows how two leading antebellum politicians ultimately shattered their party and hastened the coming of the Civil War.
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Michael E. Woods is an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee and director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson project.]]>4423falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/111-america-s-first-abolition-movement-with-paul-j-polgar--41492473
By reinterpreting the early history of American antislavery, Polgar illustrates that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are as integral to histories of race, rights, and reform in the United States as the mid-nineteenth century.
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Paul J. Polgar is assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/41492473Fri, 16 Oct 2020 12:56:33 +0000Daniel GullottaPaul Polgar recovers the racially inclusive vision of America's first abolition movement. In showcasing the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the New York Manumission Society, and their African American allies during the...
By reinterpreting the early history of American antislavery, Polgar illustrates that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are as integral to histories of race, rights, and reform in the United States as the mid-nineteenth century.
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Paul J. Polgar is assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi.]]>4502falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/110-religion-and-the-making-of-new-york-city-1783-1860-with-kyle-b-roberts--40541640
In Evangelical Gotham, Roberts explores the role of the urban evangelical community in the development of New York between the American Revolution and the Civil War. As developers prepared to open new neighborhoods uptown, evangelicals stood ready to build meetinghouses. As the city’s financial center emerged and solidified, evangelicals capitalized on the resultant wealth, technology, and resources to expand their missionary and benevolent causes. When they began to feel that the city’s morals had degenerated, evangelicals turned to temperance, Sunday school, prayer meetings, antislavery causes, and urban missions to reform their neighbors. The result of these efforts was Evangelical Gotham—a complicated and contradictory world whose influence spread far beyond the shores of Manhattan.
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Kyle Roberts is the Associate Director of Library & Museum Programming of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum. Dr. Roberts helps to integrate the programming departments of the Library, which manage scholarly programming and digital outreach, with those of the Museum, which oversee education programming and adult learning. Prior to coming to the APS Library & Museum, Dr. Roberts was an Associate Professor of Public History and New Media and Director of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at Loyola University Chicago. A scholar of Atlantic World religion, print, and library history, he is the author of Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 (Chicago, 2016) and the co-editor, with Stephen Schloesser, of Crossings and Dwellings: Restored Jesuits, Women Religious, American Experience 1814-2014 (Brill, 2017) and, with Mark Towsey, of Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850 (Brill, 2017).]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/40541640Fri, 28 Aug 2020 14:50:16 +0000Daniel GullottaAt first glance, evangelical and Gotham seem like an odd pair. What does a movement of pious converts and reformers have to do with a city notoriously full of temptation and sin? More than you might think, says Kyle B. Roberts, who argues that...
In Evangelical Gotham, Roberts explores the role of the urban evangelical community in the development of New York between the American Revolution and the Civil War. As developers prepared to open new neighborhoods uptown, evangelicals stood ready to build meetinghouses. As the city’s financial center emerged and solidified, evangelicals capitalized on the resultant wealth, technology, and resources to expand their missionary and benevolent causes. When they began to feel that the city’s morals had degenerated, evangelicals turned to temperance, Sunday school, prayer meetings, antislavery causes, and urban missions to reform their neighbors. The result of these efforts was Evangelical Gotham—a complicated and contradictory world whose influence spread far beyond the shores of Manhattan.
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Kyle Roberts is the Associate Director of Library & Museum Programming of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum. Dr. Roberts helps to integrate the programming departments of the Library, which manage scholarly programming and digital outreach, with those of the Museum, which oversee education programming and adult learning. Prior to coming to the APS Library & Museum, Dr. Roberts was an Associate Professor of Public History and New Media and Director of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at Loyola University Chicago. A scholar of Atlantic World religion, print, and library history, he is the author of Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 (Chicago, 2016) and the co-editor, with Stephen Schloesser, of Crossings and Dwellings: Restored Jesuits, Women Religious, American Experience 1814-2014 (Brill, 2017) and, with Mark Towsey, of Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850 (Brill, 2017).]]>3449falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/109-the-1840-election-and-the-making-of-a-partisan-nation-with-richard-j-ellis--40437857
Richard J. Ellis, a veteran scholar of presidential politics, suggests that the election pitting the Democratic incumbent Martin Van Buren against Whig William Henry Harrison should also be remembered as the first presidential election in which a major political party selected—rather than merely anointed—its nominee at a national nominating convention. In this analysis, the convention’s selection, as well as Henry Clay’s post-convention words and deeds, emerge as crucial factors in the shaping of the nineteenth-century partisan nation. Exploring the puzzle of why the Whig Party’s political titan Henry Clay lost out to a relative political also-ran, Ellis teases out the role the fluctuating economy and growing anti-slavery sentiment played in the party’s fateful decision to nominate the Harrison-Tyler ticket. His work dismantles the caricature of the 1840 campaign (a.k.a. the “carnival campaign”) as all froth and no substance, instead giving due seriousness to the deeply held moral commitments, as well as anxieties about the political system, that informed the campaign.

In Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox, the campaign of 1840 can finally be seen clearly for what it was: a contest of two profoundly different visions of policy and governance, including fundamental, still-pressing questions about the place of the presidency and Congress in the US political system.
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Richard J. Ellis is Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics, Policy, Law, and Ethics at Willamette University. His many books include The Development of the American Presidency (Third Edition), Historian in Chief: How Presidents Interpret the Past to Shape the Future (as coeditor), and, from Kansas, Presidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/40437857Fri, 21 Aug 2020 15:01:00 +0000Daniel GullottaUsually remembered for its slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” the election of 1840 is also the first presidential election of which it might be truly said, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Tackling a contest best known for log cabins, cider barrels, and...
Richard J. Ellis, a veteran scholar of presidential politics, suggests that the election pitting the Democratic incumbent Martin Van Buren against Whig William Henry Harrison should also be remembered as the first presidential election in which a major political party selected—rather than merely anointed—its nominee at a national nominating convention. In this analysis, the convention’s selection, as well as Henry Clay’s post-convention words and deeds, emerge as crucial factors in the shaping of the nineteenth-century partisan nation. Exploring the puzzle of why the Whig Party’s political titan Henry Clay lost out to a relative political also-ran, Ellis teases out the role the fluctuating economy and growing anti-slavery sentiment played in the party’s fateful decision to nominate the Harrison-Tyler ticket. His work dismantles the caricature of the 1840 campaign (a.k.a. the “carnival campaign”) as all froth and no substance, instead giving due seriousness to the deeply held moral commitments, as well as anxieties about the political system, that informed the campaign.

In Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox, the campaign of 1840 can finally be seen clearly for what it was: a contest of two profoundly different visions of policy and governance, including fundamental, still-pressing questions about the place of the presidency and Congress in the US political system.
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Richard J. Ellis is Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics, Policy, Law, and Ethics at Willamette University. His many books include The Development of the American Presidency (Third Edition), Historian in Chief: How Presidents Interpret the Past to Shape the Future (as coeditor), and, from Kansas, Presidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush.]]>5401falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/108-the-life-of-john-tyler-the-president-without-a-party-with-christopher-j-leahy--40322436
Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler’s early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice­-presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler’s ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later.

Leahy also examines the president’s personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a “traitor president.”

The most complete accounting of Tyler’s life and career, Leahy’s biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South’s dominant ideology of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-­of-­the­-road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president―the annexation of Texas―exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.
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Dr. Leahy, who began teaching at Keuka College in August 2007, earned his bachelor’s degree from Washington and Jefferson College, his master’s degree from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/40322436Fri, 14 Aug 2020 14:39:15 +0000Daniel GullottaHistorians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation’s least effective heads of state. In President without a Party―the first full­-scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight...
Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler’s early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice­-presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler’s ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later.

Leahy also examines the president’s personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a “traitor president.”

The most complete accounting of Tyler’s life and career, Leahy’s biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South’s dominant ideology of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-­of-­the­-road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president―the annexation of Texas―exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.
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Dr. Leahy, who began teaching at Keuka College in August 2007, earned his bachelor’s degree from Washington and Jefferson College, his master’s degree from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.]]>5312falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/107-the-rage-for-paper-money-in-the-early-republic-with-joshua-r-greenberg--40193724
Locating evidence of Americans grappling with their money in fiction, correspondence, newspapers, printed ephemera, government documents, legal cases, and even on the money itself, Greenberg argues Americans, by necessity, developed the ability to analyze the value of paper financial instruments, assess the strength of banking institutions, and even track legislative changes that might alter the rules of currency circulation. In his examination of the doodles, calculations, political screeds, and commercial stamps that ended up on bank bills, he connects the material culture of cash to financial, political, and intellectual history.

The book demonstrates that the shift from state-regulated banks and private shinplaster producers to federally authorized paper money in the Civil War era led to the erasure of the skill, knowledge, and lived experience with banking that informed debates over economic policy. The end result, Greenberg writes, has been a diminished public understanding of how currency and the financial sector operate in our contemporary era, from the 2008 recession to the rise of Bitcoin.
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Joshua R. Greenberg is the editor of Commonplace: the journal of early American life.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/40193724Fri, 07 Aug 2020 14:38:31 +0000Daniel GullottaBefore Civil War greenbacks and a national bank network established a uniform federal currency in the United States, the proliferation of loosely regulated banks saturated the early American republic with upwards of 10,000 unique and legal bank notes....
Locating evidence of Americans grappling with their money in fiction, correspondence, newspapers, printed ephemera, government documents, legal cases, and even on the money itself, Greenberg argues Americans, by necessity, developed the ability to analyze the value of paper financial instruments, assess the strength of banking institutions, and even track legislative changes that might alter the rules of currency circulation. In his examination of the doodles, calculations, political screeds, and commercial stamps that ended up on bank bills, he connects the material culture of cash to financial, political, and intellectual history.

The book demonstrates that the shift from state-regulated banks and private shinplaster producers to federally authorized paper money in the Civil War era led to the erasure of the skill, knowledge, and lived experience with banking that informed debates over economic policy. The end result, Greenberg writes, has been a diminished public understanding of how currency and the financial sector operate in our contemporary era, from the 2008 recession to the rise of Bitcoin.
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Joshua R. Greenberg is the editor of Commonplace: the journal of early American life.]]>3664falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/106-merrill-d-peterson-s-the-great-triumvirate-webster-clay-and-calhoun-1988-with-james-bradley-history-of-history-20--40075258
Arriving on the national scene at the onset of the War of 1812 and departing political life during the ordeal of the Union in 1850-52, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun opened--and closed--a new era in American politics. In outlook and style, they represented startling contrasts: Webster, the Federalist and staunch New England defender of the Union; Clay, the "war hawk" and National Rebublican leader from the West; Calhoun, the youthful nationalist who became the foremost spokesman of the South and slavery. They came together in the Senate for the first time in 1832, united in their opposition of Andrew Jackson, and thus gave birth to the idea of the "Great Triumvirate." Entering the history books, this idea survived the test of time because these men divided so much of American politics between them for so long.

Peterson brings to life the great events in which the Triumvirate figured so prominently, including the debates on Clay's American System, the Missouri Compromise, the Webster-Hayne debate, the Bank War, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the annexation of Texas, and the Compromise of 1850. At once a sweeping narrative and a penetrating study of non-presidential leadership, this book offers an indelible picture of this conservative era in which statesmen viewed the preservation of the legacy of free government inherited from the Founding Fathers as their principal mission. In fascinating detail, Peterson demonstrates how precisely Webster, Clay, and Calhoun exemplify three facets of this national mind.
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James Bradley holds an M.A. in history from New York University, has been a journalist and editor for more than 20 years, contributing to The Village Voice, The New York Observer, and New York Newsday, among other publications. He has been an editor at Time Inc. since 1998. For five years, he was the senior project editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City, published by Yale University Press, now in its second edition. Bradley is currently under contract with Oxford University Press to complete a biography of Van Buren. He has a home in the Hudson Valley and often visits the Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook to do research.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/40075258Fri, 31 Jul 2020 14:42:17 +0000Daniel GullottaEnormously powerful, intensely ambitious, the very personifications of their respective regions--Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun represented the foremost statemen of their age. In the decades preceding the Civil War, they dominated...
Arriving on the national scene at the onset of the War of 1812 and departing political life during the ordeal of the Union in 1850-52, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun opened--and closed--a new era in American politics. In outlook and style, they represented startling contrasts: Webster, the Federalist and staunch New England defender of the Union; Clay, the "war hawk" and National Rebublican leader from the West; Calhoun, the youthful nationalist who became the foremost spokesman of the South and slavery. They came together in the Senate for the first time in 1832, united in their opposition of Andrew Jackson, and thus gave birth to the idea of the "Great Triumvirate." Entering the history books, this idea survived the test of time because these men divided so much of American politics between them for so long.

Peterson brings to life the great events in which the Triumvirate figured so prominently, including the debates on Clay's American System, the Missouri Compromise, the Webster-Hayne debate, the Bank War, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the annexation of Texas, and the Compromise of 1850. At once a sweeping narrative and a penetrating study of non-presidential leadership, this book offers an indelible picture of this conservative era in which statesmen viewed the preservation of the legacy of free government inherited from the Founding Fathers as their principal mission. In fascinating detail, Peterson demonstrates how precisely Webster, Clay, and Calhoun exemplify three facets of this national mind.
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James Bradley holds an M.A. in history from New York University, has been a journalist and editor for more than 20 years, contributing to The Village Voice, The New York Observer, and New York Newsday, among other publications. He has been an editor at Time Inc. since 1998. For five years, he was the senior project editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City, published by Yale University Press, now in its second edition. Bradley is currently under contract with Oxford University Press to complete a biography of Van Buren. He has a home in the Hudson Valley and often visits the Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook to do research.]]>3960falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/105-tariff-wars-and-the-politics-of-jacksonian-america-with-william-k-bolt--39959162
The spreading of democracy caused by the tariff evoked bitter sectional controversy among Americans. Northerners claimed they needed a tariff to protect their industries and also their wages. Southerners alleged the tariff forced them to buy goods at increased prices. Having lost the argument against the tariff on its merits, in the 1820s, southerners began to argue the Constitution did not allow Congress to enact a protective tariff. In this fight, we see increased tensions between northerners and southerners in the decades before the Civil War began.

As Tariff Wars reveals, this struggle spawned a controversy that placed the nation on a path that would lead to the early morning hours of Charleston Harbor in April of 1861.
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William K. Bolt is Assistant Professor of History at Francis Marion University and former assistant editor on the James K. Polk Project.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/39959162Fri, 24 Jul 2020 15:57:43 +0000Daniel GullottaBefore the Civil War, the American people did not have to worry about a federal tax collector coming to their door. The reason why was the tariff, taxing foreign goods and imports on arrival in the United States. Tariff Wars and the Politics of...
The spreading of democracy caused by the tariff evoked bitter sectional controversy among Americans. Northerners claimed they needed a tariff to protect their industries and also their wages. Southerners alleged the tariff forced them to buy goods at increased prices. Having lost the argument against the tariff on its merits, in the 1820s, southerners began to argue the Constitution did not allow Congress to enact a protective tariff. In this fight, we see increased tensions between northerners and southerners in the decades before the Civil War began.

As Tariff Wars reveals, this struggle spawned a controversy that placed the nation on a path that would lead to the early morning hours of Charleston Harbor in April of 1861.
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William K. Bolt is Assistant Professor of History at Francis Marion University and former assistant editor on the James K. Polk Project.]]>3841falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/104-church-state-relations-in-the-early-american-republic-with-james-s-kabala--39816090-
James S. Kabala received his Ph.D. in History from Brown University. He is an adjunct professor at Rhode Island College and Community College of Rhode Island.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/39816090Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:33:05 +0000Daniel GullottaAmericans of the Early Republic devoted close attention to the question of what should be the proper relationship between church and state. This issue engaged participants from all religions, denominations and party affiliations. Kabala examines this...-
James S. Kabala received his Ph.D. in History from Brown University. He is an adjunct professor at Rhode Island College and Community College of Rhode Island.]]>3864falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/103-white-women-as-slave-owners-in-the-american-south-with-stephanie-e-jones-rogers--38337916-
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the winner of the 2013 Lerner-Scott Prize for best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women’s history.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/38337916Fri, 10 Jul 2020 14:18:32 +0000Daniel GullottaBridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that...-
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the winner of the 2013 Lerner-Scott Prize for best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women’s history.]]>4216falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/102-european-nationalist-movements-and-the-creation-of-the-confederacy-with-ann-l-tucker--33660086
While popular at home, claims to equivalency with European nations failed to resonate with Europeans and northerners, who viewed slavery as incompatible with liberal nationalism. Forced to reevaluate their claims about the international place of southern nationalism, some southerners redoubled their attempts to place the Confederacy within the broader trends of nineteenth-century nationalism. More conservative southerners took a different tack, emphasizing the distinctiveness of their nationalism, claiming that the Confederacy actually purified nationalism through slavery. Southern Unionists likewise internationalized their case for national unity. By examining the evolution of and variation within these international perspectives, Tucker reveals the making of a southern nationhood to be a complex, contested process.
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Ann L. Tucker is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Georgia. She earned her BA at Wake Forest University and MA and Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Tucker’s areas of expertise include the Civil War era and US South, which she approaches through a transnational perspective. She is interested in questions of southern identity and international influences; in particular, she wants to know how events in Europe helped shape southern identity in the Civil War era. Her first book is Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalist Movements and the Creation of the Confederacy. You can follow her on Twitter, @AnnLTucker.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/33660086Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:16:42 +0000Daniel GullottaFrom the earliest stirrings of southern nationalism to the defeat of the Confederacy, analysis of European nationalist movements played a critical role in how southerners thought about their new southern nation. Southerners argued that because the...
While popular at home, claims to equivalency with European nations failed to resonate with Europeans and northerners, who viewed slavery as incompatible with liberal nationalism. Forced to reevaluate their claims about the international place of southern nationalism, some southerners redoubled their attempts to place the Confederacy within the broader trends of nineteenth-century nationalism. More conservative southerners took a different tack, emphasizing the distinctiveness of their nationalism, claiming that the Confederacy actually purified nationalism through slavery. Southern Unionists likewise internationalized their case for national unity. By examining the evolution of and variation within these international perspectives, Tucker reveals the making of a southern nationhood to be a complex, contested process.
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Ann L. Tucker is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Georgia. She earned her BA at Wake Forest University and MA and Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Tucker’s areas of expertise include the Civil War era and US South, which she approaches through a transnational perspective. She is interested in questions of southern identity and international influences; in particular, she wants to know how events in Europe helped shape southern identity in the Civil War era. Her first book is Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalist Movements and the Creation of the Confederacy. You can follow her on Twitter, @AnnLTucker.]]>3173falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/101-christine-stansell-s-city-of-women-sex-and-class-in-new-york-1789-1860-1986-with-anne-twitty-history-of-history-19--28637745
Christine Stansell writes about the social, sexual, and cultural history of American women and gender relations. Her most recent book, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century, follows an influential group of writers, artists, and political radicals from 1890 to 1920. Stansell’s first book, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860, reveals the central role that working-class women played in the city’s history. She worked in the new field of the history of sexuality, collaborating with Ann Snitow and Sharon Thompson to publish Powers of Desire; The Politics of Sexuality. She has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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Anne Twitty is an Associate Professor of History & Chair of the Undergraduate Committee at the University of Mississippi. Broadly defined, Professor Twitty’s research focuses on questions of nineteenth-century American social and cultural history, with a special emphasis on legal and labor history, slavery and freedom, gender and women’s history, and the history of the South and Midwest. She joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 2010 after completing her bachelor’s degree in political science at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her master’s and doctoral degrees in history at Princeton University. Her first book, Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. You can follow her on Twitter: @ProfessorTwitty.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/28637745Fri, 29 May 2020 14:48:26 +0000Daniel GullottaBefore the Civil War, a new idea of womanhood took shape in America in general and in the Northeast in particular. Women of the propertied classes assumed the mantle of moral guardians of their families and the nation. Laboring women, by contrast,...
Christine Stansell writes about the social, sexual, and cultural history of American women and gender relations. Her most recent book, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century, follows an influential group of writers, artists, and political radicals from 1890 to 1920. Stansell’s first book, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860, reveals the central role that working-class women played in the city’s history. She worked in the new field of the history of sexuality, collaborating with Ann Snitow and Sharon Thompson to publish Powers of Desire; The Politics of Sexuality. She has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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Anne Twitty is an Associate Professor of History & Chair of the Undergraduate Committee at the University of Mississippi. Broadly defined, Professor Twitty’s research focuses on questions of nineteenth-century American social and cultural history, with a special emphasis on legal and labor history, slavery and freedom, gender and women’s history, and the history of the South and Midwest. She joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 2010 after completing her bachelor’s degree in political science at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her master’s and doctoral degrees in history at Princeton University. Her first book, Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. You can follow her on Twitter: @ProfessorTwitty.]]>4712falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/100-andrew-jackson-and-his-papers-with-daniel-feller--28059314
The Papers of Andrew Jackson is a project to collect and publish Jackson’s entire extant literary record. After an extended worldwide search, the project has obtained photocopies of every known and available Jackson document, including letters he wrote and received, official and military papers, drafts, memoranda, legal papers, and financial records – some 100,000 items in all. In 1987 the project produced a microfilm edition of 39 reels, including all the new documents that had been found. It also issued a comprehensive Guide and Index, listing every known Jackson item by sender or recipient, date, and microfilm location.

The project is now producing a series of seventeen volumes that will bring Jackson’s most important papers to the public in easily readable form. PDFs of all published volumes are now available for free, immediate download via the University of Tennessee’s Newfound Press. Also online is the Library of Congress’s Andrew Jackson Papers, a digital archive that provides direct access to the manuscript images of many of the Jackson documents transcribed and annotated in our volumes. Rotunda’s American History Collection hosts digital versions of all our volumes, with advanced features such as cross-volume and cross-collection searching and links pairing documents with manuscript images on the Library of Congress’s Jackson Papers site.

The Papers of Andrew Jackson is sponsored by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and supported by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Tennessee Historical Commission.
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Daniel Feller is a Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the Director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson. Professor Feller’s scholarly interests encompass mid-nineteenth-century America as a whole, with special attention to Jacksonian politics and the coming of the Civil War. Besides the publications listed below, he has contributed to numerous historical reference works, including the Oxford Companion to United States History, the Reader’s Guide to American History, the Dictionary of American History, and American National Biography. His critical essays and review articles have appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic, Reviews in American History, Documentary Editing, and on H-SHEAR. Professor Feller has been active in the Association for Documentary Editing, the Southern Historical Association, British American Nineteenth-Century Historians (BrANCH), and especially the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), where he served from 1991 to 2004 as Conference Coordinator for its annual summer meeting. In 2000 he was a Commonwealth Fund Lecturer in American History at University College London. He is currently at work on a biography of Benjamin Tappan, a Jacksonian politician, scientist, social reformer, and freethinker. He is the author of The Public Lands in Jacksonian Politics and The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815 to 1840.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/28059314Fri, 22 May 2020 15:03:39 +0000Daniel GullottaAndrew Jackson was of one of the most critical and controversial figures in American history. The dominant actor on the American scene in the half-century between Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Jackson lent his name first to a political...
The Papers of Andrew Jackson is a project to collect and publish Jackson’s entire extant literary record. After an extended worldwide search, the project has obtained photocopies of every known and available Jackson document, including letters he wrote and received, official and military papers, drafts, memoranda, legal papers, and financial records – some 100,000 items in all. In 1987 the project produced a microfilm edition of 39 reels, including all the new documents that had been found. It also issued a comprehensive Guide and Index, listing every known Jackson item by sender or recipient, date, and microfilm location.

The project is now producing a series of seventeen volumes that will bring Jackson’s most important papers to the public in easily readable form. PDFs of all published volumes are now available for free, immediate download via the University of Tennessee’s Newfound Press. Also online is the Library of Congress’s Andrew Jackson Papers, a digital archive that provides direct access to the manuscript images of many of the Jackson documents transcribed and annotated in our volumes. Rotunda’s American History Collection hosts digital versions of all our volumes, with advanced features such as cross-volume and cross-collection searching and links pairing documents with manuscript images on the Library of Congress’s Jackson Papers site.

The Papers of Andrew Jackson is sponsored by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and supported by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Tennessee Historical Commission.
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Daniel Feller is a Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the Director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson. Professor Feller’s scholarly interests encompass mid-nineteenth-century America as a whole, with special attention to Jacksonian politics and the coming of the Civil War. Besides the publications listed below, he has contributed to numerous historical reference works, including the Oxford Companion to United States History, the Reader’s Guide to American History, the Dictionary of American History, and American National Biography. His critical essays and review articles have appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic, Reviews in American History, Documentary Editing, and on H-SHEAR. Professor Feller has been active in the Association for Documentary Editing, the Southern Historical Association, British American Nineteenth-Century Historians (BrANCH), and especially the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), where he served from 1991 to 2004 as Conference Coordinator for its annual summer meeting. In 2000 he was a Commonwealth Fund Lecturer in American History at University College London. He is currently at work on a biography of Benjamin...]]>6356falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/099-the-battle-of-new-orleans-and-the-rebirth-of-america-with-william-c-davis--27414051
It was a battle that could not be won. Outnumbered farmers, merchants, backwoodsmen, smugglers, slaves, and Choctaw Indians, many of them unarmed, were up against the cream of the British army, professional soldiers who had defeated the great Napoleon and set Washington, D.C., ablaze. At stake was nothing less than the future of the vast American heartland, from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, as the ragtag American forces fought to hold New Orleans, the gateway of the Mississippi River and an inland empire.

Tipping the balance of power in the New World, this single battle irrevocably shifted the young republic's political and cultural center of gravity and kept the British from ever regaining dominance in North America. In this gripping, comprehensive study of the Battle of New Orleans, William C. Davis examines the key players and strategy of King George's Red Coats and Andrew Jackson's makeshift "army." A master historian, he expertly weaves together narratives of personal motivation and geopolitical implications that make this battle one of the most impactful ever fought on American soil.
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William C. Davis is a retired history professor who taught at Virginia Tech. An acclaimed expert on the Civil War, he has served on a number of advisory boards, including the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; the Civil War Preservation Trust; the Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Virginia; the National Park Service; and the Lincoln Prize and Pulitzer Prize nominating juries. He is the author of numerous books, including Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, and Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee - the War They Fought, the Peace They Forged. His most recent work is The Greatest Fury: The Battle of New Orleans and the Rebirth of America.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/27414051Fri, 15 May 2020 14:19:16 +0000Daniel GullottaFrom master historian William C. Davis, the definitive story of the Battle of New Orleans, the fight that decided the ultimate fate not only of the War of 1812 but the future course of the fledgling American republic It was a battle that could not...
It was a battle that could not be won. Outnumbered farmers, merchants, backwoodsmen, smugglers, slaves, and Choctaw Indians, many of them unarmed, were up against the cream of the British army, professional soldiers who had defeated the great Napoleon and set Washington, D.C., ablaze. At stake was nothing less than the future of the vast American heartland, from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, as the ragtag American forces fought to hold New Orleans, the gateway of the Mississippi River and an inland empire.

Tipping the balance of power in the New World, this single battle irrevocably shifted the young republic's political and cultural center of gravity and kept the British from ever regaining dominance in North America. In this gripping, comprehensive study of the Battle of New Orleans, William C. Davis examines the key players and strategy of King George's Red Coats and Andrew Jackson's makeshift "army." A master historian, he expertly weaves together narratives of personal motivation and geopolitical implications that make this battle one of the most impactful ever fought on American soil.
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William C. Davis is a retired history professor who taught at Virginia Tech. An acclaimed expert on the Civil War, he has served on a number of advisory boards, including the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; the Civil War Preservation Trust; the Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Virginia; the National Park Service; and the Lincoln Prize and Pulitzer Prize nominating juries. He is the author of numerous books, including Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, and Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee - the War They Fought, the Peace They Forged. His most recent work is The Greatest Fury: The Battle of New Orleans and the Rebirth of America.]]>3831falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/098-fixing-the-american-constitution-in-the-founding-era-with-jonathan-gienapp--26904460Americans widely believe that the United States Constitution was created when it was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But in a shrewd rereading of the founding era, Jonathan Gienapp upends this long-held assumption, recovering the unknown story of American constitutional creation in the decade after its adoption—a story with explosive implications for current debates over constitutional originalism and interpretation.
When the Constitution first appeared, it was shrouded in uncertainty. Not only was its meaning unclear, but so too was its essential nature. Was the American Constitution a written text, or something else? Was it a legal text? Was it finished or unfinished? What rules would guide its interpretation? Who would adjudicate competing readings? As political leaders put the Constitution to work, none of these questions had answers. Through vigorous debates they confronted the document’s uncertainty, and—over time—how these leaders imagined the Constitution radically changed. They had begun trying to fix, or resolve, an imperfect document, but they ended up fixing, or cementing, a very particular notion of the Constitution as a distinctively textual and historical artifact circumscribed in space and time. This means that some of the Constitution’s most definitive characteristics, ones which are often treated as innate, were only added later and were thus contingent and optional.
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Jonathan Gienapp is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. A scholar of early American political culture, he has written several articles on early constitutional history and modern constitutional theory and interpretation that speak to current political concerns. He is the author of The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/26904460Fri, 08 May 2020 14:02:20 +0000Daniel GullottaA stunning revision of our founding document’s evolving history that forces us to confront anew the question that animated the founders so long ago: What is our Constitution? Americans widely believe that the United States Constitution was created...Americans widely believe that the United States Constitution was created when it was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But in a shrewd rereading of the founding era, Jonathan Gienapp upends this long-held assumption, recovering the unknown story of American constitutional creation in the decade after its adoption—a story with explosive implications for current debates over constitutional originalism and interpretation.
When the Constitution first appeared, it was shrouded in uncertainty. Not only was its meaning unclear, but so too was its essential nature. Was the American Constitution a written text, or something else? Was it a legal text? Was it finished or unfinished? What rules would guide its interpretation? Who would adjudicate competing readings? As political leaders put the Constitution to work, none of these questions had answers. Through vigorous debates they confronted the document’s uncertainty, and—over time—how these leaders imagined the Constitution radically changed. They had begun trying to fix, or resolve, an imperfect document, but they ended up fixing, or cementing, a very particular notion of the Constitution as a distinctively textual and historical artifact circumscribed in space and time. This means that some of the Constitution’s most definitive characteristics, ones which are often treated as innate, were only added later and were thus contingent and optional.
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Jonathan Gienapp is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. A scholar of early American political culture, he has written several articles on early constitutional history and modern constitutional theory and interpretation that speak to current political concerns. He is the author of The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era.]]>4899falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/covid-19-book-recommendations-fashion-advice-and-ask-us-anything-with-craig-bruce-smith--24105045https://api.spreaker.com/episode/24105045Fri, 20 Mar 2020 18:38:29 +0000Daniel Gullotta3930falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/097-the-intimate-world-of-james-buchanan-and-william-rufus-king-with-thomas-j-balcerski--23837801
In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation's capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan's and King's contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man's rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation's fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them.

While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were--and continue to be--an important part of success in American politics.
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Thomas J. Balcerski is an Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Ph. D. from Cornell University. He is the author of Acacia Fraternity at Cornell: The First Century and Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. You can follow him on Twitter at @tbalcerski.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/23837801Fri, 13 Mar 2020 18:23:34 +0000Daniel GullottaThe friendship of the bachelor politicians James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania and William Rufus King (1786-1853) of Alabama has excited much speculation through the years. Why did neither marry? Might they have been gay? Or was their...
In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation's capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan's and King's contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man's rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation's fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them.

While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were--and continue to be--an important part of success in American politics.
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Thomas J. Balcerski is an Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Ph. D. from Cornell University. He is the author of Acacia Fraternity at Cornell: The First Century and Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. You can follow him on Twitter at @tbalcerski.]]>4843falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/096-the-mormon-kingdom-of-nauvoo-with-benjamin-e-park--23290786
Drawing on newly available sources from the LDS Church―sources that had been kept unseen in Church archives for 150 years―Park recreates one of the most dramatic episodes of the 19th century frontier. Founded in Western Illinois in 1839 by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his followers, Nauvoo initially served as a haven from mob attacks the Mormons had endured in neighboring Missouri, where, in one incident, seventeen men, women, and children were massacred, and where the governor declared that all Mormons should be exterminated. In the relative safety of Nauvoo, situated on a hill and protected on three sides by the Mississippi River, the industrious Mormons quickly built a religious empire; at its peak, the city surpassed Chicago in population, with more than 12,000 inhabitants. The Mormons founded their own army, with Smith as its general; established their own courts; and went so far as to write their own constitution, in which they declared that there could be no separation of church and state, and that the world was to be ruled by Mormon priests.

This experiment in religious utopia, however, began to unravel when gentiles in the countryside around Nauvoo heard rumors of a new Mormon marital practice. More than any previous work, Kingdom of Nauvoo pieces together the haphazard and surprising emergence of Mormon polygamy, and reveals that most Mormons were not participants themselves, though they too heard the rumors, which said that Joseph Smith and other married Church officials had been “sealed” to multiple women. Evidence of polygamy soon became undeniable, and non-Mormons reacted with horror, as did many Mormons―including Joseph Smith’s first wife, Emma Smith, a strong-willed woman who resisted the strictures of her deeply patriarchal community and attempted to save her Church, and family, even when it meant opposing her husband and prophet.

A raucous, violent, character-driven story, Kingdom of Nauvoo raises many of the central questions of American history, and even serves as a parable for the American present. How far does religious freedom extend? Can religious and other minority groups survive in a democracy where the majority dictates the law of the land? The Mormons of Nauvoo, who initially believed in the promise of American democracy, would become its strongest critics. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows the many ways in which the Mormons were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates nineteenth-century Mormon history into the American mainstream.
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Benjamin E. Park is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge and is the author of American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833 and Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. He has also written for the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Houston Chronicle, and lives in Conroe, Texas.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/23290786Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:43:37 +0000Daniel GullottaCompared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, treated as fringe cultists at best or marginalized as polygamists unworthy of serious examination at worst. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, the historian Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief life...
Drawing on newly available sources from the LDS Church―sources that had been kept unseen in Church archives for 150 years―Park recreates one of the most dramatic episodes of the 19th century frontier. Founded in Western Illinois in 1839 by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his followers, Nauvoo initially served as a haven from mob attacks the Mormons had endured in neighboring Missouri, where, in one incident, seventeen men, women, and children were massacred, and where the governor declared that all Mormons should be exterminated. In the relative safety of Nauvoo, situated on a hill and protected on three sides by the Mississippi River, the industrious Mormons quickly built a religious empire; at its peak, the city surpassed Chicago in population, with more than 12,000 inhabitants. The Mormons founded their own army, with Smith as its general; established their own courts; and went so far as to write their own constitution, in which they declared that there could be no separation of church and state, and that the world was to be ruled by Mormon priests.

This experiment in religious utopia, however, began to unravel when gentiles in the countryside around Nauvoo heard rumors of a new Mormon marital practice. More than any previous work, Kingdom of Nauvoo pieces together the haphazard and surprising emergence of Mormon polygamy, and reveals that most Mormons were not participants themselves, though they too heard the rumors, which said that Joseph Smith and other married Church officials had been “sealed” to multiple women. Evidence of polygamy soon became undeniable, and non-Mormons reacted with horror, as did many Mormons―including Joseph Smith’s first wife, Emma Smith, a strong-willed woman who resisted the strictures of her deeply patriarchal community and attempted to save her Church, and family, even when it meant opposing her husband and prophet.

A raucous, violent, character-driven story, Kingdom of Nauvoo raises many of the central questions of American history, and even serves as a parable for the American present. How far does religious freedom extend? Can religious and other minority groups survive in a democracy where the majority dictates the law of the land? The Mormons of Nauvoo, who initially believed in the promise of American democracy, would become its strongest critics. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows the many ways in which the Mormons were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates nineteenth-century Mormon history into the American mainstream.
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Benjamin E. Park is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge and is the author of American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833 and Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. He has also written for the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Houston Chronicle, and lives in Conroe, Texas.]]>3682falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/095-jackson-harrison-and-taylor-using-indian-killing-for-political-gain-with-barbara-alice-mann--23041025
President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain examines the way in which presidential hopefuls through the first half of the nineteenth century parlayed militarily mounted land grabs into "Indian-hating" political capital to attain the highest office in the United States. The text zeroes in on three eras of U.S. "expansionism" as it led to the massacre of Indians to "open" land to African slavery while luring lower European classes into racism's promise to raise "white" above "red" and "black."

This book inquires deeply into the existence of the affected Muskogee ("Creek"), Shawnee, Sauk, Meskwaki ("Fox"), and Seminole, before and after invasion, showing what it meant to them to have been so displaced and to have lost a large percentage of their members in the process. It additionally addresses land seizures from these and the Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, Black Hawk, and Osceola tribes.

President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain is written for undergraduate and graduate readers who are interested in the Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, U.S. slavery, and the settler politics of U.S. expansionism.
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Barbara Alice Mann is Professor of Honors Humanities in the Jesup Scott Honors College, University of Toledo. She is the author of several books, including Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath: The Twinned Cosmos of Indigenous America, Iroquoian Women : The Gantowisas, George Washington's War on Native America, and most recently President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain. A Bear Clan, Ohio Seneca, she is co-chair of the Native American Alliance of Ohio.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/23041025Fri, 21 Feb 2020 18:44:17 +0000Daniel GullottaPresident by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain pulls back the curtain of "expansionism," revealing how Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor massacred Indians to "open" land to slavery and oligarchic fortunes....
President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain examines the way in which presidential hopefuls through the first half of the nineteenth century parlayed militarily mounted land grabs into "Indian-hating" political capital to attain the highest office in the United States. The text zeroes in on three eras of U.S. "expansionism" as it led to the massacre of Indians to "open" land to African slavery while luring lower European classes into racism's promise to raise "white" above "red" and "black."

This book inquires deeply into the existence of the affected Muskogee ("Creek"), Shawnee, Sauk, Meskwaki ("Fox"), and Seminole, before and after invasion, showing what it meant to them to have been so displaced and to have lost a large percentage of their members in the process. It additionally addresses land seizures from these and the Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, Black Hawk, and Osceola tribes.

President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain is written for undergraduate and graduate readers who are interested in the Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, U.S. slavery, and the settler politics of U.S. expansionism.
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Barbara Alice Mann is Professor of Honors Humanities in the Jesup Scott Honors College, University of Toledo. She is the author of several books, including Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath: The Twinned Cosmos of Indigenous America, Iroquoian Women : The Gantowisas, George Washington's War on Native America, and most recently President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain. A Bear Clan, Ohio Seneca, she is co-chair of the Native American Alliance of Ohio.]]>3728falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/094-the-influence-of-european-separatists-on-southern-secession-with-niels-eichhorn--22770111
Eichhorn’s analysis begins with the separatist movements of 1830 in Greece, Belgium, and Poland, which, in many regards, laid a new foundation for similar rebellions later in the century. Turning next to the 1848 uprisings, he focuses on the vaguely interpreted revolts in Ireland, Hungary, and Schleswig-Holstein. Revolutionaries embraced or rejected the language of slavery, Eichhorn argues, to justify their rebellion and its larger goals. The failure of these insurgencies propelled a wave of revolutionary migrants across the Atlantic world. Those who journeyed to the United States settled mostly in the North, but all faced the challenge of adjusting to the new political and sectional divisions in their adopted home.

Ultimately, Eichhorn contends that European migrants to the United States were steeped in the language of slavery and separatism from their home countries and therefore sided with the Union when the sectional crisis culminated in the secession of the Confederacy and civil war in 1861.
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Niels Eichhorn is an assistant professor of history at Middle Georgia State University. His research focuses on Nineteenth-Century U.S. Diplomatic history, Nineteenth-Century European history, Atlantic World history, transnational history, and most recently Public History. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Arkansas. He is the author of Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War and Atlantic History in the Nineteenth Century: Migration, Trade, Conflict, and Ideas.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/22770111Fri, 14 Feb 2020 14:00:34 +0000Daniel GullottaIn Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War, Niels Eichhorn examines the language of slavery, a component he considers central to revolutionary struggles, especially those fought by European separatists...
Eichhorn’s analysis begins with the separatist movements of 1830 in Greece, Belgium, and Poland, which, in many regards, laid a new foundation for similar rebellions later in the century. Turning next to the 1848 uprisings, he focuses on the vaguely interpreted revolts in Ireland, Hungary, and Schleswig-Holstein. Revolutionaries embraced or rejected the language of slavery, Eichhorn argues, to justify their rebellion and its larger goals. The failure of these insurgencies propelled a wave of revolutionary migrants across the Atlantic world. Those who journeyed to the United States settled mostly in the North, but all faced the challenge of adjusting to the new political and sectional divisions in their adopted home.

Ultimately, Eichhorn contends that European migrants to the United States were steeped in the language of slavery and separatism from their home countries and therefore sided with the Union when the sectional crisis culminated in the secession of the Confederacy and civil war in 1861.
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Niels Eichhorn is an assistant professor of history at Middle Georgia State University. His research focuses on Nineteenth-Century U.S. Diplomatic history, Nineteenth-Century European history, Atlantic World history, transnational history, and most recently Public History. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Arkansas. He is the author of Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War and Atlantic History in the Nineteenth Century: Migration, Trade, Conflict, and Ideas.]]>4338falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/093-thomas-jefferson-s-education-and-the-founding-of-the-university-of-virginia-with-alan-taylor--22515086
By turns entertaining and tragic, this beautifully written history reveals the origins of a great university in the dilemmas of Virginia slavery. It offers an incisive portrait of Thomas Jefferson set against a social fabric of planters in decline, enslaved black families torn apart by sales, and a hair-trigger code of male honor. A man of “deft evasions” who was both courtly and withdrawn, Jefferson sought control of his family and state from his lofty perch at Monticello. Never quite the egalitarian we wish him to be, he advocated emancipation but shrank from implementing it, entrusting that reform to the next generation. Devoted to the education of his granddaughters, he nevertheless accepted their subordination in a masculine culture. During the revolution, he proposed to educate all white children in Virginia, but later in life he narrowed his goal to building an elite university.

In 1819 Jefferson’s intensive drive for state support of a new university succeeded. His intention was a university to educate the sons of Virginia’s wealthy planters, lawyers, and merchants, who might then democratize the state and in time rid it of slavery. But the university’s students, having absorbed the traditional vices of the Virginia gentry, preferred to practice and defend them. Opening in 1825, the university nearly collapsed as unruly students abused one another, the enslaved servants, and the faculty. Jefferson’s hopes of developing an enlightened leadership for the state were disappointed, and Virginia hardened its commitment to slavery in the coming years. The university was born with the flaws of a slave society. Instead, it was Jefferson’s beloved granddaughters who carried forward his faith in education by becoming dedicated teachers of a new generation of women.
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Alan Taylor is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize in history, most recently for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the author of American Colonies: The Settling of North America, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, and most recently Thomas Jefferson's Education.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/22515086Fri, 07 Feb 2020 12:48:54 +0000Daniel GullottaFrom a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a brilliant, absorbing study of Thomas Jefferson’s campaign to save Virginia through education. By turns entertaining and tragic, this beautifully written history reveals the origins of a great...
By turns entertaining and tragic, this beautifully written history reveals the origins of a great university in the dilemmas of Virginia slavery. It offers an incisive portrait of Thomas Jefferson set against a social fabric of planters in decline, enslaved black families torn apart by sales, and a hair-trigger code of male honor. A man of “deft evasions” who was both courtly and withdrawn, Jefferson sought control of his family and state from his lofty perch at Monticello. Never quite the egalitarian we wish him to be, he advocated emancipation but shrank from implementing it, entrusting that reform to the next generation. Devoted to the education of his granddaughters, he nevertheless accepted their subordination in a masculine culture. During the revolution, he proposed to educate all white children in Virginia, but later in life he narrowed his goal to building an elite university.

In 1819 Jefferson’s intensive drive for state support of a new university succeeded. His intention was a university to educate the sons of Virginia’s wealthy planters, lawyers, and merchants, who might then democratize the state and in time rid it of slavery. But the university’s students, having absorbed the traditional vices of the Virginia gentry, preferred to practice and defend them. Opening in 1825, the university nearly collapsed as unruly students abused one another, the enslaved servants, and the faculty. Jefferson’s hopes of developing an enlightened leadership for the state were disappointed, and Virginia hardened its commitment to slavery in the coming years. The university was born with the flaws of a slave society. Instead, it was Jefferson’s beloved granddaughters who carried forward his faith in education by becoming dedicated teachers of a new generation of women.
-
Alan Taylor is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize in history, most recently for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the author of American Colonies: The Settling of North America, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, and most recently Thomas Jefferson's Education.]]>4425falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/092-polygamy-in-early-american-history-with-sarah-m-s-pearsall--22272264
Pearsall expertly opens up broader questions about monogamy’s emergence as the only marital option, tracing the impact of colonial events on property, theology, feminism, imperialism, and the regulation of sexuality. She shows that heterosexual monogamy was never the only model of marriage in North America.
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Sarah M. S. Pearsall is a University Senior Lecturer in the History of Early America and the Atlantic World at Cambridge University. She received her Ph.D. in History from Harvard University and has held teaching positions at St. Andrews University, Northwestern University, and Oxford Brookes University. She is the author of Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century and Polygamy: An Early American History.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/22272264Fri, 31 Jan 2020 15:33:45 +0000Daniel GullottaToday we tend to think of polygamy as an unnatural marital arrangement characteristic of fringe sects or uncivilized peoples. Historian Sarah Pearsall shows us that polygamy’s surprising history encompasses numerous colonies, indigenous communities,...
Pearsall expertly opens up broader questions about monogamy’s emergence as the only marital option, tracing the impact of colonial events on property, theology, feminism, imperialism, and the regulation of sexuality. She shows that heterosexual monogamy was never the only model of marriage in North America.
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Sarah M. S. Pearsall is a University Senior Lecturer in the History of Early America and the Atlantic World at Cambridge University. She received her Ph.D. in History from Harvard University and has held teaching positions at St. Andrews University, Northwestern University, and Oxford Brookes University. She is the author of Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century and Polygamy: An Early American History.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3400falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/091-jefferson-davis-and-the-pro-bonaparte-democrats-with-jeffrey-zvengrowski--22019960
Like Napoleon I and Napoleon III, pro-Davis Confederates desired to build an industrial nation-state capable of waging Napoleonic-style warfare with large conscripted armies. States’ rights, they believed, should not preclude the national government from exercising power. Anglophile anti-Davis Confederates, in contrast, advocated inequality among whites, favored radical states’ rights, and supported slavery-in-the-abstract theories that were dismissive of white supremacy. Having opposed pro-Davis Democrats before the war, they preferred decentralized guerrilla warfare to Napoleonic campaigns and hoped for support from Britain. The Confederacy, they avowed, would willingly become a de facto British agricultural colony upon achieving independence. Pro-Davis Confederates, wanted the Confederacy to become an ally of France and protector of sympathetic northern states.

Zvengrowski traces the origins of the pro-Davis Confederate ideology to Jeffersonian Democrats and their faction of War Hawks, who lost power on the national level in the 1820s but regained it during Davis' term as secretary of war. Davis used this position to cultivate friendly relations with France and later warned northerners that the South would secede if Republicans captured the White House. When Lincoln won the 1860 election, Davis endorsed secession. The ideological heirs of the pro-British faction soon came to loathe Davis for antagonizing Britain and for offering to accept gradual emancipation in exchange for direct assistance from French soldiers in Mexico.

Zvengrowski’s important new interpretation of Confederate ideology situates the Civil War in a global context of imperial competition. It also shows how anti-Davis ex-Confederates came to dominate the postwar South and obscure the true nature of Confederate ideology. Furthermore, it updates the biographies of familiar characters: John C. Calhoun, who befriended Bonapartist officers; Davis, who was as much a Francophile as his namesake, Thomas Jefferson; and Robert E. Lee, who as West Point’s superintendent mentored a grand-nephew of Napoleon I.
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Jeffrey Zvengrowski is an assistant editor for the Papers of George Washington and assistant research professor at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815–1870.
---]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/22019960Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:12:51 +0000Daniel GullottaIn this highly original study of Confederate ideology and politics, Jeffrey Zvengrowski suggests that Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his supporters saw Bonapartist France as a model for the Confederate States of America. They viewed...
Like Napoleon I and Napoleon III, pro-Davis Confederates desired to build an industrial nation-state capable of waging Napoleonic-style warfare with large conscripted armies. States’ rights, they believed, should not preclude the national government from exercising power. Anglophile anti-Davis Confederates, in contrast, advocated inequality among whites, favored radical states’ rights, and supported slavery-in-the-abstract theories that were dismissive of white supremacy. Having opposed pro-Davis Democrats before the war, they preferred decentralized guerrilla warfare to Napoleonic campaigns and hoped for support from Britain. The Confederacy, they avowed, would willingly become a de facto British agricultural colony upon achieving independence. Pro-Davis Confederates, wanted the Confederacy to become an ally of France and protector of sympathetic northern states.

Zvengrowski traces the origins of the pro-Davis Confederate ideology to Jeffersonian Democrats and their faction of War Hawks, who lost power on the national level in the 1820s but regained it during Davis' term as secretary of war. Davis used this position to cultivate friendly relations with France and later warned northerners that the South would secede if Republicans captured the White House. When Lincoln won the 1860 election, Davis endorsed secession. The ideological heirs of the pro-British faction soon came to loathe Davis for antagonizing Britain and for offering to accept gradual emancipation in exchange for direct assistance from French soldiers in Mexico.

Zvengrowski’s important new interpretation of Confederate ideology situates the Civil War in a global context of imperial competition. It also shows how anti-Davis ex-Confederates came to dominate the postwar South and obscure the true nature of Confederate ideology. Furthermore, it updates the biographies of familiar characters: John C. Calhoun, who befriended Bonapartist officers; Davis, who was as much a Francophile as his namesake, Thomas Jefferson; and Robert E. Lee, who as West Point’s superintendent mentored a grand-nephew of Napoleon I.
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Jeffrey Zvengrowski is an assistant editor for the Papers of George Washington and assistant research professor at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815–1870.
---]]>3610falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/090-robert-fogel-and-stanley-engerman-s-time-on-the-cross-the-economics-of-american-negro-slavery-1974-with-phillip-w-magness--21784840-
Phillip W. Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University. He is the author of numerous works on economic history, taxation, economic inequality, the history of slavery, and education policy in the United States. He is the author of Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement. You can follow him on Twitter at: @PhilWMagness.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/21784840Fri, 17 Jan 2020 15:30:44 +0000Daniel GullottaTime on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974) is a book by the economists Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Asserting that slavery was an economically viable institution that had some benefits for African Americans, the book...-
Phillip W. Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University. He is the author of numerous works on economic history, taxation, economic inequality, the history of slavery, and education policy in the United States. He is the author of Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement. You can follow him on Twitter at: @PhilWMagness.]]>3674falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/089-america-s-revolutionary-mind-with-c-bradley-thompson--20771678
The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776.

The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought―what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
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C. Bradley Thompson is a Professor of Political Philosophy at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D. at Brown University, and he has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London. He is the author of the award-winning John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty as well as Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. His most recent work is America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/20771678Fri, 20 Dec 2019 11:55:54 +0000Daniel GullottaAmerica's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the...
The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776.

The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought―what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
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C. Bradley Thompson is a Professor of Political Philosophy at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D. at Brown University, and he has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London. He is the author of the award-winning John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty as well as Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. His most recent work is America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It.]]>4928falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/088-george-washington-the-newburgh-conspiracy-and-the-fate-of-the-american-revolution-with-david-head--20719255
After the British surrender at Yorktown, the American Revolution blazed on, and as peace was negotiated in Europe, grave problems surfaced at home. The government was broke and paid its debts with loans from France. Political rivalry among the states paralyzed Congress. The army’s officers, encamped near Newburgh, New York, and restless without an enemy to fight, brooded over a civilian population indifferent to their sacrifices.

The result was the Newburgh Conspiracy, a mysterious event in which Continental Army officers, disgruntled by a lack of pay and pensions, may have collaborated with nationalist-minded politicians such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Robert Morris to pressure Congress and the states to approve new taxes and strengthen the central government.

A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution tells the story of a pivotal episode of General Washington's leadership and reveals how the American Revolution really ended: with fiscal turmoil, political unrest, out-of-control conspiracy thinking, and suspicions between soldiers and civilians so strong that peace almost failed to bring true independence.
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David Head is a history professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, whose research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by George Washington's Mt. Vernon. His prior academic books benefited from an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship at the New-York Historical Society, and a Lord Baltimore Fellowship at the Maryland Historical Society. Head's previous work in the academic community has been honored with several awards and prizes, including Mystic Seaport Museum's John Gardner Maritime Research Award and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic's Ralph D. Gray Article Prize.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/20719255Fri, 13 Dec 2019 17:08:07 +0000Daniel GullottaIn the war’s waning days, the American Revolution neared collapse when Washington’s senior officers were rumored to approach the edge of mutiny. After the British surrender at Yorktown, the American Revolution blazed on, and as peace was negotiated...
After the British surrender at Yorktown, the American Revolution blazed on, and as peace was negotiated in Europe, grave problems surfaced at home. The government was broke and paid its debts with loans from France. Political rivalry among the states paralyzed Congress. The army’s officers, encamped near Newburgh, New York, and restless without an enemy to fight, brooded over a civilian population indifferent to their sacrifices.

The result was the Newburgh Conspiracy, a mysterious event in which Continental Army officers, disgruntled by a lack of pay and pensions, may have collaborated with nationalist-minded politicians such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Robert Morris to pressure Congress and the states to approve new taxes and strengthen the central government.

A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution tells the story of a pivotal episode of General Washington's leadership and reveals how the American Revolution really ended: with fiscal turmoil, political unrest, out-of-control conspiracy thinking, and suspicions between soldiers and civilians so strong that peace almost failed to bring true independence.
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David Head is a history professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, whose research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by George Washington's Mt. Vernon. His prior academic books benefited from an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship at the New-York Historical Society, and a Lord Baltimore Fellowship at the Maryland Historical Society. Head's previous work in the academic community has been honored with several awards and prizes, including Mystic Seaport Museum's John Gardner Maritime Research Award and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic's Ralph D. Gray Article Prize.]]>3915falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/087-the-influence-of-christianity-at-the-founding-and-in-the-early-republic-with-mark-david-hall--20532357
Drawing from hundreds of personal letters, public proclamations, early state constitutions and laws, and other original documents, Professor Hall makes the airtight case that America’s founders were not deists; that they did not create a “godless” Constitution; that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state; that most founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. In addition, Hall explains why and how the founders’ views are absolutely relevant today.

Did America Have a Christian Founding? is a compelling, utterly convincing closing argument in the debate about the role of faith in the nation’s founding, making it clear that Christian thought was crucial to the nation’s founding—and demonstrating that this benefits all of us, whatever our faith (or lack thereof).
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Mark David Hall is the Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics and Faculty Fellow in the William Penn Honors Program at George Fox University. He is also an associated faculty member at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and senior fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. He has written, edited, or co-edited a dozen books on religion and politics in America and is a nationally recognized expert on religious freedom. He writes for the online publications Law & Liberty and Intercollegiate Studies Review and has appeared regularly on a number of radio shows, including Jerry Newcomb's Truth in Action, Tim Wildman's Today's Issues, and the Janet Mefferd Show. You can follow him on Twitter, @MDH_GFU.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/20532357Fri, 06 Dec 2019 16:22:34 +0000Daniel GullottaMany Americans have been taught a distorted, inaccurate account of our nation’s founding, one that claims that the founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and that the country’s founding political ideas developed...
Drawing from hundreds of personal letters, public proclamations, early state constitutions and laws, and other original documents, Professor Hall makes the airtight case that America’s founders were not deists; that they did not create a “godless” Constitution; that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state; that most founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. In addition, Hall explains why and how the founders’ views are absolutely relevant today.

Did America Have a Christian Founding? is a compelling, utterly convincing closing argument in the debate about the role of faith in the nation’s founding, making it clear that Christian thought was crucial to the nation’s founding—and demonstrating that this benefits all of us, whatever our faith (or lack thereof).
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Mark David Hall is the Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics and Faculty Fellow in the William Penn Honors Program at George Fox University. He is also an associated faculty member at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and senior fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. He has written, edited, or co-edited a dozen books on religion and politics in America and is a nationally recognized expert on religious freedom. He writes for the online publications Law & Liberty and Intercollegiate Studies Review and has appeared regularly on a number of radio shows, including Jerry Newcomb's Truth in Action, Tim Wildman's Today's Issues, and the Janet Mefferd Show. You can follow him on Twitter, @MDH_GFU.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4617falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/086-the-panic-of-1819-the-first-great-depression-with-andrew-h-browning--20364945
The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country's attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, with the result that we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.
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Andrew H. Browning was educated at Princeton University and the University of Virginia. He has taught history in Washington, DC, Honolulu and Portland, OR, and he has been a Virginia Governor's Fellow and a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar. His first book is The Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression, which was recently nominated for the Cundill History Prize. His next book about the political education of early America's political class, Schools for Statesmen, will be released next year.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/20364945Fri, 29 Nov 2019 16:49:54 +0000Daniel GullottaThe Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic was the culmination of an economic wave that rolled...
The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country's attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, with the result that we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.
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Andrew H. Browning was educated at Princeton University and the University of Virginia. He has taught history in Washington, DC, Honolulu and Portland, OR, and he has been a Virginia Governor's Fellow and a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar. His first book is The Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression, which was recently nominated for the Cundill History Prize. His next book about the political education of early America's political class, Schools for Statesmen, will be released next year.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4547falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/085-antebellum-american-messiahs-with-adam-morris--19805943
After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history. As Morris demonstrates, these charismatic, if flawed, would-be prophets sought to expose and ameliorate deep social ills-such as income inequality, gender conformity, and racial injustice. Provocative and long overdue, this is the story of those who tried to point the way toward an impossible "American Dream": men and women who momentarily captured the imagination of a nation always searching for salvation.
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Adam Morris is a writer and literary translator who lives in California. He is a recipient of the Susan Sontag Foundation Prize in literary translation, a Northern California Book Award in prose translation, and a Ph.D. in literature from Stanford University. His first book is American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation. You can follow him on Twitter @adamjaymorris.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/19805943Fri, 01 Nov 2019 15:48:11 +0000Daniel GullottaMania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the...
After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history. As Morris demonstrates, these charismatic, if flawed, would-be prophets sought to expose and ameliorate deep social ills-such as income inequality, gender conformity, and racial injustice. Provocative and long overdue, this is the story of those who tried to point the way toward an impossible "American Dream": men and women who momentarily captured the imagination of a nation always searching for salvation.
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Adam Morris is a writer and literary translator who lives in California. He is a recipient of the Susan Sontag Foundation Prize in literary translation, a Northern California Book Award in prose translation, and a Ph.D. in literature from Stanford University. His first book is American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation. You can follow him on Twitter @adamjaymorris.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4852falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/084-a-religious-history-of-the-mexican-american-war-with-john-c-pinheiro--19571733
Pinheiro begins with the social reformer and Protestant evangelist Lyman Beecher, who was largely responsible for synthesizing seemingly unrelated strands of religious, patriotic, expansionist, and political sentiment into one universally understood argument about the future of the United States. When the overwhelmingly Protestant United States went to war with Catholic Mexico, this "Beecherite Synthesis" provided Americans with the most important means of defining their own identity, understanding Mexicans, and interpreting the larger meaning of the war. Anti-Catholic rhetoric constituted an integral piece of nearly every major argument for or against the war and was so universally accepted that recruiters, politicians, diplomats, journalists, soldiers, evangelical activists, abolitionists, and pacifists used it. It was also, Pinheiro shows, the primary tool used by American soldiers to interpret Mexico's culture. All this activity, in turn, reshaped the anti-Catholic movement. Preachers could now use caricatures of Mexicans to illustrate Roman Catholic depravity and nativists could point to Mexico as a warning about what America would be like if dominated by Catholics.

Missionaries of Republicanism provides a critical new perspective on Manifest Destiny, American republicanism, anti-Catholicism, and Mexican-American relations in the nineteenth century.
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John C. Pinheiro is an Associate Professor of History at Aquinas College in Michigan and Consulting Editor for the James K. Polk presidency at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. His publications include Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War, Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War, and numerous articles in academic journals and books. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife, Cassandra, and daughter, Lucia.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/19571733Fri, 18 Oct 2019 16:01:55 +0000Daniel GullottaThe term "Manifest Destiny" has traditionally been linked to U.S. westward expansion in the nineteenth century, the desire to spread republican government, and racialist theories like Anglo-Saxonism. Yet few people realize the degree to which Manifest...
Pinheiro begins with the social reformer and Protestant evangelist Lyman Beecher, who was largely responsible for synthesizing seemingly unrelated strands of religious, patriotic, expansionist, and political sentiment into one universally understood argument about the future of the United States. When the overwhelmingly Protestant United States went to war with Catholic Mexico, this "Beecherite Synthesis" provided Americans with the most important means of defining their own identity, understanding Mexicans, and interpreting the larger meaning of the war. Anti-Catholic rhetoric constituted an integral piece of nearly every major argument for or against the war and was so universally accepted that recruiters, politicians, diplomats, journalists, soldiers, evangelical activists, abolitionists, and pacifists used it. It was also, Pinheiro shows, the primary tool used by American soldiers to interpret Mexico's culture. All this activity, in turn, reshaped the anti-Catholic movement. Preachers could now use caricatures of Mexicans to illustrate Roman Catholic depravity and nativists could point to Mexico as a warning about what America would be like if dominated by Catholics.

Missionaries of Republicanism provides a critical new perspective on Manifest Destiny, American republicanism, anti-Catholicism, and Mexican-American relations in the nineteenth century.
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John C. Pinheiro is an Associate Professor of History at Aquinas College in Michigan and Consulting Editor for the James K. Polk presidency at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. His publications include Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War, Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War, and numerous articles in academic journals and books. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife, Cassandra, and daughter, Lucia.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>5201falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/083-the-battle-of-negro-fort-with-matthew-j-clavin--19456228
During its existence, Negro Fort was a powerful symbol of black freedom that subverted the racist foundations of an expanding American slave society. Its destruction reinforced the nation’s growing commitment to slavery, while illuminating the extent to which ambivalence over the institution had disappeared since the nation’s founding. Indeed, four decades after declaring that all men were created equal, the United States destroyed a fugitive slave community in a foreign territory for the first and only time in its history, which accelerated America’s transformation into a white republic. The Battle of Negro Fort places the violent expansion of slavery where it belongs, at the center of the history of the early American republic.
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Matthew J. Clavin, Professor of History at the University of Houston, is the author of Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers, Toussaint Louverture and the Civil War: the Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution, and The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. Professor Clavin writes and teaches in the areas of American and Atlantic history, with a focus on the history of race, slavery, and abolition. He received his Ph.D. at American University in 2005 and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and others.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/19456228Fri, 11 Oct 2019 09:21:57 +0000Daniel GullottaIn the aftermath of the War of 1812, Major General Andrew Jackson ordered a joint United States army-navy expedition into Spanish Florida to destroy a free and independent community of fugitive slaves. The result was the Battle of Negro Fort, a brutal...
During its existence, Negro Fort was a powerful symbol of black freedom that subverted the racist foundations of an expanding American slave society. Its destruction reinforced the nation’s growing commitment to slavery, while illuminating the extent to which ambivalence over the institution had disappeared since the nation’s founding. Indeed, four decades after declaring that all men were created equal, the United States destroyed a fugitive slave community in a foreign territory for the first and only time in its history, which accelerated America’s transformation into a white republic. The Battle of Negro Fort places the violent expansion of slavery where it belongs, at the center of the history of the early American republic.
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Matthew J. Clavin, Professor of History at the University of Houston, is the author of Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers, Toussaint Louverture and the Civil War: the Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution, and The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. Professor Clavin writes and teaches in the areas of American and Atlantic history, with a focus on the history of race, slavery, and abolition. He received his Ph.D. at American University in 2005 and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and others.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3955falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/082-arming-america-the-origins-of-a-national-gun-culture-2000-reloaded-with-michael-a-bellesiles--18886748
Upon publication Arming America received rave reviews from some of the academy’s most respected figures and the only early negative reviews were from conservative or libertarian voices. Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture would go on to win the Bancroft Prize, the highest honor for historians of American history. But criticism continued to mount, and more and more scholars began to investigate the claims being made by Bellesiles and the numbers he offered. As criticism increased and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles’s integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory. The investigation agreed with his critics that Arming America had serious problems within its thesis, and called into question both its quality and veracity.

In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming America‘s Bancroft Prize. Alfred A. Knopf did not renew Bellesiles’ contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library had granted Bellesiles. Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year’s end because of the university's hostile environment.

In 2003, Bellesiles released a second edition of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture with Soft Skull Press and a response booklet to his critics, Weighed in an Even Balance. To this day, while regretting having written the book, Bellesiles stands by Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture.
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Michael A. Bellesiles is a historian and has taught at Emory University, Central Connecticut State University, and Trinity College. Bellesiles received his BA from the University of California–Santa Cruz in 1975 and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine in 1986. He is the author of numerous books, including Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, 1877: America's Year of Living Violently, and A People's History of the U.S. Military: Ordinary Soldiers Reflect on Their Experience of War, from the American Revolution to Afghanistan.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18886748Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:56:06 +0000Daniel GullottaIn 1996 Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, published an article in the Journal of American History: “The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865.” His provocative argument was that there were nowhere near as many guns in early...
Upon publication Arming America received rave reviews from some of the academy’s most respected figures and the only early negative reviews were from conservative or libertarian voices. Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture would go on to win the Bancroft Prize, the highest honor for historians of American history. But criticism continued to mount, and more and more scholars began to investigate the claims being made by Bellesiles and the numbers he offered. As criticism increased and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles’s integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory. The investigation agreed with his critics that Arming America had serious problems within its thesis, and called into question both its quality and veracity.

In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming America‘s Bancroft Prize. Alfred A. Knopf did not renew Bellesiles’ contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library had granted Bellesiles. Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year’s end because of the university's hostile environment.

In 2003, Bellesiles released a second edition of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture with Soft Skull Press and a response booklet to his critics, Weighed in an Even Balance. To this day, while regretting having written the book, Bellesiles stands by Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture.
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Michael A. Bellesiles is a historian and has taught at Emory University, Central Connecticut State University, and Trinity College. Bellesiles received his BA from the University of California–Santa Cruz in 1975 and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine in 1986. He is the author of numerous books, including Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, 1877: America's Year of Living Violently, and A People's History of the U.S. Military: Ordinary Soldiers Reflect on Their Experience of War, from the American Revolution to Afghanistan.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>5231falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/081-michael-a-bellesiles-arming-america-the-origins-of-a-national-gun-culture-2000-with-joyce-lee-malcolm-history-of-history-17--18838280
Upon publication Arming America received rave reviews from some of the academy's most respected figures and the only early negative reviews were from conservative or libertarian voices. Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture would go on to win the Bancroft Prize, the highest honor for historians of American history. But criticism continued to mount, and more and more scholars began to investigate the claims being made by Bellesiles and the numbers he offered. As criticism increased and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles's integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory. The investigation agreed with his critics that Arming America had serious problems within its thesis, and called into question both its quality and veracity.

In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming America's Bancroft Prize. Alfred A. Knopf did not renew Bellesiles' contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library had granted Bellesiles. Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year's end.

In 2003, Bellesiles released the second edition of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture with Soft Skull Press and a response booklet to his critics, Weighed in an Even Balance. James Lindgren recounted much of the Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture saga and the criticisms against it in his article "Fall From Grace."
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Joyce Lee Malcolm is the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment Joyce Lee Malcolm is a historian and constitutional scholar active in the area of constitutional history, focusing on the development of individual rights in Great Britain and America. She is the author of eight books, most recently The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold: An American Life. Professor Malcolm has written many books and articles on gun control, the Second Amendment, and individual rights. Her work, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, was cited several times in the recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. She was also one of the first critics of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18838280Fri, 16 Aug 2019 20:23:17 +0000Daniel GullottaIn 1996 Emory University's Michael A. Bellesiles, published an article in the Journal of American History: "The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865." His provocative argument was that there were nowhere near as many guns in early...
Upon publication Arming America received rave reviews from some of the academy's most respected figures and the only early negative reviews were from conservative or libertarian voices. Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture would go on to win the Bancroft Prize, the highest honor for historians of American history. But criticism continued to mount, and more and more scholars began to investigate the claims being made by Bellesiles and the numbers he offered. As criticism increased and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles's integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory. The investigation agreed with his critics that Arming America had serious problems within its thesis, and called into question both its quality and veracity.

In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming America's Bancroft Prize. Alfred A. Knopf did not renew Bellesiles' contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library had granted Bellesiles. Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year's end.

In 2003, Bellesiles released the second edition of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture with Soft Skull Press and a response booklet to his critics, Weighed in an Even Balance. James Lindgren recounted much of the Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture saga and the criticisms against it in his article "Fall From Grace."
-
Joyce Lee Malcolm is the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment Joyce Lee Malcolm is a historian and constitutional scholar active in the area of constitutional history, focusing on the development of individual rights in Great Britain and America. She is the author of eight books, most recently The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold: An American Life. Professor Malcolm has written many books and articles on gun control, the Second Amendment, and individual rights. Her work, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, was cited several times in the recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. She was also one of the first critics of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture.]]>3719falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/080-native-nations-and-the-united-states-from-the-american-revolution-to-bleeding-kansas-with-jeffrey-ostler--18705576
In this book, the first part of a sweeping two-volume history, Jeffrey Ostler investigates how American democracy relied on Indian dispossession and the federally sanctioned use of force to remove or slaughter Indians in the way of U.S. expansion. He charts the losses that Indians suffered from relentless violence and upheaval and the attendant effects of disease, deprivation, and exposure. This volume centers on the eastern United States from the 1750s to the start of the Civil War.

An authoritative contribution to the history of the United States’ violent path toward building a continental empire, this ambitious and well-researched book deepens our understanding of the seizure of Indigenous lands, including the use of treaties to create the appearance of Native consent to dispossession. Ostler also documents the resilience of Native people, showing how they survived genocide by creating alliances, defending their towns, and rebuilding their communities.
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Jeffrey Ostler is Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon and the author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills and The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee. His latest work is Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas. You can follow him on Twitter @jeff__ostler.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18705576Fri, 02 Aug 2019 12:08:02 +0000Daniel GullottaThe first part of a sweeping two-volume history of the devastation brought to bear on Indian nations by U.S. expansion. In this book, the first part of a sweeping two-volume history, Jeffrey Ostler investigates how American democracy relied on...
In this book, the first part of a sweeping two-volume history, Jeffrey Ostler investigates how American democracy relied on Indian dispossession and the federally sanctioned use of force to remove or slaughter Indians in the way of U.S. expansion. He charts the losses that Indians suffered from relentless violence and upheaval and the attendant effects of disease, deprivation, and exposure. This volume centers on the eastern United States from the 1750s to the start of the Civil War.

An authoritative contribution to the history of the United States’ violent path toward building a continental empire, this ambitious and well-researched book deepens our understanding of the seizure of Indigenous lands, including the use of treaties to create the appearance of Native consent to dispossession. Ostler also documents the resilience of Native people, showing how they survived genocide by creating alliances, defending their towns, and rebuilding their communities.
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Jeffrey Ostler is Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon and the author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills and The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee. His latest work is Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas. You can follow him on Twitter @jeff__ostler.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4941falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/079-the-bank-war-and-the-partisan-press-with-stephen-w-campbell--18410221
Drawing on insights from the fields of political history, the history of journalism, and financial history, The Bank War and the Partisan Press brings to light a revolving cast of newspaper editors, financiers, and postal workers who appropriated the financial resources of preexisting political institutions—and even created new ones—to enrich themselves and further their careers. The bank propagated favorable media and tracked public opinion through its system of branch offices while the Jacksonians did the same by harnessing the patronage networks of the Post Office. Campbell’s work contextualizes the Bank War within larger political and economic developments at the national and international levels. Its focus on the newspaper business documents the transition from a seemingly simple question of renewing the bank’s charter to a multisided, nationwide sensation that sorted the US public into ideologically polarized political parties. In doing so, The Bank War and the Partisan Press shows how the conflict played out on the ground level in various states—in riots, duels, raucous public meetings, politically orchestrated bank runs, arson, and assassination attempts. The resulting narrative moves beyond the traditional boxing match between Jackson and bank president Nicholas Biddle, balancing political institutions with individual actors, and business practices with party attitudes.
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Stephen W. Campbell is a lecturer in the History Department at Cal Poly Pomona. He is the author of The Bank War and the Partisan Press: Newspapers, Financial Institutions, and the Post Office in Jacksonian America. You can follow him on Twitter, @Historian_Steve.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18410221Fri, 28 Jun 2019 15:18:11 +0000Daniel GullottaPresident Andrew Jackson’s conflict with the Second Bank of the United States was one of the most consequential political struggles in the early nineteenth century. A fight over the bank’s reauthorization, the Bank War, provoked fundamental...
Drawing on insights from the fields of political history, the history of journalism, and financial history, The Bank War and the Partisan Press brings to light a revolving cast of newspaper editors, financiers, and postal workers who appropriated the financial resources of preexisting political institutions—and even created new ones—to enrich themselves and further their careers. The bank propagated favorable media and tracked public opinion through its system of branch offices while the Jacksonians did the same by harnessing the patronage networks of the Post Office. Campbell’s work contextualizes the Bank War within larger political and economic developments at the national and international levels. Its focus on the newspaper business documents the transition from a seemingly simple question of renewing the bank’s charter to a multisided, nationwide sensation that sorted the US public into ideologically polarized political parties. In doing so, The Bank War and the Partisan Press shows how the conflict played out on the ground level in various states—in riots, duels, raucous public meetings, politically orchestrated bank runs, arson, and assassination attempts. The resulting narrative moves beyond the traditional boxing match between Jackson and bank president Nicholas Biddle, balancing political institutions with individual actors, and business practices with party attitudes.
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Stephen W. Campbell is a lecturer in the History Department at Cal Poly Pomona. He is the author of The Bank War and the Partisan Press: Newspapers, Financial Institutions, and the Post Office in Jacksonian America. You can follow him on Twitter, @Historian_Steve.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4823falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/078-the-presidents-adams-confront-the-cult-of-personality-with-nancy-isenberg-andrew-burstein--18337146
When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat. Though they spent many years apart--and as their careers spanned Europe, Washington DC, and their family home south of Boston--they maintained a close bond through extensive letter writing, debating history, political philosophy, and partisan maneuvering.

The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality is an urgent problem; the father-and-son presidents grasped the perilous psychology of politics and forecast what future generations would have to contend with: citizens wanting heroes to worship and covetous elites more than willing to mislead. Rejection at the polls, each after one term, does not prove that the presidents Adams had erroneous ideas. Intellectually, they were what we today call "independents," reluctant to commit blindly to an organized political party. No historian has attempted to dissect their intertwined lives as Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein do in these pages, and there is no better time than the present to learn from the American nation's most insightful malcontents.
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Nancy Isenberg is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at Louisiana State University, and the author of the New York Times bestseller White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, and two award-winning books, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr and Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. She is the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson.

Andrew Burstein is the Charles P. Manship Professor of History at Louisiana State University, a noted Jefferson scholar, and the author of ten previous books on early American politics and culture. These include The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson's Secrets, and Democracy's Muse. He and Nancy Isenberg have coauthored regular pieces for national news outlets.

You can follow them on Twitter, @andyandnancy.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18337146Fri, 21 Jun 2019 13:07:19 +0000Daniel GullottaJohn and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that...
When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat. Though they spent many years apart--and as their careers spanned Europe, Washington DC, and their family home south of Boston--they maintained a close bond through extensive letter writing, debating history, political philosophy, and partisan maneuvering.

The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality is an urgent problem; the father-and-son presidents grasped the perilous psychology of politics and forecast what future generations would have to contend with: citizens wanting heroes to worship and covetous elites more than willing to mislead. Rejection at the polls, each after one term, does not prove that the presidents Adams had erroneous ideas. Intellectually, they were what we today call "independents," reluctant to commit blindly to an organized political party. No historian has attempted to dissect their intertwined lives as Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein do in these pages, and there is no better time than the present to learn from the American nation's most insightful malcontents.
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Nancy Isenberg is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at Louisiana State University, and the author of the New York Times bestseller White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, and two award-winning books, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr and Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. She is the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson.

Andrew Burstein is the Charles P. Manship Professor of History at Louisiana State University, a noted Jefferson scholar, and the author of ten previous books on early American politics and culture. These include The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson's Secrets, and Democracy's Muse. He and Nancy Isenberg have coauthored regular pieces for national news outlets.

You can follow them on Twitter, @andyandnancy.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>6289falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/077-the-struggle-for-religious-freedom-in-the-early-republic-with-steven-waldman--18202933
Just as the documentary Eyes on the Prize captured the rich drama of the civil rights movement, Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom brings to life the remarkable story of how America became one of the few nations in world history that has religious freedom, diversity and high levels of piety at the same time. Finally, Sacred Liberty provides a roadmap for how, in the face of modern threats to religious freedom, this great achievement can be preserved.
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Steven Waldman is the national bestselling author of Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty and the co-founder of Beliefnet, the award-winning multifaith website. He is now co-founder and President of Report for America, a national service program that places talented journalists into local newsrooms. His writings have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, National Review, Christianity Today, The Atlantic, First Things, The Washington Monthly, Slate, The New Republic, ​and others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Amy Cunningham.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18202933Fri, 07 Jun 2019 11:54:53 +0000Daniel GullottaSacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom offers a dramatic, sweeping survey of how America built a unique model of religious freedom, perhaps the nation’s “greatest invention.” Steven Waldman, the bestselling...
Just as the documentary Eyes on the Prize captured the rich drama of the civil rights movement, Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom brings to life the remarkable story of how America became one of the few nations in world history that has religious freedom, diversity and high levels of piety at the same time. Finally, Sacred Liberty provides a roadmap for how, in the face of modern threats to religious freedom, this great achievement can be preserved.
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Steven Waldman is the national bestselling author of Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty and the co-founder of Beliefnet, the award-winning multifaith website. He is now co-founder and President of Report for America, a national service program that places talented journalists into local newsrooms. His writings have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, National Review, Christianity Today, The Atlantic, First Things, The Washington Monthly, Slate, The New Republic, ​and others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Amy Cunningham.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3912falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/076-jacksonian-democracy-race-and-the-transformation-of-american-conservatism-with-joshua-a-lynn--18135053
Responding to fears of African American and female political agency, Democrats in the late 1840s and 1850s reinvented themselves as "conservatives" and repurposed Jacksonian Democracy as a tool for local majorities of white men to police racial and gender boundaries by democratically withholding rights. With the policy of "popular sovereignty," Democrats left slavery’s expansion to white men’s democratic decision-making. They also promised white men local democracy and individual autonomy regarding temperance, religion, and nativism. Translating white men’s household mastery into political power over all women and Americans of color, Democrats united white men nationwide and made democracy a conservative assertion of white manhood.

Democrats thereby turned traditional Jacksonian principles—grassroots democracy, liberal individualism, and anti-statism—into staples of conservatism. As Lynn’s book shows, this movement sent conservatism on a new, populist trajectory, one in which democracy can be called upon to legitimize inequality and hierarchy, a uniquely American conservatism that endures in our republic today.
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Joshua A. Lynn is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University. His research focuses on the intersection of political culture with constructions of race, gender, and sexuality. Dr. Lynn is also a historian of American conservatism. He previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed his Ph.D. in History. His first book is Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism and he is currently working on his second book, “The Black Douglass and the White Douglas: Embodying Race, Manhood, and Democracy in Civil War America.”
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18135053Fri, 31 May 2019 16:14:22 +0000Daniel GullottaIn Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism, Joshua Lynn reveals how the national Democratic Party rebranded majoritarian democracy and liberal individualism as conservative means...
Responding to fears of African American and female political agency, Democrats in the late 1840s and 1850s reinvented themselves as "conservatives" and repurposed Jacksonian Democracy as a tool for local majorities of white men to police racial and gender boundaries by democratically withholding rights. With the policy of "popular sovereignty," Democrats left slavery’s expansion to white men’s democratic decision-making. They also promised white men local democracy and individual autonomy regarding temperance, religion, and nativism. Translating white men’s household mastery into political power over all women and Americans of color, Democrats united white men nationwide and made democracy a conservative assertion of white manhood.

Democrats thereby turned traditional Jacksonian principles—grassroots democracy, liberal individualism, and anti-statism—into staples of conservatism. As Lynn’s book shows, this movement sent conservatism on a new, populist trajectory, one in which democracy can be called upon to legitimize inequality and hierarchy, a uniquely American conservatism that endures in our republic today.
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Joshua A. Lynn is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University. His research focuses on the intersection of political culture with constructions of race, gender, and sexuality. Dr. Lynn is also a historian of American conservatism. He previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed his Ph.D. in History. His first book is Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism and he is currently working on his second book, “The Black Douglass and the White Douglas: Embodying Race, Manhood, and Democracy in Civil War America.”
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3703falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/075-the-campaign-against-convents-in-antebellum-america-with-cassandra-l-yacovazzi--18064968
The success of Monk's book was no fluke, but rather a part of a larger phenomenon of anti-Catholic propaganda, riots, and nativist politics. The secrecy of convents stood as an oblique justification for suspicion of Catholics and the campaigns against them, which were intimately connected with cultural concerns regarding reform, religion, immigration, and, in particular, the role of women in the Republic. At a time when the term "female virtue" pervaded popular rhetoric, the image of the veiled nun represented a threat to the established American ideal of womanhood. Unable to marry, she was instead a captive of a foreign foe, a fallen woman, a white slave, and a foolish virgin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, ministers, vigilantes, politicians, and writers--male and female--forged this image of the nun, locking arms against convents. The result was a far-reaching antebellum movement that would shape perceptions of nuns, and women more broadly, in America.
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Cassandra L. Yacovazzi is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. Her work focuses on 19th and 20th-century American women’s history and the intersection of gender, religion, and popular culture. She is the author of Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America. You can follow her on Twitter @CassandraYacova.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18064968Fri, 24 May 2019 14:47:40 +0000Daniel GullottaJust five weeks after its publication in January 1836, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, billed as an escaped nun's shocking exposé of convent life, had already sold more than 20,000 copies. The book detailed gothic-style horror stories of...
The success of Monk's book was no fluke, but rather a part of a larger phenomenon of anti-Catholic propaganda, riots, and nativist politics. The secrecy of convents stood as an oblique justification for suspicion of Catholics and the campaigns against them, which were intimately connected with cultural concerns regarding reform, religion, immigration, and, in particular, the role of women in the Republic. At a time when the term "female virtue" pervaded popular rhetoric, the image of the veiled nun represented a threat to the established American ideal of womanhood. Unable to marry, she was instead a captive of a foreign foe, a fallen woman, a white slave, and a foolish virgin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, ministers, vigilantes, politicians, and writers--male and female--forged this image of the nun, locking arms against convents. The result was a far-reaching antebellum movement that would shape perceptions of nuns, and women more broadly, in America.
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Cassandra L. Yacovazzi is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. Her work focuses on 19th and 20th-century American women’s history and the intersection of gender, religion, and popular culture. She is the author of Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America. You can follow her on Twitter @CassandraYacova.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3611falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/074-the-age-of-jackson-within-american-history-with-thomas-s-kidd--18000924-
Thomas S. Kidd is the Distinguished Professor of History, James Vardaman Endowed Professor of History and Associate Director, Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is the author of many books, including Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father, American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, Baptists in America: A History with Barry Hankins, and Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father. You can follow him on Twitter @ThomasSKidd.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/18000924Fri, 17 May 2019 14:38:01 +0000Daniel GullottaAmerican History, Volume 1: 1492-1877 surveys the broad sweep of American history from the first Native American societies to the end of the Reconstruction period, following the Civil War. Drawing on a deep range of research and years of classroom...-
Thomas S. Kidd is the Distinguished Professor of History, James Vardaman Endowed Professor of History and Associate Director, Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is the author of many books, including Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father, American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, Baptists in America: A History with Barry Hankins, and Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father. You can follow him on Twitter @ThomasSKidd.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>2739falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/073-nathan-o-hatch-s-the-democratization-of-american-christianity-with-michael-j-altman-history-of-history-16--17825818
Nathan O. Hatch grew up in Columbia, S.C., where his father was a Presbyterian minister. A graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, he received his master’s and doctoral degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities. He joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1975. He was named provost, the university’s second highest-ranking position, in 1996; a Presbyterian, he was the first Protestant to ever serve in that position at Notre Dame. Dr. Hatch became Wake Forest University’s 13th president on July 1, 2005. He is the author of The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England and The Democratization of American Christianity, and co-edited The Search for Christian America, Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, and The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History.
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Michael J. Altman received his Ph.D. in American Religious Cultures from Emory University. His areas of interest are American religious history, colonialism, theory and method in the study of religion, and Asian religions in American culture. Trained in the field of American religious cultures, he is interested in the ways religion is constructed through difference, conflict, and contact. Dr. Altman is the author of Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893. For his next book-length project, Dr. Altman is researching the use of American history in the formation of evangelical Protestant identities and communities.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17825818Fri, 03 May 2019 14:35:55 +0000Daniel GullottaIn this prize-winning book Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, arguing that during this period American Christianity was democratized and common people became powerful...
Nathan O. Hatch grew up in Columbia, S.C., where his father was a Presbyterian minister. A graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, he received his master’s and doctoral degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities. He joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1975. He was named provost, the university’s second highest-ranking position, in 1996; a Presbyterian, he was the first Protestant to ever serve in that position at Notre Dame. Dr. Hatch became Wake Forest University’s 13th president on July 1, 2005. He is the author of The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England and The Democratization of American Christianity, and co-edited The Search for Christian America, Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, and The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History.
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Michael J. Altman received his Ph.D. in American Religious Cultures from Emory University. His areas of interest are American religious history, colonialism, theory and method in the study of religion, and Asian religions in American culture. Trained in the field of American religious cultures, he is interested in the ways religion is constructed through difference, conflict, and contact. Dr. Altman is the author of Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893. For his next book-length project, Dr. Altman is researching the use of American history in the formation of evangelical Protestant identities and communities.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3761falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/072-the-religious-lives-of-the-adams-family-with-sara-georgini--17753406
Globetrotters who chronicled their religious journeys extensively, the Adamses ultimately developed a cosmopolitan Christianity that blended discovery and criticism, faith and doubt. Drawing from their rich archive, Sara Georgini, series editor for The Papers of John Adams, demonstrates how pivotal Christianity--as the different generations understood it--was in shaping the family's decisions, great and small. Spanning three centuries of faith from Puritan New England to the Jazz Age, Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family tells a new story of American religion, as the Adams family lived it.
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Sara Georgini, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., earned her doctorate in history from Boston University. She is series editor for The Papers of John Adams, part of the Adams Papers editorial project based at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Her first book is Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17753406Fri, 26 Apr 2019 14:18:04 +0000Daniel GullottaReflecting on his past, President John Adams mused that it was religion that had shaped his family's fortunes and young America's future. For the nineteenth century's first family, the Adamses of Massachusetts, the history of how they lived religion...
Globetrotters who chronicled their religious journeys extensively, the Adamses ultimately developed a cosmopolitan Christianity that blended discovery and criticism, faith and doubt. Drawing from their rich archive, Sara Georgini, series editor for The Papers of John Adams, demonstrates how pivotal Christianity--as the different generations understood it--was in shaping the family's decisions, great and small. Spanning three centuries of faith from Puritan New England to the Jazz Age, Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family tells a new story of American religion, as the Adams family lived it.
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Sara Georgini, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., earned her doctorate in history from Boston University. She is series editor for The Papers of John Adams, part of the Adams Papers editorial project based at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Her first book is Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4588falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/071-poverty-and-mobility-in-the-early-american-republic-with-kristin-o-brassill-kulfan--17692230
Vagrants and Vagabonds examines the subsistence activities of the mobile poor, from migration to wage labor to petty theft, and how local and state municipal authorities criminalized these activities, prompting extensive punishment. Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan examines the intertwined legal constructions, experiences, and responses to these so-called “vagrants,” arguing that we can glean important insights about poverty and class in this period by paying careful attention to mobility. This book charts why and how the itinerant poor were subject to imprisonment and forced migration, and considers the relationship between race and the right to movement and residence in the antebellum US. Ultimately, Vagrants and Vagabonds argues that poor migrants, the laws designed to curtail their movements, and the people charged with managing them, were central to shaping everything from the role of the state to contemporary conceptions of community to class and labor status, the spread of disease, and punishment in the early American republic.
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Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is an instructor of Public History and Coordinator of the Internship Program at Rutgers University. She is a public historian, a scholar of early American social history, and former archivist researching and writing about poverty, slavery, mobility, crime, and punishment in the early American republic, as well as public historical and commemorative representations of these subjects. She is currently at work on projects relating to subsistence crime in early America, the Arch Street Prison, and public historical interpretations of poverty, class, and labor. She is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17692230Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:17:18 +0000Daniel GullottaVagrants. Vagabonds. Hoboes. Identified by myriad names, the homeless and geographically mobile have been with us since the earliest periods of recorded history. In the early days of the United States, these poor migrants – consisting of everyone from...
Vagrants and Vagabonds examines the subsistence activities of the mobile poor, from migration to wage labor to petty theft, and how local and state municipal authorities criminalized these activities, prompting extensive punishment. Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan examines the intertwined legal constructions, experiences, and responses to these so-called “vagrants,” arguing that we can glean important insights about poverty and class in this period by paying careful attention to mobility. This book charts why and how the itinerant poor were subject to imprisonment and forced migration, and considers the relationship between race and the right to movement and residence in the antebellum US. Ultimately, Vagrants and Vagabonds argues that poor migrants, the laws designed to curtail their movements, and the people charged with managing them, were central to shaping everything from the role of the state to contemporary conceptions of community to class and labor status, the spread of disease, and punishment in the early American republic.
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Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is an instructor of Public History and Coordinator of the Internship Program at Rutgers University. She is a public historian, a scholar of early American social history, and former archivist researching and writing about poverty, slavery, mobility, crime, and punishment in the early American republic, as well as public historical and commemorative representations of these subjects. She is currently at work on projects relating to subsistence crime in early America, the Arch Street Prison, and public historical interpretations of poverty, class, and labor. She is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4040falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/070-gender-crime-and-punishment-in-antebellum-pennsylvania-with-erica-rhodes-hayden--17544343Women constituted a small percentage of those tried in courtrooms and sentenced to prison terms during the nineteenth century, yet their experiences offer valuable insight into the era’s criminal justice system. Hayden illuminates how criminal punishment and reform intersected with larger social issues of the time, including questions of race, class, and gender, and reveals how women prisoners actively influenced their situation despite class disparities. Hayden’s focus on recovering the individual experiences of women in the criminal justice system across the state of Pennsylvania marks a significant shift from studies that focus on the structure and leadership of penal institutions and reform organizations in urban centers.

Troublesome Women advances our understanding of female crime and punishment in the antebellum period and challenges preconceived notions of nineteenth-century womanhood. Scholars of women’s history and the history of crime and punishment, as well as those interested in Pennsylvania history, will benefit greatly from Hayden’s thorough and fascinating research.
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Erica Rhodes Hayden is Associate Professor of History at Trevecca Nazarene University. Originally from Pennsylvania, she completed her Ph.D. in history at Vanderbilt University in 2013. Her research interests focus on nineteenth-century American social history, specifically reform movements, women’s history, and the history of crime and punishment. She is the author of Troublesome Women: Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania and the co-editor of Incarcerated Women: A History of Struggles, Oppression, and Resistance in American Prisons with Theresa R. Jach.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17544343Fri, 05 Apr 2019 13:23:04 +0000Daniel GullottaTroublesome Women: Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By...Women constituted a small percentage of those tried in courtrooms and sentenced to prison terms during the nineteenth century, yet their experiences offer valuable insight into the era’s criminal justice system. Hayden illuminates how criminal punishment and reform intersected with larger social issues of the time, including questions of race, class, and gender, and reveals how women prisoners actively influenced their situation despite class disparities. Hayden’s focus on recovering the individual experiences of women in the criminal justice system across the state of Pennsylvania marks a significant shift from studies that focus on the structure and leadership of penal institutions and reform organizations in urban centers.

Troublesome Women advances our understanding of female crime and punishment in the antebellum period and challenges preconceived notions of nineteenth-century womanhood. Scholars of women’s history and the history of crime and punishment, as well as those interested in Pennsylvania history, will benefit greatly from Hayden’s thorough and fascinating research.
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Erica Rhodes Hayden is Associate Professor of History at Trevecca Nazarene University. Originally from Pennsylvania, she completed her Ph.D. in history at Vanderbilt University in 2013. Her research interests focus on nineteenth-century American social history, specifically reform movements, women’s history, and the history of crime and punishment. She is the author of Troublesome Women: Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania and the co-editor of Incarcerated Women: A History of Struggles, Oppression, and Resistance in American Prisons with Theresa R. Jach.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4172falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/069-paul-e-johnson-s-a-shopkeeper-s-millennium-with-chris-babits-history-of-history-15--17474321
Paul E. Johnson, professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a Ph.D. in 1975. He taught at Princeton University, Yale University, University of Utah, and the University of South Carolina. He is the author of A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, and coauthor, with Sean Wilentz, of The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina, and Onancock, Virginia.
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Chris Babits is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. History at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the university's Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Fellows. His work examines the intersection of religion, psychology, gender, and sexuality in the modern United States. Chris' dissertation, "To Cure a Sinful Nation: Conversion Therapy in the United States," is an ambitious work on the nation's history of sexual orientation and gender identity therapies. You can follow him on Twitter @chris_babits.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17474321Fri, 29 Mar 2019 15:23:39 +0000Daniel GullottaA quarter-century after its first publication, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 remains a landmark work--brilliant both as a new interpretation of the intimate connections among politics, economy, and...
Paul E. Johnson, professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a Ph.D. in 1975. He taught at Princeton University, Yale University, University of Utah, and the University of South Carolina. He is the author of A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, and coauthor, with Sean Wilentz, of The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina, and Onancock, Virginia.
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Chris Babits is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. History at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the university's Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Fellows. His work examines the intersection of religion, psychology, gender, and sexuality in the modern United States. Chris' dissertation, "To Cure a Sinful Nation: Conversion Therapy in the United States," is an ambitious work on the nation's history of sexual orientation and gender identity therapies. You can follow him on Twitter @chris_babits.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>2970falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/068-the-world-of-first-lady-sarah-polk-with-amy-s-greenberg--17404264
Lady First also shines a light on Sarah's many layers and contradictions. While her marriage to James was one of equals, she firmly opposed the feminist movement's demands for what she perceived to be far-reaching equality. She banned dancing and hard liquor from the White House, but did more entertaining than any of her predecessors. During the Civil War, she operated on behalf of the Confederacy even though she claimed to be neutral. And in the late nineteenth-century, she became a celebrity among female Christian temperance reformers, while she struggled to redeem her husband's tarnished political legacy.

Sarah Polk's life spanned nearly the entirety of the 19th-century. But her own legacy, which profoundly transformed the South, continues to endure. Comprehensive, nuanced, and brimming with invaluable insight, Lady First is a revelation of our eleventh First Lady's complex but essential part in American feminism.
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Amy S. Greenberg is the George Winfree Professor of History and Women's Studies at Penn State University. A leading scholar of the history of nineteenth-century America, she has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society, among others. Her previous books include A Wicked War and Manifest Manhood.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17404264Fri, 22 Mar 2019 14:16:40 +0000Daniel GullottaWhile the Woman's Rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman in Washington, D.C. Yet, while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but...
Lady First also shines a light on Sarah's many layers and contradictions. While her marriage to James was one of equals, she firmly opposed the feminist movement's demands for what she perceived to be far-reaching equality. She banned dancing and hard liquor from the White House, but did more entertaining than any of her predecessors. During the Civil War, she operated on behalf of the Confederacy even though she claimed to be neutral. And in the late nineteenth-century, she became a celebrity among female Christian temperance reformers, while she struggled to redeem her husband's tarnished political legacy.

Sarah Polk's life spanned nearly the entirety of the 19th-century. But her own legacy, which profoundly transformed the South, continues to endure. Comprehensive, nuanced, and brimming with invaluable insight, Lady First is a revelation of our eleventh First Lady's complex but essential part in American feminism.
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Amy S. Greenberg is the George Winfree Professor of History and Women's Studies at Penn State University. A leading scholar of the history of nineteenth-century America, she has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society, among others. Her previous books include A Wicked War and Manifest Manhood.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4661falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/067-lobbyists-and-the-making-of-us-tariff-policy-with-daniel-peart--17330912
In Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816-1861, Daniel Peart reveals how active lobbyists were in Washington throughout the antebellum era. He describes how they involved themselves at every stage of the making of tariff policy, from setting the congressional agenda, through the writing of legislation in committee, to the final vote. Considering policymaking as a process, Peart focuses on the importance of rules and timing, the critical roles played by individual lawmakers and lobbyists, and the high degree of uncertainty that characterized this formative period in American political development.

The debate about tariff policy, Peart explains, is an unbroken thread that runs throughout the pre–Civil War era, connecting disparate individuals and events and shaping the development of the United States in myriad ways. Duties levied on imports provided the federal government with the major part of its revenue from the ratification of the Constitution to the close of the nineteenth century. More controversially, they also offered protection to domestic producers against foreign competition, at the expense of increased costs for consumers and the risk of retaliation from international trade partners. Ultimately, this book uses the tariff issue to illustrate the critical role that lobbying played within the antebellum policymaking process.
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Daniel Peart is a senior lecturer in American history at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Era of Experimentation: American Political Practices in the Early Republic and the coeditor of Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War. His most recent work is Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816-1861.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17330912Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:40:39 +0000Daniel GullottaSince the 2008 global economic crisis, historians have embraced the challenge of making visible the invisible hand of the market. This renewed interest in the politics of political economy makes it all the more timely to remind ourselves that debates...
In Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816-1861, Daniel Peart reveals how active lobbyists were in Washington throughout the antebellum era. He describes how they involved themselves at every stage of the making of tariff policy, from setting the congressional agenda, through the writing of legislation in committee, to the final vote. Considering policymaking as a process, Peart focuses on the importance of rules and timing, the critical roles played by individual lawmakers and lobbyists, and the high degree of uncertainty that characterized this formative period in American political development.

The debate about tariff policy, Peart explains, is an unbroken thread that runs throughout the pre–Civil War era, connecting disparate individuals and events and shaping the development of the United States in myriad ways. Duties levied on imports provided the federal government with the major part of its revenue from the ratification of the Constitution to the close of the nineteenth century. More controversially, they also offered protection to domestic producers against foreign competition, at the expense of increased costs for consumers and the risk of retaliation from international trade partners. Ultimately, this book uses the tariff issue to illustrate the critical role that lobbying played within the antebellum policymaking process.
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Daniel Peart is a senior lecturer in American history at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Era of Experimentation: American Political Practices in the Early Republic and the coeditor of Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War. His most recent work is Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816-1861.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4432falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/066-francis-j-grund-s-aristocracy-in-america-with-armin-mattes--17263732
Francis J. Grund, a German immigrant, was one of the most influential journalists in America in the three decades preceding the Civil War. He also wrote several books, including this fictional, satiric travel memoir in response to Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous Democracy in America. Armin Mattes provides a thorough account of Grund’s dynamic engagement in American political and social life and brings to light many of Grund’s reflections previously published only in German. Mattes shows how Grund’s work can expand our understanding of the emerging democratic political culture and society in the antebellum United States.
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Armin Mattes earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Virginia, working with Peter Onuf on the origins of American democracy and nationhood. Dr. Mattes then spent the 2012-2013 academic year as the Gilder Lehrman Research Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, where he completed his first book, Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: the Transatlantic Context of the Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood, 1775-1840, which was published by University of Virginia Press in 2015. His newly translated and annotated edition of Francis J. Grund’s Aristocracy in America was published in Spring 2018 on the Kinder Institute’s Studies in Constitutional Democracy monograph series with University of Missouri Press, and immigrant is also currently at work on a book project that explores the transformation of the meaning and practice of political patronage in America from 1750 to 1850. Dr. Mattes has taught at the University of Virginia and Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (Germany), and he served as a Kinder Institute Research Fellow in History from 2014-2017.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17263732Fri, 08 Mar 2019 13:44:32 +0000Daniel GullottaIn Jacksonian America, as Grund exposes, the wealthy inhabitants of northern cities and the plantation South may have been willing to accept their poorer neighbors as political and legal peers, but rarely as social equals. In this important work, he...
Francis J. Grund, a German immigrant, was one of the most influential journalists in America in the three decades preceding the Civil War. He also wrote several books, including this fictional, satiric travel memoir in response to Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous Democracy in America. Armin Mattes provides a thorough account of Grund’s dynamic engagement in American political and social life and brings to light many of Grund’s reflections previously published only in German. Mattes shows how Grund’s work can expand our understanding of the emerging democratic political culture and society in the antebellum United States.
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Armin Mattes earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Virginia, working with Peter Onuf on the origins of American democracy and nationhood. Dr. Mattes then spent the 2012-2013 academic year as the Gilder Lehrman Research Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, where he completed his first book, Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: the Transatlantic Context of the Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood, 1775-1840, which was published by University of Virginia Press in 2015. His newly translated and annotated edition of Francis J. Grund’s Aristocracy in America was published in Spring 2018 on the Kinder Institute’s Studies in Constitutional Democracy monograph series with University of Missouri Press, and immigrant is also currently at work on a book project that explores the transformation of the meaning and practice of political patronage in America from 1750 to 1850. Dr. Mattes has taught at the University of Virginia and Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (Germany), and he served as a Kinder Institute Research Fellow in History from 2014-2017.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3065falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/065-drew-r-mccoy-s-the-last-of-the-fathers-with-aaron-n-coleman-history-of-history-14--17193349
Dr. Drew R. McCoy received an A.B. from Cornell University in 1971, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1973 and 1976, respectively. He has been at Clark since 1990. A specialist in American political and intellectual history, Professor McCoy teaches courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in early American history, with emphasis on the period from the Revolution through the Civil War. Before coming to Clark he taught at the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University. His current project, which is biographical, focusing on the early life of Abraham Lincoln in relation to the transformative developments of the early nineteenth century. He is the author of The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America and The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy.
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Dr. Aaron N. Coleman is Associate Professor of History and the History Department Chair at the University of the Cumberlands. He is interested in Anglo-American constitutional and ideological development of the 17th and 18th Centuries, especially the era of the American Founding. Dr. Coleman also specializes in contemporary leadership theory and application. He has published two books both dealing with the conception and political debates over federalism. He is currently working on two projects, one a short biography of Thomas Burke and another on the competing languages of Nationalism and State Sovereignty in 18th and 19th Century United States. Dr. Coleman is a die-hard Elvis fan and spends his free time listening to Elvis or reading Lord of the Rings. He is the author of The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800 and the co-editor of Debating Federalism: From the Founding to Today with Christopher S. Leskiw. You can follow him on Twitter, @Big_Liberty.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17193349Fri, 01 Mar 2019 15:09:28 +0000Daniel GullottaJames Madison survived longer than any other member of the most remarkable generation of political leaders in American history. Born in the middle of the eighteenth century as a subject of King George II, the Father of the United States Constitution...
Dr. Drew R. McCoy received an A.B. from Cornell University in 1971, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1973 and 1976, respectively. He has been at Clark since 1990. A specialist in American political and intellectual history, Professor McCoy teaches courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in early American history, with emphasis on the period from the Revolution through the Civil War. Before coming to Clark he taught at the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University. His current project, which is biographical, focusing on the early life of Abraham Lincoln in relation to the transformative developments of the early nineteenth century. He is the author of The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America and The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy.
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Dr. Aaron N. Coleman is Associate Professor of History and the History Department Chair at the University of the Cumberlands. He is interested in Anglo-American constitutional and ideological development of the 17th and 18th Centuries, especially the era of the American Founding. Dr. Coleman also specializes in contemporary leadership theory and application. He has published two books both dealing with the conception and political debates over federalism. He is currently working on two projects, one a short biography of Thomas Burke and another on the competing languages of Nationalism and State Sovereignty in 18th and 19th Century United States. Dr. Coleman is a die-hard Elvis fan and spends his free time listening to Elvis or reading Lord of the Rings. He is the author of The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800 and the co-editor of Debating Federalism: From the Founding to Today with Christopher S. Leskiw. You can follow him on Twitter, @Big_Liberty.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4376falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/064-james-monroe-a-republican-champion-with-brook-poston--17145017
Monroe’s dedication to the vision of a modern republic built on liberty began when he joined the American Revolution. His devotion to the cause further developed under his apprenticeship to Thomas Jefferson. These experiences spurred him to support the virtues of republicanism during the French Revolution, when he tried to create an alliance between the United States and the French republic despite ire from the U.S. Federalist party. As he climbed the political ranks, Monroe’s achievements began to add up: he played a significant role in the Louisiana Purchase, helped lead the fight against Great Britain in the War of 1812, oversaw the acquisition of Florida from Spain, and created the Monroe Doctrine to protect the Americas from the influence of European monarchies.

Focusing exclusively on America’s fifth president and his complete commitment to republicanism, this book offers new interpretations of James Monroe as a patriot who dedicated his life to what he believed was perhaps the most important cause in human history.
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Brook Poston is associate professor of history at Stephen F. Austin State University. He received his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University and is the author of James Monroe: A Republican Champion.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17145017Mon, 25 Feb 2019 16:39:41 +0000Daniel GullottaDespite serving his country for 50 years and being among the most qualified men to hold the office of president, James Monroe is an oft-forgotten Founding Father. In this book, Brook Poston reveals how Monroe attempted to craft a legacy for himself as...
Monroe’s dedication to the vision of a modern republic built on liberty began when he joined the American Revolution. His devotion to the cause further developed under his apprenticeship to Thomas Jefferson. These experiences spurred him to support the virtues of republicanism during the French Revolution, when he tried to create an alliance between the United States and the French republic despite ire from the U.S. Federalist party. As he climbed the political ranks, Monroe’s achievements began to add up: he played a significant role in the Louisiana Purchase, helped lead the fight against Great Britain in the War of 1812, oversaw the acquisition of Florida from Spain, and created the Monroe Doctrine to protect the Americas from the influence of European monarchies.

Focusing exclusively on America’s fifth president and his complete commitment to republicanism, this book offers new interpretations of James Monroe as a patriot who dedicated his life to what he believed was perhaps the most important cause in human history.
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Brook Poston is associate professor of history at Stephen F. Austin State University. He received his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University and is the author of James Monroe: A Republican Champion.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>4028falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/063-mesmerism-in-the-early-united-states-with-emily-ogden--17052517
Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.
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Emily Ogden is the author of Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. She has written for Critical Inquiry, The New York Times, American Literature, J19, Lapham's Quarterly Online, Early American Literature, and Public Books. Her columns at 3 Quarks Daily appear every eighth Monday. The Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and other granting organizations have supported her work. You can follow her on Twitter, @ENOgden.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/17052517Fri, 15 Feb 2019 14:48:16 +0000Daniel GullottaFrom the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the...
Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.
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Emily Ogden is the author of Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. She has written for Critical Inquiry, The New York Times, American Literature, J19, Lapham's Quarterly Online, Early American Literature, and Public Books. Her columns at 3 Quarks Daily appear every eighth Monday. The Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and other granting organizations have supported her work. You can follow her on Twitter, @ENOgden.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>2741falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/062-heirs-of-the-founders-henry-clay-john-calhoun-a-nd-daniel-webster-with-h-w-brands--16987728
Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal, and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery.

They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart.

Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.
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H. W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon, where he lived until he went to California for college. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics. For nine years he taught mathematics and history in high school and community college. Meanwhile, he resumed his formal education, earning graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years. In 2005 he returned to the University of Texas, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History. He has written twenty-five books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His most recent book is Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16987728Fri, 08 Feb 2019 17:47:54 +0000Daniel GullottaIn the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke...
Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal, and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery.

They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart.

Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.
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H. W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon, where he lived until he went to California for college. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics. For nine years he taught mathematics and history in high school and community college. Meanwhile, he resumed his formal education, earning graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years. In 2005 he returned to the University of Texas, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History. He has written twenty-five books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His most recent book is Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3534falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/061-founding-first-ladies-and-slaves-with-marie-jenkins-schwartz--16919835
Unlike other histories that treat the stories of the First Ladies’ slaves as separate from the lives of their mistresses, Ties That Bound closely examines the relationships that developed between the First Ladies and their slaves. For elite women and their families, slaves were more than an agricultural workforce; slavery was an entire domestic way of life that reflected and reinforced their status. In many cases slaves were more constant companions to the white women of the household than were their husbands and sons, who often traveled or were at war. By looking closely at the complicated intimacy these women shared, Schwartz is able to reveal how they negotiated their roles, illuminating much about the lives of slaves themselves, as well as class, race, and gender in early America.

By detailing the prevalence and prominence of slaves in the daily lives of women who helped shape the country, Schwartz makes it clear that it is impossible to honestly tell the stories of these women while ignoring their slaves. She asks us to consider anew the embedded power of slavery in the very earliest conception of American politics, society, and everyday domestic routines.
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Marie Jenkins Schwartz is professor emeritus of history at the University of Rhode Island. She is the author of Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South, Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South, and Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16919835Fri, 01 Feb 2019 13:54:11 +0000Daniel GullottaBehind every great man stands a great woman. And behind that great woman stands a slave. Or so it was in the households of the Founding Fathers from Virginia, where slaves worked and suffered throughout the domestic environments of the era, from Mount...
Unlike other histories that treat the stories of the First Ladies’ slaves as separate from the lives of their mistresses, Ties That Bound closely examines the relationships that developed between the First Ladies and their slaves. For elite women and their families, slaves were more than an agricultural workforce; slavery was an entire domestic way of life that reflected and reinforced their status. In many cases slaves were more constant companions to the white women of the household than were their husbands and sons, who often traveled or were at war. By looking closely at the complicated intimacy these women shared, Schwartz is able to reveal how they negotiated their roles, illuminating much about the lives of slaves themselves, as well as class, race, and gender in early America.

By detailing the prevalence and prominence of slaves in the daily lives of women who helped shape the country, Schwartz makes it clear that it is impossible to honestly tell the stories of these women while ignoring their slaves. She asks us to consider anew the embedded power of slavery in the very earliest conception of American politics, society, and everyday domestic routines.
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Marie Jenkins Schwartz is professor emeritus of history at the University of Rhode Island. She is the author of Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South, Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South, and Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>3945falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/060-murray-n-rothbard-s-the-panic-of-1819-1962-with-patrick-newman-history-of-history-13--16840141
The American Economic Review was wild for this book when it appeared: "Rothbard's work represents the only published, book-length, academic treatise on the remedies that were proposed, debated, and enacted in attempts to cope with the crisis of 1819," the reviewer wrote. "As such, the book should certainly find a place on the shelf of the study of U.S. business cycles and of the economic historian who is interested in the early economic development of the United States."

And specialists have treasured the book for years. It is incredible to realize that some American historians think of M.N. Rothbard as the author of this book and nothing else!

The panic of 1819 grew largely out of the changes wrought by the War of 1812, and by the postwar boom that followed. The war also brought a rash of paper money, as the government borrowed heavily to finance the conflict. This would inevitably lead to suspension of specie payments in some parts of the country in 1814.

Freed from the shackles of hard money, the suspension of specie led to a boom. When peace came, the so did the bust.

But in the end, there was no widespread confusion on what caused the downturn. Instead, it was widely known that false prosperity is a very dangerous thing. It always turns to bust. But unlike today, the government didn't intervene. And precisely because there was no intervention, the panic ended quickly and peacefully.

Dr. Patrick Newman, a Fellow of the Mises Institute, is an ​assistant professor of economics at Florida Southern College and a Fellow of its Center for Free Enterprise. He completed his PhD in economics at George Mason University. His primary research interests include Austrian economics, monetary theory, and late 19th- and early 20th-century American economic history. He is the editor of Murray Rothbard's The Progressive Era (Mises Institute, 2017).]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16840141Fri, 25 Jan 2019 15:49:39 +0000Daniel GullottaThe panic of 1819 was America's first great economic crisis. And this is Murray Rothbard's masterful account, the first full scholarly book on the topic and still the most definitive. It was his dissertation, published in 1962 but nearly impossible to...
The American Economic Review was wild for this book when it appeared: "Rothbard's work represents the only published, book-length, academic treatise on the remedies that were proposed, debated, and enacted in attempts to cope with the crisis of 1819," the reviewer wrote. "As such, the book should certainly find a place on the shelf of the study of U.S. business cycles and of the economic historian who is interested in the early economic development of the United States."

And specialists have treasured the book for years. It is incredible to realize that some American historians think of M.N. Rothbard as the author of this book and nothing else!

The panic of 1819 grew largely out of the changes wrought by the War of 1812, and by the postwar boom that followed. The war also brought a rash of paper money, as the government borrowed heavily to finance the conflict. This would inevitably lead to suspension of specie payments in some parts of the country in 1814.

Freed from the shackles of hard money, the suspension of specie led to a boom. When peace came, the so did the bust.

But in the end, there was no widespread confusion on what caused the downturn. Instead, it was widely known that false prosperity is a very dangerous thing. It always turns to bust. But unlike today, the government didn't intervene. And precisely because there was no intervention, the panic ended quickly and peacefully.

Dr. Patrick Newman, a Fellow of the Mises Institute, is an ​assistant professor of economics at Florida Southern College and a Fellow of its Center for Free Enterprise. He completed his PhD in economics at George Mason University. His primary research interests include Austrian economics, monetary theory, and late 19th- and early 20th-century American economic history. He is the editor of Murray Rothbard's The Progressive Era (Mises Institute, 2017).]]>3275falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/059-henry-clay-the-man-who-would-be-president-with-james-c-klotter--16746609
James C. Klotter uses new research and offers a more focused, nuanced explanation of Clay's programs and politics in order to answer to the question of why the man they called "The Great Rejected" never won the presidency but did win the accolades of history. Klotter's fresh outlook reveals that the best monument to Henry Clay is the fact that the United States remains one country, one nation, one example of a successful democracy, still working, still changing, still reflecting his spirit. The appeal of Henry Clay and his emphasis on compromise still resonate in a society seeking less partisanship and more efforts at conciliation.
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James C. Klotter is Professor of History at Georgetown College and State Historian of Kentucky. The prize-winning author, coauthor, or editor of some eighteen books, he was the executive director of the Kentucky Historical Society for many years.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16746609Fri, 18 Jan 2019 14:23:39 +0000Daniel GullottaCharismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay seemed to have it all. He offered a comprehensive plan of change for America, and he directed national affairs as Speaker of the House, as Secretary of State to John Quincy...
James C. Klotter uses new research and offers a more focused, nuanced explanation of Clay's programs and politics in order to answer to the question of why the man they called "The Great Rejected" never won the presidency but did win the accolades of history. Klotter's fresh outlook reveals that the best monument to Henry Clay is the fact that the United States remains one country, one nation, one example of a successful democracy, still working, still changing, still reflecting his spirit. The appeal of Henry Clay and his emphasis on compromise still resonate in a society seeking less partisanship and more efforts at conciliation.
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James C. Klotter is Professor of History at Georgetown College and State Historian of Kentucky. The prize-winning author, coauthor, or editor of some eighteen books, he was the executive director of the Kentucky Historical Society for many years.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.]]>2986falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/058-presidential-campaigning-in-the-age-of-jackson-with-mark-r-cheathem--16687075
In The Coming of Democracy, Mark R. Cheathem examines the evolution of presidential campaigning from 1824 to 1840. Addressing the roots of early republic cultural politics—from campaign biographies to songs, political cartoons, and public correspondence between candidates and voters—Cheathem asks the reader to consider why such informal political expressions increased so dramatically during the Jacksonian period. What sounded and looked like mere entertainment, he argues, held important political meaning. The extraordinary voter participation rate—over 80 percent—in the 1840 presidential election indicated that both substantive issues and cultural politics drew Americans into the presidential selection process.

Drawing on period newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and public and private correspondence, The Coming of Democracy is the first book-length treatment to reveal how presidents and presidential candidates used both old and new forms of cultural politics to woo voters and win elections in the Jacksonian era. This book will appeal to anyone interested in US politics, the Jacksonian/antebellum era, or the presidency.

Mark R. Cheathem is a professor of history at Cumberland University, where he is the project director of the Papers of Martin Van Buren. He is the author of Andrew Jackson, Southerner and Andrew Jackson and the Rise of the Democrats.
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The Age of Jackson Podcast is hosted by Daniel N. Gullotta and is sponsored by "Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​: Home of the People's President" in Nashville​​e, TN:
https://thehermitage.com.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16687075Fri, 11 Jan 2019 15:17:37 +0000Daniel GullottaAfter the "corrupt bargain" that awarded John Quincy Adams the presidency in 1825, American politics underwent a fundamental shift from deference to participation. This changing tide eventually propelled Andrew Jackson into the White House—twice. But...
In The Coming of Democracy, Mark R. Cheathem examines the evolution of presidential campaigning from 1824 to 1840. Addressing the roots of early republic cultural politics—from campaign biographies to songs, political cartoons, and public correspondence between candidates and voters—Cheathem asks the reader to consider why such informal political expressions increased so dramatically during the Jacksonian period. What sounded and looked like mere entertainment, he argues, held important political meaning. The extraordinary voter participation rate—over 80 percent—in the 1840 presidential election indicated that both substantive issues and cultural politics drew Americans into the presidential selection process.

Drawing on period newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and public and private correspondence, The Coming of Democracy is the first book-length treatment to reveal how presidents and presidential candidates used both old and new forms of cultural politics to woo voters and win elections in the Jacksonian era. This book will appeal to anyone interested in US politics, the Jacksonian/antebellum era, or the presidency.

Mark R. Cheathem is a professor of history at Cumberland University, where he is the project director of the Papers of Martin Van Buren. He is the author of Andrew Jackson, Southerner and Andrew Jackson and the Rise of the Democrats.
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The Age of Jackson Podcast is hosted by Daniel N. Gullotta and is sponsored by "Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​: Home of the People's President" in Nashville​​e, TN:
https://thehermitage.com.]]>3476falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/057-the-rise-of-andrew-jackson-with-david-s-heidler-and-jeanne-t-heidler--16539644
Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his forties his sole claim on the public’s affections derived from his victory in a thirty-minute battle at New Orleans in early 1815. Yet those in his immediate circle believed he was a great man who should be president of the United States.

Jackson’s election in 1828 is usually viewed as a result of the expansion of democracy. Historians David and Jeanne Heidler in The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics argue that he actually owed his victory to his closest supporters, who wrote hagiographies of him, founded newspapers to savage his enemies, and built a political network that was always on message. In transforming a difficult man into a paragon of republican virtue, the Jacksonites exploded the old order and created a mode of electioneering that has been mimicked ever since.

David S. Heidler is an author and retired professor. Jeanne T. Heidler is professor emerita of history at the United States Air Force Academy. They have collaborated on numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Henry Clay: The Essential American and the award-winning Washington’s Circle: The Creation of the President. Their most recent work is The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics. They live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16539644Fri, 21 Dec 2018 14:03:29 +0000Daniel GullottaThe story of Andrew Jackson’s improbable ascent to the White House, centered on the handlers and propagandists who made it possible Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his forties his sole claim on the public’s...
Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his forties his sole claim on the public’s affections derived from his victory in a thirty-minute battle at New Orleans in early 1815. Yet those in his immediate circle believed he was a great man who should be president of the United States.

Jackson’s election in 1828 is usually viewed as a result of the expansion of democracy. Historians David and Jeanne Heidler in The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics argue that he actually owed his victory to his closest supporters, who wrote hagiographies of him, founded newspapers to savage his enemies, and built a political network that was always on message. In transforming a difficult man into a paragon of republican virtue, the Jacksonites exploded the old order and created a mode of electioneering that has been mimicked ever since.

David S. Heidler is an author and retired professor. Jeanne T. Heidler is professor emerita of history at the United States Air Force Academy. They have collaborated on numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Henry Clay: The Essential American and the award-winning Washington’s Circle: The Creation of the President. Their most recent work is The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics. They live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.]]>4495falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/056-slavery-and-antislavery-at-the-nation-s-founding-with-sean-wilentz--16472054
Wilentz’s controversial and timely reconsideration upends orthodox views of the Constitution. He describes the document as a tortured paradox that abided slavery without legitimizing it. This paradox lay behind the great political battles that fractured the nation over the next seventy years. As Southern Fire-eaters invented a proslavery version of the Constitution, antislavery advocates, including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, proclaimed antislavery versions based on the framers’ refusal to validate what they called “property in man.”

No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding invites fresh debate about the political and legal struggles over slavery that began during the Revolution and concluded with the Confederacy’s defeat. It drives straight to the heart of the most contentious and enduring issue in all of American history.

Sean Wilentz is George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books on American history and politics, including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics, chosen as Best History Book of the Year by Kirkus and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Wilentz’s writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and two Deems-Taylor-ASCAP awards. You can follow him on Twitter @seanwilentz.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16472054Fri, 14 Dec 2018 15:42:12 +0000Daniel GullottaAmericans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation’s founding. The acclaimed political historian Sean...
Wilentz’s controversial and timely reconsideration upends orthodox views of the Constitution. He describes the document as a tortured paradox that abided slavery without legitimizing it. This paradox lay behind the great political battles that fractured the nation over the next seventy years. As Southern Fire-eaters invented a proslavery version of the Constitution, antislavery advocates, including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, proclaimed antislavery versions based on the framers’ refusal to validate what they called “property in man.”

No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding invites fresh debate about the political and legal struggles over slavery that began during the Revolution and concluded with the Confederacy’s defeat. It drives straight to the heart of the most contentious and enduring issue in all of American history.

Sean Wilentz is George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books on American history and politics, including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics, chosen as Best History Book of the Year by Kirkus and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Wilentz’s writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and two Deems-Taylor-ASCAP awards. You can follow him on Twitter @seanwilentz.]]>5221falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/055-sean-wilentz-s-the-rise-of-american-democracy-2005-with-michelle-orihel-history-of-history-12--16433641
Sean Wilentz studies U.S. social and political history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University (1980) after earning bachelor’s degrees from Columbia University (1972) and Balliol College, Oxford University (1974). Chants Democratic (1984), which won several national prizes, including the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association, shows how the working class emerged in New York City and examines the changes in politics and political thought that came with it. It has recently been republished with a new preface in a 20th-anniversary edition. In The Kingdom of Matthias (1994), Wilentz and coauthor Paul Johnson tell the story of a bizarre religious cult that sprang up in New York City in the 1830s, exploring in the process the darker corners of the 19th-century religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. His major work to date, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

Michelle Orihel associate professor of history at Southern Utah University, is known for her use of contemporary popular culture in class like “Assassin’s Creed,” Disney’s “Pocahontas,” and “Hamilton: An American Musical” to generate students’ interest in the early American past. She is also a fan of bringing history into the present with projects like translating the letters of John and Abigail Adams into a series of social media posts. You can follow her on Twitter, @michelle_orihel.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16433641Mon, 10 Dec 2018 19:26:42 +0000Daniel GullottaAcclaimed as the definitive study of the period by one of the greatest American historians, The Rise of American Democracy traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. Ferocious clashes among...
Sean Wilentz studies U.S. social and political history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University (1980) after earning bachelor’s degrees from Columbia University (1972) and Balliol College, Oxford University (1974). Chants Democratic (1984), which won several national prizes, including the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association, shows how the working class emerged in New York City and examines the changes in politics and political thought that came with it. It has recently been republished with a new preface in a 20th-anniversary edition. In The Kingdom of Matthias (1994), Wilentz and coauthor Paul Johnson tell the story of a bizarre religious cult that sprang up in New York City in the 1830s, exploring in the process the darker corners of the 19th-century religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. His major work to date, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

Michelle Orihel associate professor of history at Southern Utah University, is known for her use of contemporary popular culture in class like “Assassin’s Creed,” Disney’s “Pocahontas,” and “Hamilton: An American Musical” to generate students’ interest in the early American past. She is also a fan of bringing history into the present with projects like translating the letters of John and Abigail Adams into a series of social media posts. You can follow her on Twitter, @michelle_orihel.]]>3482falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/054-jews-on-the-frontier-in-antebellum-america-with-shari-rabin--16410020
Rabin argues that Jewish mobility during this time was pivotal to the development of American Judaism. In the absence of key institutions like synagogues or charitable organizations which had played such a pivotal role in assimilating East Coast immigrants, ordinary Jews on the frontier created religious life from scratch, expanding and transforming Jewish thought and practice.

Jews on the Frontier vividly recounts the story of a neglected era in American Jewish history, offering a new interpretation of American religions, rooted not in congregations or denominations, but in the politics and experiences of being on the move. This book shows that by focusing on everyday people, we gain a more complete view of how American religion has taken shape. This book follows a group of dynamic and diverse individuals as they searched for resources for stability, certainty, and identity in a nation where there was little to be found.

Shari Rabin is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Director of the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston. She is a historian of American religions and modern Judaism, specializing in the nineteenth century. Her first book is Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America and was the winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies from the Jewish Book Council and a Finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. You can follow her on Twitter, @sharirabin.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16410020Fri, 07 Dec 2018 13:27:15 +0000Daniel GullottaJews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America offers a religious history that begins in an unexpected place: on the road. Shari Rabin recounts the journey of Jewish people as they left Eastern cities and ventured into the...
Rabin argues that Jewish mobility during this time was pivotal to the development of American Judaism. In the absence of key institutions like synagogues or charitable organizations which had played such a pivotal role in assimilating East Coast immigrants, ordinary Jews on the frontier created religious life from scratch, expanding and transforming Jewish thought and practice.

Jews on the Frontier vividly recounts the story of a neglected era in American Jewish history, offering a new interpretation of American religions, rooted not in congregations or denominations, but in the politics and experiences of being on the move. This book shows that by focusing on everyday people, we gain a more complete view of how American religion has taken shape. This book follows a group of dynamic and diverse individuals as they searched for resources for stability, certainty, and identity in a nation where there was little to be found.

Shari Rabin is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Director of the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston. She is a historian of American religions and modern Judaism, specializing in the nineteenth century. Her first book is Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America and was the winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies from the Jewish Book Council and a Finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. You can follow her on Twitter, @sharirabin.]]>2951falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/053-united-states-slavery-in-the-age-of-jackson-with-calvin-schermerhorn--16352212
Calvin Schermerhorn grew up in southern Maryland and is a historian of American slavery, capitalism, and African American inequality. A Professor of History in Arizona State University's School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, he has advanced degrees from the University of Virginia and Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860, Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South, and most recently Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery. You can follow him on Twitter @CalScherm.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16352212Fri, 30 Nov 2018 17:03:35 +0000Daniel GullottaWritten as a narrative history of slavery within the United States, Unrequited Toil details how an institution that seemed to be disappearing at the end of the American Revolution rose to become the most contested and valuable economic interest in the...
Calvin Schermerhorn grew up in southern Maryland and is a historian of American slavery, capitalism, and African American inequality. A Professor of History in Arizona State University's School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, he has advanced degrees from the University of Virginia and Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860, Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South, and most recently Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery. You can follow him on Twitter @CalScherm.]]>4783falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/052-one-family-two-states-and-the-coming-of-the-civil-war-with-jason-lantzer--16239367
The book uses not just Preston s story, but that of his family as a lens to help us glimpse the past. Preston s paternal family had strong ties to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, his grandfather was a prominent Presbyterian minister, and family members studied at and helped to lead Lexington, Virginia s Washington College (now Washington and Lee University). The maternal side of Preston s family tree included some of the most important Whig politicians in Indiana s young history, including his other grandfather, Governor Noah Noble. Preston s parents helped found Indianapolis s Second Presbyterian Church, and were married by the congregation s newly named minister, Henry Ward Beecher. It was through these connections that Preston and his siblings met Beecher s sister, Harriet, as well as interact with an elderly former slave of their great-grandfather Noble (whom the governor had brought to Indiana to freedom), a man known around Indianapolis as Uncle Tom.

Committed to faith, education, and community, Preston and his elder brother, Dorman, were enrolled by their father in Ovid Butler s North Western Christian University as part of the second entering class (1856 57). However, with rising sectional tensions, the boys' father, Alexander Davidson (himself to be a leader in the Constitutional Union Party), decided that both of his sons also needed to spend time in Southern schools of higher education. Dorman attended the Virginia Military Institute, only to come home in the wake of John Brown s raid on Harpers Ferry. Preston, undaunted by the prospect of war, went to his father s alma mater, Washington College. He was there to witness the election of 1860, Virginia s secession, and, despite his father s protests, it was there that Preston enlisted alongside his cousins in the cause of the Confederacy.

Preston served for the duration of the conflict, rising from the rank of private to lieutenant, surviving multiple wounding, the deaths of friends and family members, and the accusation (which helped lead to his eventual court-martial) that despite his service he was not really loyal to the South. After the war, he returned to Indianapolis, where he re-encountered the family he had left behind (including Dorman, who served briefly in the midst of John Hunt Morgan s raid) and sought to make sense of the new America, one without slavery, that was rising out of the ashes of war.

Davidson s story is one that delves into the human experience on multiple levels, asks us to reconsider what we think we know of the Civil War, and complicates, while it complements the existing literature. It is a story that perhaps could only have happened in Indiana.

Jason S. Lantzer is the author of three books, Prohibition is Here to Stay: The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in America, Interpreting the Prohibition Era at Museums and Historic Sites, and Rebel Bulldog: The Story of One Family, Two States, and the Civil War. He is a historian who looks at the intersection of religion, politics, and law in American culture, he holds three degrees from Indiana University and currently serves as the assistant director of Butler University’s Honors Program. You can follow him on Twitter at @HistProfDad.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16239367Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:22:57 +0000Daniel GullottaRebel Bulldog tells the story of Preston Davidson, a Northerner who fought for the Confederacy, and his family who lived in Indiana and Virginia. It is a story that examines antebellum religion, education, reform, and politics, and how they affected...
The book uses not just Preston s story, but that of his family as a lens to help us glimpse the past. Preston s paternal family had strong ties to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, his grandfather was a prominent Presbyterian minister, and family members studied at and helped to lead Lexington, Virginia s Washington College (now Washington and Lee University). The maternal side of Preston s family tree included some of the most important Whig politicians in Indiana s young history, including his other grandfather, Governor Noah Noble. Preston s parents helped found Indianapolis s Second Presbyterian Church, and were married by the congregation s newly named minister, Henry Ward Beecher. It was through these connections that Preston and his siblings met Beecher s sister, Harriet, as well as interact with an elderly former slave of their great-grandfather Noble (whom the governor had brought to Indiana to freedom), a man known around Indianapolis as Uncle Tom.

Committed to faith, education, and community, Preston and his elder brother, Dorman, were enrolled by their father in Ovid Butler s North Western Christian University as part of the second entering class (1856 57). However, with rising sectional tensions, the boys' father, Alexander Davidson (himself to be a leader in the Constitutional Union Party), decided that both of his sons also needed to spend time in Southern schools of higher education. Dorman attended the Virginia Military Institute, only to come home in the wake of John Brown s raid on Harpers Ferry. Preston, undaunted by the prospect of war, went to his father s alma mater, Washington College. He was there to witness the election of 1860, Virginia s secession, and, despite his father s protests, it was there that Preston enlisted alongside his cousins in the cause of the Confederacy.

Preston served for the duration of the conflict, rising from the rank of private to lieutenant, surviving multiple wounding, the deaths of friends and family members, and the accusation (which helped lead to his eventual court-martial) that despite his service he was not really loyal to the South. After the war, he returned to Indianapolis, where he re-encountered the family he had left behind (including Dorman, who served briefly in the midst of John Hunt Morgan s raid) and sought to make sense of the new America, one without slavery, that was rising out of the ashes of war.

Davidson s story is one that delves into the human experience on multiple levels, asks us to reconsider what we think we know of the Civil War, and complicates, while it complements the existing literature. It is a story that perhaps could only have happened in Indiana.

Jason S. Lantzer is the author of three books, Prohibition is Here to Stay: The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in America, Interpreting the Prohibition Era at Museums and Historic Sites, and Rebel Bulldog: The Story of One Family, Two States, and the Civil War. He is a historian who looks at the intersection of religion, politics, and law in American culture, he holds three degrees from Indiana University and currently serves as the assistant director of Butler University’s Honors Program. You can follow him on Twitter at @HistProfDad.]]>4650falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/051-david-r-roediger-s-the-wages-of-whiteness-1991-with-joshua-a-lynn-history-of-history-11--16199484
David R. Roediger teaches history and African American Studies at the University of Kansas. He was born in southern Illinois and educated in public schools in that state, with a B.S. in Ed from Northern Illinois University. He completed a doctorate inx History at Northwestern in 1979. Roediger has taught labor and Southern history at Northwestern, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, and the University of Illinois. He has also worked as an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University. He has written on U.S. movements for a shorter working day, on labor and poetry, on the history of radicalism, and on the racial identities of white workers and of immigrants. His books include Our Own Time, The Wages of Whiteness, How Race Survived U.S. History, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, and Working Towards Whiteness.

Joshua A. Lynn is a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions. His research focuses on the intersection of political culture with constructions of race, gender, and sexuality. Josh is also a historian of American conservatism. He previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed his Ph.D. in History. His first book, Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism, will be published by University of Virginia Press.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16199484Mon, 12 Nov 2018 17:25:05 +0000Daniel GullottaCombining classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the new labor history pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, David Roediger’s widely acclaimed book provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United...
David R. Roediger teaches history and African American Studies at the University of Kansas. He was born in southern Illinois and educated in public schools in that state, with a B.S. in Ed from Northern Illinois University. He completed a doctorate inx History at Northwestern in 1979. Roediger has taught labor and Southern history at Northwestern, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, and the University of Illinois. He has also worked as an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University. He has written on U.S. movements for a shorter working day, on labor and poetry, on the history of radicalism, and on the racial identities of white workers and of immigrants. His books include Our Own Time, The Wages of Whiteness, How Race Survived U.S. History, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, and Working Towards Whiteness.

Joshua A. Lynn is a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions. His research focuses on the intersection of political culture with constructions of race, gender, and sexuality. Josh is also a historian of American conservatism. He previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed his Ph.D. in History. His first book, Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism, will be published by University of Virginia Press.]]>3833falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/050-andrew-jackson-s-hermitage-with-howard-j-kittell--16166955
The non-profit Andrew Jackson Foundation originally named the Ladies Hermitage Association, operates the Hermitage daily. Their aim is to increase the public’s understanding of the complex life and times of Andrew Jackson, to discuss their relationship to events of today, and to inspire citizenship and pride in our nation. The Andrew Jackson Foundation endeavors to accomplish this through preservation, interpretation, exhibition, education, research, and publication.

The mission of the Andrew Jackson Foundation is to preserve the home place of Andrew Jackson, to create learning opportunities, and to inspire citizenship through experiencing the life and unique impact of Jackson.

Howard J. Kittell is president and CEO of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville. He has held this position since November 2008. Home of our nation’s 7th president, The Hermitage is a National Historic Landmark that consists of the 1,120-acre property, 27 buildings including the renowned Hermitage Mansion, Jackson’s Tomb, gardens, slave quarters and extensive collections. It is operated by a staff of 105 employees. A Michigan native, Kittell received a degree in Urban Planning from Michigan State University and did graduate work in architectural history and historic preservation at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. ]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16166955Thu, 08 Nov 2018 12:49:43 +0000Daniel GullottaAndrew Jackson's Hermitage is a historical plantation and museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States, 10 miles (16 km) east of downtown Nashville. The plantation was owned by Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States,...
The non-profit Andrew Jackson Foundation originally named the Ladies Hermitage Association, operates the Hermitage daily. Their aim is to increase the public’s understanding of the complex life and times of Andrew Jackson, to discuss their relationship to events of today, and to inspire citizenship and pride in our nation. The Andrew Jackson Foundation endeavors to accomplish this through preservation, interpretation, exhibition, education, research, and publication.

The mission of the Andrew Jackson Foundation is to preserve the home place of Andrew Jackson, to create learning opportunities, and to inspire citizenship through experiencing the life and unique impact of Jackson.

Howard J. Kittell is president and CEO of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville. He has held this position since November 2008. Home of our nation’s 7th president, The Hermitage is a National Historic Landmark that consists of the 1,120-acre property, 27 buildings including the renowned Hermitage Mansion, Jackson’s Tomb, gardens, slave quarters and extensive collections. It is operated by a staff of 105 employees. A Michigan native, Kittell received a degree in Urban Planning from Michigan State University and did graduate work in architectural history and historic preservation at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. ]]>3659falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/049-the-marquis-de-lafayette-reconsidered-with-laura-auricchio--16118436
Drawing on substantial new research conducted in libraries, archives, museums, and private homes in France and the United States, Auricchio, gives us history on a grand scale revealing the man and his complex life while challenging and exploring the complicated myths that have surrounded his name for more than two centuries

Laura Auricchio is a Professor of Art History at Parsons School of Design and Vice Provost for Curriculum and Learning, studies and teaches French and American history, art history, and visual and material culture in the Age of Revolution. Her most recent book, The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered, offers a visually-informed biography of the French hero of the American Revolution and received the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award. She is a frequent lecturer in both academic and public settings in the United States and around the world. You can follow her on Twitter at @Auricchio_Laura.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16118436Fri, 02 Nov 2018 12:44:02 +0000Daniel GullottaThe Marquis de Lafayette at age nineteen volunteered to fight under George Washington and became the French hero of the American Revolution. In this major biography, Laura Auricchio looks past the storybook hero and selfless champion of righteous...
Drawing on substantial new research conducted in libraries, archives, museums, and private homes in France and the United States, Auricchio, gives us history on a grand scale revealing the man and his complex life while challenging and exploring the complicated myths that have surrounded his name for more than two centuries

Laura Auricchio is a Professor of Art History at Parsons School of Design and Vice Provost for Curriculum and Learning, studies and teaches French and American history, art history, and visual and material culture in the Age of Revolution. Her most recent book, The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered, offers a visually-informed biography of the French hero of the American Revolution and received the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award. She is a frequent lecturer in both academic and public settings in the United States and around the world. You can follow her on Twitter at @Auricchio_Laura.]]>3100falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/048-lincoya-jackson-indian-adoption-and-the-politics-of-antebellum-expansion-with-dawn-peterson--16061462
As the United States aggressively expanded into Indian territories between 1790 and 1830, government officials stressed the importance of assimilating Native peoples into what they styled the United States’ “national family.” White households who adopted Indians—especially slaveholding Southern planters influenced by leaders such as Jackson—saw themselves as part of this expansionist project. They hoped to inculcate in their young charges U.S. attitudes toward private property, patriarchal family, and racial hierarchy.

U.S. whites were not the only ones driving this process. Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw families sought to place their sons in white households, to be educated in the ways of U.S. governance and political economy. But there were unintended consequences for all concerned. As adults, these adopted Indians used their educations to thwart U.S. federal claims to their homelands, setting the stage for the political struggles that would culminate in the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

Dawn Peterson is Assistant Professor of History at Emory University. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University in 2011, her MA from the same institution in 2007, and her BA from Barnard College in 1999. In her research, she considers the roles of race, gender, and kinship in the history of U.S. capitalism, settler colonialism, and slavery, particularly in the post-Revolutionary period. Her first book is Indians in the Family: Adoption and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16061462Fri, 26 Oct 2018 11:31:38 +0000Daniel GullottaDuring his invasion of Creek Indian territory in 1813, future U.S. president Andrew Jackson discovered a Creek infant orphaned by his troops. Moved by an “unusual sympathy,” Jackson sent the child to be adopted into his Tennessee plantation household....
As the United States aggressively expanded into Indian territories between 1790 and 1830, government officials stressed the importance of assimilating Native peoples into what they styled the United States’ “national family.” White households who adopted Indians—especially slaveholding Southern planters influenced by leaders such as Jackson—saw themselves as part of this expansionist project. They hoped to inculcate in their young charges U.S. attitudes toward private property, patriarchal family, and racial hierarchy.

U.S. whites were not the only ones driving this process. Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw families sought to place their sons in white households, to be educated in the ways of U.S. governance and political economy. But there were unintended consequences for all concerned. As adults, these adopted Indians used their educations to thwart U.S. federal claims to their homelands, setting the stage for the political struggles that would culminate in the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

Dawn Peterson is Assistant Professor of History at Emory University. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University in 2011, her MA from the same institution in 2007, and her BA from Barnard College in 1999. In her research, she considers the roles of race, gender, and kinship in the history of U.S. capitalism, settler colonialism, and slavery, particularly in the post-Revolutionary period. Her first book is Indians in the Family: Adoption and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion.]]>3492falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/047-federalist-politics-and-religious-struggle-in-the-new-american-nation-with-jonathan-j-den-hartog--16002238
Den Hartog describes the Federalist appropriations of religion as passing through three stages: a "republican" phase of easy cooperation inherited from the experience of the American Revolution; a "combative" phase, forged during the political battles of the 1790s–1800s, when the destiny of the republic was hotly contested; and a "voluntarist" phase that grew in importance after 1800. Faith became more individualistic and issue-oriented as a result of the actions of religious Federalists.

Religious impulses fueled party activism and informed governance, but the redirection of religious energies into voluntary societies sapped party momentum, and religious differences led to intraparty splits. These developments altered not only the Federalist Party but also the practice and perception of religion in America, as Federalist insights helped to create voluntary, national organizations in which Americans could practice their faith in interdenominational settings.

Patriotism and Piety focuses on the experiences and challenges confronted by a number of Federalists, from well-known leaders such as John Adams, John Jay, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Timothy Dwight to lesser-known but still important figures such as Caleb Strong, Elias Boudinot, and William Jay.

Jonathan Den Hartog is the Department Chair of History and Full Professor of History at the University of Northwestern, St. Paul. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation. You can follow him on Twitter at @JDenHartog1776.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/16002238Fri, 19 Oct 2018 13:20:24 +0000Daniel GullottaIn Patriotism and Piety, Jonathan Den Hartog argues that the question of how religion would function in American society was decided in the decades after the Constitution and First Amendment established a legal framework. Den Hartog shows that among...
Den Hartog describes the Federalist appropriations of religion as passing through three stages: a "republican" phase of easy cooperation inherited from the experience of the American Revolution; a "combative" phase, forged during the political battles of the 1790s–1800s, when the destiny of the republic was hotly contested; and a "voluntarist" phase that grew in importance after 1800. Faith became more individualistic and issue-oriented as a result of the actions of religious Federalists.

Religious impulses fueled party activism and informed governance, but the redirection of religious energies into voluntary societies sapped party momentum, and religious differences led to intraparty splits. These developments altered not only the Federalist Party but also the practice and perception of religion in America, as Federalist insights helped to create voluntary, national organizations in which Americans could practice their faith in interdenominational settings.

Patriotism and Piety focuses on the experiences and challenges confronted by a number of Federalists, from well-known leaders such as John Adams, John Jay, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Timothy Dwight to lesser-known but still important figures such as Caleb Strong, Elias Boudinot, and William Jay.

Jonathan Den Hartog is the Department Chair of History and Full Professor of History at the University of Northwestern, St. Paul. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation. You can follow him on Twitter at @JDenHartog1776.]]>3093falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/046-race-and-rights-in-antebellum-america-with-martha-s-jones--15944589
Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Co-President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She is the author of Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018) and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture (2007) and an editor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015.) For more information visit marthasjones.com.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15944589Fri, 12 Oct 2018 12:31:18 +0000Daniel GullottaBefore the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures,...
Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Co-President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She is the author of Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018) and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture (2007) and an editor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015.) For more information visit marthasjones.com.]]>4745falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/045-alexander-saxton-s-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-white-republic-1990-with-david-r-roediger-history-of-history-10--15908954
In this meticulous historical study, Saxton asks why white racism remained an ideological force in America long after the need to justify slavery and Western conquest had disappeared. He shows how the notion of white racial superiority continued to meet the needs of the various class coalitions that ruled the nation, at the same time as a creed of liberty and equality became dominant. And he explores the processes of ideological revision that made possible these seemingly contradictory transformations.

Examining images of race at a popular level—from blackface minstrelsy to the construction of the Western hero; from grassroots political culture to dime novels—as well as the philosophical construction of the political elite, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America is a powerful and comprehensive account of the ideological forces at work in the formation of modern America.

Alexander Saxton, was professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, is also the author of The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California as well as several novels. He spent nearly twenty years as a merchant seaman and carpenter before launching a distinguished academic career.

David Roediger teaches history and African American Studies at the University of Kansas. He was born in southern Illinois and educated in public schools in that state, with a B.S. in Ed from Northern Illinois University. He completed a doctorate in History at Northwestern in 1979. Roediger has taught labor and Southern history at Northwestern, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, and the University of Illinois. He has also worked as an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University. He has written on U.S. movements for a shorter working day, on labor and poetry, on the history of radicalism, and on the racial identities of white workers and of immigrants. His books include Our Own Time, The Wages of Whiteness, How Race Survived U.S. History, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, and Working Towards Whiteness.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15908954Mon, 08 Oct 2018 17:11:33 +0000Daniel GullottaIs racism a blot on the American democratic tradition? Or, as Alexander Saxton argues, has racial discrimination always been integral to it? In the nineteenth century, the United States was transformed into an industrialized mass democratic society....
In this meticulous historical study, Saxton asks why white racism remained an ideological force in America long after the need to justify slavery and Western conquest had disappeared. He shows how the notion of white racial superiority continued to meet the needs of the various class coalitions that ruled the nation, at the same time as a creed of liberty and equality became dominant. And he explores the processes of ideological revision that made possible these seemingly contradictory transformations.

Examining images of race at a popular level—from blackface minstrelsy to the construction of the Western hero; from grassroots political culture to dime novels—as well as the philosophical construction of the political elite, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America is a powerful and comprehensive account of the ideological forces at work in the formation of modern America.

Alexander Saxton, was professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, is also the author of The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California as well as several novels. He spent nearly twenty years as a merchant seaman and carpenter before launching a distinguished academic career.

David Roediger teaches history and African American Studies at the University of Kansas. He was born in southern Illinois and educated in public schools in that state, with a B.S. in Ed from Northern Illinois University. He completed a doctorate in History at Northwestern in 1979. Roediger has taught labor and Southern history at Northwestern, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, and the University of Illinois. He has also worked as an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University. He has written on U.S. movements for a shorter working day, on labor and poetry, on the history of radicalism, and on the racial identities of white workers and of immigrants. His books include Our Own Time, The Wages of Whiteness, How Race Survived U.S. History, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, and Working Towards Whiteness.]]>3480falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/044-in-defense-of-andrew-jackson-with-bradley-j-birzer--15889168
Today, Jackson is criticized and reviled – condemned as a slave-owner, repudiated as the president who dispatched the Indians down the “Trail of Tears,” dropped with embarrassment by the Democratic Party, and demanded by many to be removed from the twenty-dollar bill.

Who is the real Andrew Jackson? The beloved Old Hickory whom Americans once revered? Or the villain who has become a prime target of the Social Justice Warriors?

Using letters, diaries, newspaper columns, and notes, historian Bradley Birzer provides a fresh and enlightening perspective on Jackson —unvarnished, true to history, revealing why President Donald Trump sees Andrew Jackson as a political role model, and illustrating the strong parallels between the anxieties of Jacksonian America and the anxieties of the "Hillbilly Elegy" voting bloc of today.

Bradley J. Birzer is a professor of history and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College, where he has taught since 1999. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received his Ph.D. from Indiana University. His previous books include Russell Kirk: American Conservative, Neil Peart: Cultural (Re)Percussions, American Cicero: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, and In Defense of Andrew Jackson.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15889168Fri, 05 Oct 2018 17:15:39 +0000Daniel GullottaAndrew Jackson was controversial in his time—and even more controversial in our own. Indian fighter, ardent patriot, hero of the War of 1812, the very embodiment of America’s democratic and frontier spirit, Andrew Jackson was an iconic figure. Today,...
Today, Jackson is criticized and reviled – condemned as a slave-owner, repudiated as the president who dispatched the Indians down the “Trail of Tears,” dropped with embarrassment by the Democratic Party, and demanded by many to be removed from the twenty-dollar bill.

Who is the real Andrew Jackson? The beloved Old Hickory whom Americans once revered? Or the villain who has become a prime target of the Social Justice Warriors?

Using letters, diaries, newspaper columns, and notes, historian Bradley Birzer provides a fresh and enlightening perspective on Jackson —unvarnished, true to history, revealing why President Donald Trump sees Andrew Jackson as a political role model, and illustrating the strong parallels between the anxieties of Jacksonian America and the anxieties of the "Hillbilly Elegy" voting bloc of today.

Bradley J. Birzer is a professor of history and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College, where he has taught since 1999. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received his Ph.D. from Indiana University. His previous books include Russell Kirk: American Conservative, Neil Peart: Cultural (Re)Percussions, American Cicero: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, and In Defense of Andrew Jackson.]]>2624falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/043-converting-the-world-in-the-early-american-republic-with-emily-conroy-krutz--15832470
In describing how American missionaries interacted with a range of foreign locations (including India, Liberia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Singapore) and imperial contexts, Christian Imperialism provides a new perspective on how Americans thought of their country’s role in the world. While in the early republican period many were engaged in territorial expansion in the west, missionary supporters looked east and across the seas toward Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Conroy-Krutz’s history of the mission movement reveals that strong Anglo-American and global connections persisted through the early republic. Considering Britain and its empire to be models for their work, the missionaries of the American Board attempted to convert the globe into the image of Anglo-American civilization.

Emily Conroy-Krutz is Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University and is the author of Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15832470Fri, 28 Sep 2018 16:47:09 +0000Daniel GullottaIn 1812, eight American missionaries, under the direction of the recently formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailed from the United States to South Asia. The plans that motivated their voyage were ano less grand than taking...
In describing how American missionaries interacted with a range of foreign locations (including India, Liberia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Singapore) and imperial contexts, Christian Imperialism provides a new perspective on how Americans thought of their country’s role in the world. While in the early republican period many were engaged in territorial expansion in the west, missionary supporters looked east and across the seas toward Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Conroy-Krutz’s history of the mission movement reveals that strong Anglo-American and global connections persisted through the early republic. Considering Britain and its empire to be models for their work, the missionaries of the American Board attempted to convert the globe into the image of Anglo-American civilization.

Emily Conroy-Krutz is Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University and is the author of Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic.]]>4017falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/042-ralph-e-w-earl-and-the-selling-of-andrew-jackson-with-rachel-stephens--15773907
By investigating the role that visual culture played in early American history, Stephens reveals the fascinating connections between politics and portraiture in order to challenge existing frameworks for grasping the inner workings of early nineteenth-century politics. Stephens argues that understanding the role Earl played within Jackson's coterie is critical to understanding the trajectory of Jackson's career. Earl, she concludes, should be credited with playing the propagandistic role of image-shaper--long before such a position existed within American presidential politics. Earl's portraits became fine art icons that changed in character and context as Jackson matured from the hero of the Battle of New Orleans to the first common-man president to the leader of the Democratic party, and finally to the rustic sage of the Hermitage.

Jackson and Earl worked as a team to exploit an emerging political culture that sought pictures of famous people to complement the nation's exploding mass culture, grounded on printing, fast communications, and technological innovation. To further this cause, Earl operated a printmaking enterprise and used his portrait images to create engravings and lithographs to spread Jackson's influence into homes and businesses. Portraits became vehicles to portray political allegiances, middle-class cultural aspirations, and the conspicuous trappings of wealth and power.

Through a comprehensive analysis of primary sources including those detailing Jackson's politics, contemporary political cartoons and caricatures, portraits and prints, and the social and economic history of the period, Stephens illuminates the man they pictured in new ways, seeking to broaden the understanding of such a complicated figure in American history.

Rachel Stephens is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Alabama. Her research investigates the art and visual culture of the antebellum era, particularly in the South. She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Iowa. Her first book is Selling Andrew Jackson: Ralph E. W. Earl and the Politics of Portraiture.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15773907Fri, 21 Sep 2018 13:39:53 +0000Daniel GullottaSelling Andrew Jackson is the first book-length study of the American portrait painter Ralph E. W. Earl, who worked as Andrew Jackson's personal artist from 1817 until Earl's death in 1838. During this period Jackson held Earl in close council, even...
By investigating the role that visual culture played in early American history, Stephens reveals the fascinating connections between politics and portraiture in order to challenge existing frameworks for grasping the inner workings of early nineteenth-century politics. Stephens argues that understanding the role Earl played within Jackson's coterie is critical to understanding the trajectory of Jackson's career. Earl, she concludes, should be credited with playing the propagandistic role of image-shaper--long before such a position existed within American presidential politics. Earl's portraits became fine art icons that changed in character and context as Jackson matured from the hero of the Battle of New Orleans to the first common-man president to the leader of the Democratic party, and finally to the rustic sage of the Hermitage.

Jackson and Earl worked as a team to exploit an emerging political culture that sought pictures of famous people to complement the nation's exploding mass culture, grounded on printing, fast communications, and technological innovation. To further this cause, Earl operated a printmaking enterprise and used his portrait images to create engravings and lithographs to spread Jackson's influence into homes and businesses. Portraits became vehicles to portray political allegiances, middle-class cultural aspirations, and the conspicuous trappings of wealth and power.

Through a comprehensive analysis of primary sources including those detailing Jackson's politics, contemporary political cartoons and caricatures, portraits and prints, and the social and economic history of the period, Stephens illuminates the man they pictured in new ways, seeking to broaden the understanding of such a complicated figure in American history.

Rachel Stephens is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Alabama. Her research investigates the art and visual culture of the antebellum era, particularly in the South. She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Iowa. Her first book is Selling Andrew Jackson: Ralph E. W. Earl and the Politics of Portraiture.]]>2976falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/041-jefferson-paine-monroe-and-the-struggle-against-the-old-order-in-america-and-europe-with-john-ferling--15717908
Apostles of Revolution spans a crucial period in Western Civilization ranging from the American insurgency against Great Britain to the Declaration of Independence, from desperate engagements on American battlefields to the threat posed to the ideals of the Revolution by the Federalist Party. With the French Revolution devolving into anarchy in the background, the era culminates with the “Revolution of 1800,” Jefferson's election as president.

Written as a sweeping narrative of a pivotal epoch, Apostles of Revolution captures the turbulent spirit of the times and the personal dangers experienced by Jefferson, Paine, and Monroe. It reminds us that the liberty we take for granted is ours only because we, both champions and common citizens, have fought for it.

John Ferling is professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of many books on American Revolutionary history, including The Ascent of George Washington; Almost a Miracle, an acclaimed military history of the War of Independence; and the award-winning A Leap in the Dark and Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It. His most recent book on American history is Apostles of Revolution: Jefferson, Paine, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe. He and his wife, Carol, live near Atlanta, Georgia.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15717908Fri, 14 Sep 2018 15:22:18 +0000Daniel GullottaThomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Monroe were in the vanguard of revolutionary ideas in the 18th century. As founding fathers, they risked their lives for American independence, but they also wanted more. Each wished for profound changes in...
Apostles of Revolution spans a crucial period in Western Civilization ranging from the American insurgency against Great Britain to the Declaration of Independence, from desperate engagements on American battlefields to the threat posed to the ideals of the Revolution by the Federalist Party. With the French Revolution devolving into anarchy in the background, the era culminates with the “Revolution of 1800,” Jefferson's election as president.

Written as a sweeping narrative of a pivotal epoch, Apostles of Revolution captures the turbulent spirit of the times and the personal dangers experienced by Jefferson, Paine, and Monroe. It reminds us that the liberty we take for granted is ours only because we, both champions and common citizens, have fought for it.

John Ferling is professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of many books on American Revolutionary history, including The Ascent of George Washington; Almost a Miracle, an acclaimed military history of the War of Independence; and the award-winning A Leap in the Dark and Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It. His most recent book on American history is Apostles of Revolution: Jefferson, Paine, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe. He and his wife, Carol, live near Atlanta, Georgia.]]>3814falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/040-albert-j-raboteau-s-slave-religion-1978-with-yvonne-p-chireau-history-of-history-9--15683521
Albert J. Raboteau who came to Princeton in 1982, is a specialist in American religious history. His research and teaching have focused on American Catholic history, African-American religious movements and currently, he is working on the place of beauty in the history of Eastern and Western Christian Spirituality. He has written Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History, Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, and most recently American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals & Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice. He was the first recipient of the J.W.C. Pennington Award from the University of Heidelberg and last Fall delivered the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary. He retired in June, 2013.

Yvonne Chireau is the Department of Religion Chair at Swarthmore College and is an authority on African-based religions such as Santeria and Voodoo in America, religion and healing, and black American religion. She is also interested in religion and comics, manga, and graphic novels. The author of Black Magic: African American Religion and the Conjuring Tradition, she has also co-edited, with Nathaniel Deutsch, Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism. She received her B.A from Mount Holyoke College, her M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15683521Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:03:41 +0000Daniel GullottaTwenty-five years after its original publication, Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South remains a classic in the study of African American history and religion. In a new chapter in this anniversary edition, author Albert...
Albert J. Raboteau who came to Princeton in 1982, is a specialist in American religious history. His research and teaching have focused on American Catholic history, African-American religious movements and currently, he is working on the place of beauty in the history of Eastern and Western Christian Spirituality. He has written Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History, Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, and most recently American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals & Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice. He was the first recipient of the J.W.C. Pennington Award from the University of Heidelberg and last Fall delivered the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary. He retired in June, 2013.

Yvonne Chireau is the Department of Religion Chair at Swarthmore College and is an authority on African-based religions such as Santeria and Voodoo in America, religion and healing, and black American religion. She is also interested in religion and comics, manga, and graphic novels. The author of Black Magic: African American Religion and the Conjuring Tradition, she has also co-edited, with Nathaniel Deutsch, Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism. She received her B.A from Mount Holyoke College, her M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University.]]>3712falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/039-archbishop-john-hughes-and-the-making-of-irish-america-with-john-loughery--15664131
In Dagger John, Loughery reveals Hughes’s life as it unfolded amid turbulent times for the religious and ethnic minority he represented. Hughes the public figure comes to the fore, illuminated by Loughery’s retelling of his interactions with, and responses to, every major figure of his era, including his critics (Walt Whitman, James Gordon Bennett, and Horace Greeley) and his admirers (Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln). Loughery peels back the layers of the public life of this complicated man, showing how he reveled in the controversies he provoked and believed he had lived to see many of his goals achieved until his dreams came crashing down during the Draft Riots of 1863 when violence set Manhattan ablaze.

To know "Dagger" John Hughes is to understand the United States during a painful period of growth as the nation headed toward civil war. Dagger John’s successes and failures, his public relationships and private trials, and his legacy in the Irish Catholic community and beyond provide context and layers of detail for the larger history of a modern culture unfolding in his wake.

John Loughery is the author of, Alias S. S. Van Dine, John Sloan: Painter and Rebel, The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives and Gay Identities, a Twentieth Century History, the last two of which were New York Times Notable Books. His biography of John Sloan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. His most recent book is Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15664131Fri, 07 Sep 2018 14:42:12 +0000Daniel GullottaAcclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John’s College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of...
In Dagger John, Loughery reveals Hughes’s life as it unfolded amid turbulent times for the religious and ethnic minority he represented. Hughes the public figure comes to the fore, illuminated by Loughery’s retelling of his interactions with, and responses to, every major figure of his era, including his critics (Walt Whitman, James Gordon Bennett, and Horace Greeley) and his admirers (Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln). Loughery peels back the layers of the public life of this complicated man, showing how he reveled in the controversies he provoked and believed he had lived to see many of his goals achieved until his dreams came crashing down during the Draft Riots of 1863 when violence set Manhattan ablaze.

To know "Dagger" John Hughes is to understand the United States during a painful period of growth as the nation headed toward civil war. Dagger John’s successes and failures, his public relationships and private trials, and his legacy in the Irish Catholic community and beyond provide context and layers of detail for the larger history of a modern culture unfolding in his wake.

John Loughery is the author of, Alias S. S. Van Dine, John Sloan: Painter and Rebel, The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives and Gay Identities, a Twentieth Century History, the last two of which were New York Times Notable Books. His biography of John Sloan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. His most recent book is Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America.]]>3774falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/038-alexander-hamilton-james-madison-and-the-creation-of-american-oligarchy-with-jay-cost--15611695
Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment. He shows that each man in his own way came to accept corruption as a necessary cost of growth. The Price of Greatness reveals the trade-off that made the United States the richest nation in human history, and that continues to fracture our politics to this day.

Jay Cost is a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a columnist at National Review Online, a contributing editorial writer to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard. He is the author of three books, most recently The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy. He earned a B.A. with High Distinction in government and history from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15611695Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:11:19 +0000Daniel GullottaIn the history of American politics, there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison’s bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born...
Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment. He shows that each man in his own way came to accept corruption as a necessary cost of growth. The Price of Greatness reveals the trade-off that made the United States the richest nation in human history, and that continues to fracture our politics to this day.

Jay Cost is a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a columnist at National Review Online, a contributing editorial writer to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard. He is the author of three books, most recently The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy. He earned a B.A. with High Distinction in government and history from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.]]>2744falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/037-david-hosack-botany-and-medicine-in-the-garden-of-the-early-republic-with-victoria-johnson--15561006
As historian Victoria Johnson reveals in her groundbreaking biography, Hosack was one of the few points the duelists did agree on. Summoned that morning because of his role as the beloved Hamilton family doctor, he was also a close friend of Burr. A brilliant surgeon and a world-class botanist, Hosack―who until now has been lost in the fog of history―was a pioneering thinker who shaped a young nation.

Born in New York City, he was educated in Europe and returned to America inspired by his newfound knowledge. He assembled a plant collection so spectacular and diverse that it amazes botanists today, conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States, and introduced new surgeries to American. His tireless work championing public health and science earned him national fame and praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

One goal drove Hosack above all others: to build the Republic’s first botanical garden. Despite innumerable obstacles and near-constant resistance, Hosack triumphed when, by 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden at last crowned twenty acres of Manhattan farmland. “Where others saw real estate and power, Hosack saw the landscape as a pharmacopoeia able to bring medicine into the modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta). Today what remains of America’s first botanical garden lies in the heart of midtown, buried beneath Rockefeller Center.

Whether collecting specimens along the banks of the Hudson River, lecturing before a class of rapt medical students, or breaking the fever of a young Philip Hamilton, David Hosack was an American visionary who has been too long forgotten. Alongside other towering figures of the post-Revolutionary generation, he took the reins of a nation. In unearthing the dramatic story of his life, Johnson offers a lush depiction of the man who gave a new voice to the powers and perils of nature.

Victoria Johnson is an associate professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she teaches on the history of New York City. She has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library and a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the New York Botanical Garden. She is the author of Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime and American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15561006Fri, 24 Aug 2018 14:33:45 +0000Daniel GullottaOn a clear morning in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat at the edge of the Hudson River. He was bound for a New Jersey dueling ground to settle his bitter dispute with Aaron Burr. Hamilton took just two men with him: his “second” for...
As historian Victoria Johnson reveals in her groundbreaking biography, Hosack was one of the few points the duelists did agree on. Summoned that morning because of his role as the beloved Hamilton family doctor, he was also a close friend of Burr. A brilliant surgeon and a world-class botanist, Hosack―who until now has been lost in the fog of history―was a pioneering thinker who shaped a young nation.

Born in New York City, he was educated in Europe and returned to America inspired by his newfound knowledge. He assembled a plant collection so spectacular and diverse that it amazes botanists today, conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States, and introduced new surgeries to American. His tireless work championing public health and science earned him national fame and praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

One goal drove Hosack above all others: to build the Republic’s first botanical garden. Despite innumerable obstacles and near-constant resistance, Hosack triumphed when, by 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden at last crowned twenty acres of Manhattan farmland. “Where others saw real estate and power, Hosack saw the landscape as a pharmacopoeia able to bring medicine into the modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta). Today what remains of America’s first botanical garden lies in the heart of midtown, buried beneath Rockefeller Center.

Whether collecting specimens along the banks of the Hudson River, lecturing before a class of rapt medical students, or breaking the fever of a young Philip Hamilton, David Hosack was an American visionary who has been too long forgotten. Alongside other towering figures of the post-Revolutionary generation, he took the reins of a nation. In unearthing the dramatic story of his life, Johnson offers a lush depiction of the man who gave a new voice to the powers and perils of nature.

Victoria Johnson is an associate professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she teaches on the history of New York City. She has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library and a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the New York Botanical Garden. She is the author of Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime and American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.]]>3612falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/036-contesting-equal-rights-from-the-revolution-to-the-civil-war-with-richard-d-brown--15512622 
Brown illustrates how the ideal was tested in struggles over race and ethnicity, religious freedom, gender and social class, voting rights, and citizenship. He shows how high principles fared in criminal trials and divorce cases when minorities, women, and people from different social classes faced judgment. This book offers a much-needed exploration of the ways revolutionary political ideas penetrated popular thinking and everyday practice.

Richard D. Brown is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Connecticut. His previous books include Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865; The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in Early America, 1650-1870; and the coauthored microhistory The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in Early America. His most recent work is Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15512622Fri, 17 Aug 2018 13:38:43 +0000Daniel GullottaHow did Americans in the generations following the Declaration of Independence translate its lofty ideals into practice? In this broadly synthetic work, distinguished historian Richard Brown shows that despite its founding statement that “all men are... 
Brown illustrates how the ideal was tested in struggles over race and ethnicity, religious freedom, gender and social class, voting rights, and citizenship. He shows how high principles fared in criminal trials and divorce cases when minorities, women, and people from different social classes faced judgment. This book offers a much-needed exploration of the ways revolutionary political ideas penetrated popular thinking and everyday practice.

Richard D. Brown is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Connecticut. His previous books include Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865; The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in Early America, 1650-1870; and the coauthored microhistory The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in Early America. His most recent work is Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War.]]>3814falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/035-american-honor-and-the-creation-of-the-nation-s-ideals-with-craig-bruce-smith--15466212
By also interweaving individuals and groups that have historically been excluded from the discussion of honor—such as female thinkers, women patriots, slaves, and free African Americans—Smith makes a broad and significant argument about how the Revolutionary era witnessed a fundamental shift in ethical ideas. This thoughtful work sheds new light on a forgotten cause of the Revolution and on the ideological foundation of the United States.

Craig Bruce Smith is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the History Program at William Woods University. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University. His specialization is in early American cultural and intellectual history during the long eighteenth century and the Age of Revolution, specifically looking at ethics, national identity, and transnational ideas. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, the Atlantic world, military history, and the American Founders. He is the author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15466212Fri, 10 Aug 2018 20:16:12 +0000Daniel GullottaThe American Revolution was not only a revolution for liberty and freedom, it was also a revolution of ethics, reshaping what colonial Americans understood as "honor" and "virtue." As Craig Bruce Smith demonstrates, these concepts were crucial aspects...
By also interweaving individuals and groups that have historically been excluded from the discussion of honor—such as female thinkers, women patriots, slaves, and free African Americans—Smith makes a broad and significant argument about how the Revolutionary era witnessed a fundamental shift in ethical ideas. This thoughtful work sheds new light on a forgotten cause of the Revolution and on the ideological foundation of the United States.

Craig Bruce Smith is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the History Program at William Woods University. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University. His specialization is in early American cultural and intellectual history during the long eighteenth century and the Age of Revolution, specifically looking at ethics, national identity, and transnational ideas. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, the Atlantic world, military history, and the American Founders. He is the author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary.]]>3851falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/034-bertram-wyatt-brown-s-southern-honor-1982-with-craig-bruce-smith-history-of-history-8--15435887
Bertram Wyatt-Brown (March 19, 1932-November 5, 2012) was the Richard J. Milbauer Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida and a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. The author of House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family and The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, he was a past president of the Southern Historical Association, the Society for Historians of Early American History, and the St. George Tucker Society. 

Craig Bruce Smith is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the History Program at William Woods University. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University. His specialization is in early American cultural and intellectual history during the long eighteenth century and the Age of Revolution, specifically looking at ethics, national identity, and transnational ideas. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, the Atlantic world, military history, and the American Founders. He is the author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15435887Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:02:47 +0000Daniel GullottaA finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, hailed in The Washington Post as "a work of enormous imagination and enterprise" and in The New York Times as "an important, original book," Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old...
Bertram Wyatt-Brown (March 19, 1932-November 5, 2012) was the Richard J. Milbauer Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida and a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. The author of House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family and The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, he was a past president of the Southern Historical Association, the Society for Historians of Early American History, and the St. George Tucker Society. 

Craig Bruce Smith is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the History Program at William Woods University. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University. His specialization is in early American cultural and intellectual history during the long eighteenth century and the Age of Revolution, specifically looking at ethics, national identity, and transnational ideas. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, the Atlantic world, military history, and the American Founders. He is the author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era.]]>3869falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/033-kiowa-indians-religion-and-the-struggle-for-the-american-west-with-jennifer-graber--15405933
In The Gods of Indian Country, Jennifer Graber tells the story of the Kiowa Indians during Anglo-Americans' hundred-year effort to seize their homeland. Like Native people across the American West, Kiowas had known struggle and dislocation before. But the forces bearing down on them-soldiers, missionaries, and government officials-were unrelenting. With pressure mounting, Kiowas adapted their ritual practices in the hope that they could use sacred power to save their lands and community. 

Against the Kiowas stood Protestant and Catholic leaders, missionaries, and reformers who hoped to remake Indian Country. These activists saw themselves as the Indians' friends, teachers, and protectors. They also asserted the primacy of white Christian civilization and the need to transform the spiritual and material lives of Native people. When Kiowas and other Native people resisted their designs, these Christians supported policies that broke treaties and appropriated Indian lands. They argued that the gifts bestowed by Christianity and civilization outweighed the pains that accompanied the denial of freedoms, the destruction of communities, and the theft of resources. In order to secure Indian Country and control indigenous populations, Christian activists sanctified the economic and racial hierarchies of their day.

Jennifer Graber is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and an affiliated faculty member in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program. She is the author of The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America and The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15405933Thu, 02 Aug 2018 14:42:02 +0000Daniel GullottaDuring the nineteenth century, white Americans sought the cultural transformation and physical displacement of Native people. Though this process was certainly a clash of rival economic systems and racial ideologies, it was also a profound spiritual...
In The Gods of Indian Country, Jennifer Graber tells the story of the Kiowa Indians during Anglo-Americans' hundred-year effort to seize their homeland. Like Native people across the American West, Kiowas had known struggle and dislocation before. But the forces bearing down on them-soldiers, missionaries, and government officials-were unrelenting. With pressure mounting, Kiowas adapted their ritual practices in the hope that they could use sacred power to save their lands and community. 

Against the Kiowas stood Protestant and Catholic leaders, missionaries, and reformers who hoped to remake Indian Country. These activists saw themselves as the Indians' friends, teachers, and protectors. They also asserted the primacy of white Christian civilization and the need to transform the spiritual and material lives of Native people. When Kiowas and other Native people resisted their designs, these Christians supported policies that broke treaties and appropriated Indian lands. They argued that the gifts bestowed by Christianity and civilization outweighed the pains that accompanied the denial of freedoms, the destruction of communities, and the theft of resources. In order to secure Indian Country and control indigenous populations, Christian activists sanctified the economic and racial hierarchies of their day.

Jennifer Graber is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and an affiliated faculty member in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program. She is the author of The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America and The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West.]]>3172falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/032-the-value-of-the-enslaved-from-womb-to-grave-with-daina-ramey-berry--15341799
This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. Reaching out from these pages, they compel the reader to bear witness to their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely commodities.

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, nineteenth-century medical education, and the value of life and death.

Daina Ramey Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies, and the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Fellow in History, at the University of Texas at Austin. An award-winning historian, she is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She lives in Austin, Texas.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15341799Fri, 27 Jul 2018 14:11:47 +0000Daniel GullottaIn life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people...
This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. Reaching out from these pages, they compel the reader to bear witness to their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely commodities.

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, nineteenth-century medical education, and the value of life and death.

Daina Ramey Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies, and the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Fellow in History, at the University of Texas at Austin. An award-winning historian, she is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She lives in Austin, Texas.]]>2790falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/031-pirates-and-privateers-in-the-age-of-jackson-with-david-head--15295955
Seafarers living in the United States secured commissions from Spanish American nations, attacked Spanish vessels, and returned to sell their captured cargoes (which sometimes included slaves) from bases in Baltimore, New Orleans, and Galveston and on Amelia Island. Privateers sold millions of dollars of goods to untold numbers of ordinary Americans. Their collective enterprise involved more than a hundred vessels and thousands of people―not only ships’ crews but investors, merchants, suppliers, and others. They angered foreign diplomats, worried American officials, and muddied U.S. foreign relations.

David Head looks at how Spanish American privateering worked and who engaged in it; how the U.S. government responded; how privateers and their supporters evaded or exploited laws and international relations; what motivated men to choose this line of work; and ultimately, what it meant to them to sail for the new republics of Spanish America. His findings broaden our understanding of the experience of being an American in a wider world.

David Head teaches history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His first book, Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States, was honored with the John Gardner Maritime Research Award by the Fellows of the G.W. Blunt White Library at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University at Buffalo in 2010. In 2016, he was the Amanda and Greg Gregory Family Fellow at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. He is writing his next book on George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15295955Fri, 20 Jul 2018 15:32:54 +0000Daniel GullottaPrivateers of the Americas examines raids on Spanish shipping conducted from the United States during the early 1800s. These activities were sanctioned by and conducted on behalf of, republics in Spanish America aspiring to independence from Spain....
Seafarers living in the United States secured commissions from Spanish American nations, attacked Spanish vessels, and returned to sell their captured cargoes (which sometimes included slaves) from bases in Baltimore, New Orleans, and Galveston and on Amelia Island. Privateers sold millions of dollars of goods to untold numbers of ordinary Americans. Their collective enterprise involved more than a hundred vessels and thousands of people―not only ships’ crews but investors, merchants, suppliers, and others. They angered foreign diplomats, worried American officials, and muddied U.S. foreign relations.

David Head looks at how Spanish American privateering worked and who engaged in it; how the U.S. government responded; how privateers and their supporters evaded or exploited laws and international relations; what motivated men to choose this line of work; and ultimately, what it meant to them to sail for the new republics of Spanish America. His findings broaden our understanding of the experience of being an American in a wider world.

David Head teaches history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His first book, Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States, was honored with the John Gardner Maritime Research Award by the Fellows of the G.W. Blunt White Library at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University at Buffalo in 2010. In 2016, he was the Amanda and Greg Gregory Family Fellow at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. He is writing his next book on George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy.]]>3210falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/030-how-banking-worked-in-the-early-american-republic-with-sharon-ann-murphy--15188401
In Other People’s Money, Sharon Ann Murphy explains how banking and money worked before the federal government, spurred by the chaos of the Civil War, created the national system of US paper currency. Murphy traces the evolution of banking in America from the founding of the nation, when politicians debated the constitutionality of chartering a national bank, to Andrew Jackson’s role in the Bank War of the early 1830s, to the problems of financing a large-scale war. She reveals how, ultimately, the monetary and banking structures that emerged from the Civil War also provided the basis for our modern financial system, from its formation under the Federal Reserve in 1913 to the present.

Touching on the significant role that numerous historical figures played in shaping American banking—including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Louis Brandeis—Other People’s Money is an engaging guide to the heated political fights that surrounded banking in early America as well as to the economic causes and consequences of the financial system that emerged from the turmoil. By helping readers understand the financial history of this period and the way banking shaped the society in which ordinary Americans lived and worked, this book broadens and deepens our knowledge of the Early American Republic.

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America and Other People's Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15188401Fri, 06 Jul 2018 11:15:03 +0000Daniel GullottaPieces of paper that claimed to be good for two dollars upon redemption at a distant bank. Foreign coins that fluctuated in value from town to town. Stock certificates issued by turnpike or canal companies—worth something... or perhaps nothing. IOUs...
In Other People’s Money, Sharon Ann Murphy explains how banking and money worked before the federal government, spurred by the chaos of the Civil War, created the national system of US paper currency. Murphy traces the evolution of banking in America from the founding of the nation, when politicians debated the constitutionality of chartering a national bank, to Andrew Jackson’s role in the Bank War of the early 1830s, to the problems of financing a large-scale war. She reveals how, ultimately, the monetary and banking structures that emerged from the Civil War also provided the basis for our modern financial system, from its formation under the Federal Reserve in 1913 to the present.

Touching on the significant role that numerous historical figures played in shaping American banking—including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Louis Brandeis—Other People’s Money is an engaging guide to the heated political fights that surrounded banking in early America as well as to the economic causes and consequences of the financial system that emerged from the turmoil. By helping readers understand the financial history of this period and the way banking shaped the society in which ordinary Americans lived and worked, this book broadens and deepens our knowledge of the Early American Republic.

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America and Other People's Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic.]]>4346falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/029-gordon-s-wood-s-the-radicalism-of-the-american-revolution-1991-with-michael-d-hattem-history-of-history-7--15188311
Michael D. Hattem is the Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Knox College. He received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2017 and served one year as a Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and Visiting Faculty at The New School. His current manuscript, Past and Prologue: The Politics of Memory in the American Revolution, explores the role of the historical past in revolutionary American culture and politics, particularly the importance of changing historical memories of the British and colonial pasts in shaping the dynamics of the coming of the American Revolution and the development of early American nationalism. The manuscript is currently under contract to Yale University Press. You can follow him on Twitter: @MichaelHattem.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15188311Wed, 04 Jul 2018 10:11:14 +0000Daniel GullottaIn a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than...
Michael D. Hattem is the Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Knox College. He received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2017 and served one year as a Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and Visiting Faculty at The New School. His current manuscript, Past and Prologue: The Politics of Memory in the American Revolution, explores the role of the historical past in revolutionary American culture and politics, particularly the importance of changing historical memories of the British and colonial pasts in shaping the dynamics of the coming of the American Revolution and the development of early American nationalism. The manuscript is currently under contract to Yale University Press. You can follow him on Twitter: @MichaelHattem.]]>4154falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/028-the-cherokee-diaspora-with-gregory-d-smithers--15159013
Gregory D. Smithers is Professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of numerous books and articles about Native American and African American history. He is the author of Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History, Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780–1940, and The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity. You can follow him on Twitter at: @GD_Smithers.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15159013Fri, 29 Jun 2018 14:55:01 +0000Daniel GullottaThe Cherokee are one of the largest Native American tribes in the United States, with more than three hundred thousand people across the country claiming tribal membership and nearly one million people internationally professing to have at least one...
Gregory D. Smithers is Professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of numerous books and articles about Native American and African American history. He is the author of Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History, Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780–1940, and The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity. You can follow him on Twitter at: @GD_Smithers.]]>5290falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/027-fugitive-slaves-and-the-politics-of-slavery-with-richard-j-m-blackett--15108634
Richard Blackett is a historian of the abolitionist movement in the US and particularly its transatlantic connections and the roles African Americans played in the movement to abolish slavery. He is the author of Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860; Beating Against the Barriers. Biographical Essays in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History; Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent; Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War; Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery, and Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. His most recent work is The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery.

Blackett has been named the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University for the 2013-14 academic year. On May 5, 2008, the Library Company held its Annual Dinner in its 277th year. Professor Richard J. Blackett, the Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, was the featured speaker. Click Here for an audio pod cast of his talk about the African American struggle in the age of emancipation. Blackett taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-85), Indiana University (1985-1996); University of Houston where he was the John & Rebecca Moores professor of history and African American Studies (1996-2002). He has been Associate Editor of the Journal of American History (1985-1990), Acting Editor (1989-1990); editor of the Indiana Magazine of History (1993-1996). He is also past president of the Association of Caribbean Historians.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15108634Fri, 22 Jun 2018 13:32:16 +0000Daniel GullottaThis magisterial study, ten years in the making by one of the field's most distinguished historians, will be the first to explore the impact fugitive slaves had on the politics of the critical decade leading up to the Civil War. Through the close...
Richard Blackett is a historian of the abolitionist movement in the US and particularly its transatlantic connections and the roles African Americans played in the movement to abolish slavery. He is the author of Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860; Beating Against the Barriers. Biographical Essays in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History; Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent; Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War; Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery, and Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. His most recent work is The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery.

Blackett has been named the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University for the 2013-14 academic year. On May 5, 2008, the Library Company held its Annual Dinner in its 277th year. Professor Richard J. Blackett, the Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, was the featured speaker. Click Here for an audio pod cast of his talk about the African American struggle in the age of emancipation. Blackett taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-85), Indiana University (1985-1996); University of Houston where he was the John & Rebecca Moores professor of history and African American Studies (1996-2002). He has been Associate Editor of the Journal of American History (1985-1990), Acting Editor (1989-1990); editor of the Indiana Magazine of History (1993-1996). He is also past president of the Association of Caribbean Historians.]]>2668falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/026-the-bank-war-of-andrew-jackson-and-nicholas-biddle-with-paul-kahan--15041389
Paul Kahan earned his Ph.D. in history from Temple University in 2009. He has written numerous books, including Eastern State Penitentiary: A History and The Homestead Strike: Labor, Violence, and American Industry. For more information, visit his website at paulkahan.com. You can also follow him on Twitter (@paul_kahan) and "like" him on Facebook (facebook.com/pkahan/).]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15041389Fri, 15 Jun 2018 09:50:16 +0000Daniel GullottaIn The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance, historian Paul Kahan explores one of the most important and dramatic events in American political and economic history, from the idea of centralized banking and the...
Paul Kahan earned his Ph.D. in history from Temple University in 2009. He has written numerous books, including Eastern State Penitentiary: A History and The Homestead Strike: Labor, Violence, and American Industry. For more information, visit his website at paulkahan.com. You can also follow him on Twitter (@paul_kahan) and "like" him on Facebook (facebook.com/pkahan/).]]>2905falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/025-r-r-palmer-s-the-age-of-the-democratic-revolution-1959-with-steven-pincus-history-of-history-6--15020292
Joining me to discuss R. R. Palmer’s The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, is Steven Pincus.

Steven Pincus received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990. At Yale, he teaches 17th and 18th century British, Atlantic and European history, the history of the early British Empire, and Directed Studies.  In addition to research seminars in History, he regularly co-teaches cross-disciplinary seminars with faculty in other departments.  Recent topics have included the Divergence of Britain, Comparative Revolutions, and Early Modern Empires in Theory and Practice.  He is the author of Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1668 and 1688: The First Modern Revolution, and most recently The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders’ Case for Activist Government.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/15020292Mon, 11 Jun 2018 15:20:07 +0000Daniel GullottaFor the Western world, the period from 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. R.R. Palmer argues that the American, French, and Polish revolutions―and the movements for...
Joining me to discuss R. R. Palmer’s The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, is Steven Pincus.

Steven Pincus received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990. At Yale, he teaches 17th and 18th century British, Atlantic and European history, the history of the early British Empire, and Directed Studies.  In addition to research seminars in History, he regularly co-teaches cross-disciplinary seminars with faculty in other departments.  Recent topics have included the Divergence of Britain, Comparative Revolutions, and Early Modern Empires in Theory and Practice.  He is the author of Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1668 and 1688: The First Modern Revolution, and most recently The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders’ Case for Activist Government.]]>2698falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/024-the-first-ladies-of-the-american-republic-with-jeanne-e-abrams--14987565
Martha, Abigail and Dolley walked the fine line between bringing dignity to their lives as presidential wives, and supporting their husbands’ presidential agendas, while at the same time, distancing themselves from the behavior, customs and ceremonies that reflected the courtly styles of European royalty that were inimical to the values of the new republic. In the face of personal challenges, public scrutiny, and sometimes vocal criticism, they worked to project a persona that inspired approval and confidence, and helped burnish their husbands’ presidential reputations.

The position of First Lady was not officially authorized or defined, and the place of women in society was more restricted than it is today. These capable and path-breaking women not only shaped their own roles as prominent Americans and “First Ladies,” but also defined a role for women in public and private life in America.

Jeanne E. Abrams is Professor at the University Libraries and the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, where she is also Director of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society, and Curator of the Beck Archives, Special Collections. She is the author of Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health (NYU Press, 2013) and First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role (NYU Press, 2018).]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14987565Fri, 08 Jun 2018 11:48:28 +0000Daniel GullottaAmerica’s first First Ladies—Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison—had the challenging task of playing a pivotal role in defining the nature of the American presidency to a fledgling nation and to the world. In First Ladies of the...
Martha, Abigail and Dolley walked the fine line between bringing dignity to their lives as presidential wives, and supporting their husbands’ presidential agendas, while at the same time, distancing themselves from the behavior, customs and ceremonies that reflected the courtly styles of European royalty that were inimical to the values of the new republic. In the face of personal challenges, public scrutiny, and sometimes vocal criticism, they worked to project a persona that inspired approval and confidence, and helped burnish their husbands’ presidential reputations.

The position of First Lady was not officially authorized or defined, and the place of women in society was more restricted than it is today. These capable and path-breaking women not only shaped their own roles as prominent Americans and “First Ladies,” but also defined a role for women in public and private life in America.

Jeanne E. Abrams is Professor at the University Libraries and the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, where she is also Director of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society, and Curator of the Beck Archives, Special Collections. She is the author of Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health (NYU Press, 2013) and First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role (NYU Press, 2018).]]>2279falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/023-chief-justice-john-marshall-and-his-times-with-joel-richard-paul--14948005
This is the astonishing true story of how a rough-cut frontiersman - born in Virginia in 1755 and with little formal education - invented himself as one of the nation's preeminent lawyers and politicians who then reinvented the Constitution to forge a stronger nation. Without Precedent is the engrossing account of the life and times of this exceptional man, who with cunning, imagination, and grace shaped America's future as he held together the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the country itself.

Joel Richard Paul is a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of California Hastings Law School in San Francisco. He is the author of Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright and a Spy Saved the American Revolution, which was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post. His latest work is Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times. ]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14948005Fri, 01 Jun 2018 14:10:47 +0000Daniel GullottaNo member of America's Founding Generation had a greater impact on the Constitution and the Supreme Court than John Marshall, and no one did more to preserve the delicate unity of the fledgling United States. From the nation's founding in 1776 and for...
This is the astonishing true story of how a rough-cut frontiersman - born in Virginia in 1755 and with little formal education - invented himself as one of the nation's preeminent lawyers and politicians who then reinvented the Constitution to forge a stronger nation. Without Precedent is the engrossing account of the life and times of this exceptional man, who with cunning, imagination, and grace shaped America's future as he held together the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the country itself.

Joel Richard Paul is a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of California Hastings Law School in San Francisco. He is the author of Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright and a Spy Saved the American Revolution, which was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post. His latest work is Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times. ]]>3200falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/022-poor-whites-and-slavery-in-the-antebellum-south-with-keri-leigh-merritt--14885794
Keri Leigh Merritt works as an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her B.A. in History and Political Science from Emory University and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2014) in History from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on race and class in U.S. history. Merritt’s work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. She has also co-edited a book on southern labor history with Matthew Hild, Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (2018), and is currently conducting research for books on radical black resistance during Reconstruction, and on the role of sheriffs and police in the nineteenth century South.

In her spare time, Keri Leigh loves to read, listen to music (everything from jazz and rocksteady to old punk rock), and travel. She also writes historical pieces for the public, with letters and essays appearing in Aeon, Bill Moyers, Salon, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Follow Keri Leigh on Twitter: @kerileighmerrit.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14885794Fri, 25 May 2018 14:11:03 +0000Daniel GullottaAnalyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the...
Keri Leigh Merritt works as an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her B.A. in History and Political Science from Emory University and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2014) in History from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on race and class in U.S. history. Merritt’s work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. She has also co-edited a book on southern labor history with Matthew Hild, Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (2018), and is currently conducting research for books on radical black resistance during Reconstruction, and on the role of sheriffs and police in the nineteenth century South.

In her spare time, Keri Leigh loves to read, listen to music (everything from jazz and rocksteady to old punk rock), and travel. She also writes historical pieces for the public, with letters and essays appearing in Aeon, Bill Moyers, Salon, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Follow Keri Leigh on Twitter: @kerileighmerrit.]]>2437falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/021-indians-settlers-and-slaves-at-great-crossings-with-christina-snyder--14827053
Great Crossings embodied monumental changes then transforming North America. The United States, within the span of a few decades, grew from an East Coast nation to a continental empire. The territorial growth of the United States forged a multicultural, multiracial society, but that diversity also sparked fierce debates over race, citizenship, and America's destiny. Great Crossings, a place of race-mixing and cultural exchange, emerged as a battleground. Its history provides an intimate view of the ambitions and struggles of Indians, settlers, and slaves who were trying to secure their place in a changing world. Through deep research and compelling prose, Snyder introduces us to a diverse range of historical actors: Richard Mentor Johnson, the politician who reportedly killed Tecumseh and then became schoolmaster to the sons of his former foes; Julia Chinn, Johnson's enslaved concubine, who fought for her children's freedom; and Peter Pitchlynn, a Choctaw intellectual who, even in the darkest days of Indian removal, argued for the future of Indian nations. Together, their stories demonstrate how this era transformed colonizers and the colonized alike, sowing the seeds of modern America.

Christina Snyder is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. Her first book, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, earned a wide range of accolades, including the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the James H. Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the John C. Ewers Prize from the Western History Association. Her latest work is Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson.

Song Credit: Tommy Case's The Great Crossing Waltz.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14827053Fri, 18 May 2018 13:57:39 +0000Daniel GullottaIn "Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson," prize-winning historian Christina Snyder reinterprets the history of Jacksonian America. Most often, this drama focuses on whites who turned west to conquer a continent,...
Great Crossings embodied monumental changes then transforming North America. The United States, within the span of a few decades, grew from an East Coast nation to a continental empire. The territorial growth of the United States forged a multicultural, multiracial society, but that diversity also sparked fierce debates over race, citizenship, and America's destiny. Great Crossings, a place of race-mixing and cultural exchange, emerged as a battleground. Its history provides an intimate view of the ambitions and struggles of Indians, settlers, and slaves who were trying to secure their place in a changing world. Through deep research and compelling prose, Snyder introduces us to a diverse range of historical actors: Richard Mentor Johnson, the politician who reportedly killed Tecumseh and then became schoolmaster to the sons of his former foes; Julia Chinn, Johnson's enslaved concubine, who fought for her children's freedom; and Peter Pitchlynn, a Choctaw intellectual who, even in the darkest days of Indian removal, argued for the future of Indian nations. Together, their stories demonstrate how this era transformed colonizers and the colonized alike, sowing the seeds of modern America.

Christina Snyder is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. Her first book, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, earned a wide range of accolades, including the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the James H. Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the John C. Ewers Prize from the Western History Association. Her latest work is Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson.

Song Credit: Tommy Case's The Great Crossing Waltz.]]>3279falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/020-charles-sellers-the-market-revolution-1991-with-michael-zakim-history-of-history-5--14783490
Equally important, he offers a provocative new way of looking at this crucial period, showing how the boom that followed the War of 1812 ignited a generational conflict over the republic's destiny, a struggle that changed America dramatically. Sellers stresses throughout that democracy was born in tension with capitalism, not as its natural political expression, and he shows how the massive national resistance to commercial interests ultimately rallied around Andrew Jackson.

Discussing this landmark in the study of the Age of Jackson is Michael Zakim.

Michael Zakim is associate professor of history at Tel Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1998. He is the author of Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men's Dress in the American Republic, 1760-1860 and Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made and the co-editor of Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14783490Mon, 14 May 2018 13:02:04 +0000Daniel GullottaIn The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, one of America's most distinguished historians offers a major reinterpretation of a pivotal moment in United States history. Based on impeccable scholarship and written with grace and style,...
Equally important, he offers a provocative new way of looking at this crucial period, showing how the boom that followed the War of 1812 ignited a generational conflict over the republic's destiny, a struggle that changed America dramatically. Sellers stresses throughout that democracy was born in tension with capitalism, not as its natural political expression, and he shows how the massive national resistance to commercial interests ultimately rallied around Andrew Jackson.

Discussing this landmark in the study of the Age of Jackson is Michael Zakim.

Michael Zakim is associate professor of history at Tel Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1998. He is the author of Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men's Dress in the American Republic, 1760-1860 and Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made and the co-editor of Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America.]]>4253falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/019-joseph-smith-and-the-beginnings-of-mormonism-with-richard-lyman-bushman--14777732
Richard Lyman Bushman is an American historian and Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus at Columbia University. Dr. Bushman received his AM, AB, and Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University. Through the years he has taught at Harvard University, Brigham Young University, Boston University, University of Delaware, and at Columbia University. He is the author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14777732Sat, 12 May 2018 16:27:25 +0000Daniel GullottaJoseph Smith, America’s preeminent visionary and prophet, rose from a modest background to found the largest indigenous Christian church in American history. Without the benefit of wealth, education, or social position, he published the 584-page Book...
Richard Lyman Bushman is an American historian and Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus at Columbia University. Dr. Bushman received his AM, AB, and Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University. Through the years he has taught at Harvard University, Brigham Young University, Boston University, University of Delaware, and at Columbia University. He is the author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.]]>3566falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/018-the-northern-experience-of-the-indian-removal-act-with-john-p-bowes--14702625
Bowes focuses on four case studies that exemplify particular elements of removal in the Old Northwest. He traces the paths taken by Delaware Indians in response to Euro-American expansion and U.S. policies in the decades prior to the Indian Removal Act. He also considers the removal experience among the Seneca-Cayugas, Wyandots, and other Indian communities in the Sandusky River region of northwestern Ohio. Bowes uses the 1833 Treaty of Chicago as a lens through which to examine the forces that drove the divergent removals of various Potawatomi communities from northern Illinois and Indiana. And in exploring the experiences of the Odawas and Ojibwes in Michigan Territory, he analyzes the historical context and choices that enabled some Indian communities to avoid relocation west of the Mississippi River.

John P. Bowes is Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University and received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, including Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West, The Trail of Tears: Removal in the South, Black Hawk and the War of 1832: Removal in the North, The Choctaw, and Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14702625Fri, 04 May 2018 05:13:48 +0000Daniel GullottaThe history of Indian removal has often followed a single narrative arc, one that begins with President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 and follows the Cherokee Trail of Tears. In that conventional account, the Black Hawk War of 1832...
Bowes focuses on four case studies that exemplify particular elements of removal in the Old Northwest. He traces the paths taken by Delaware Indians in response to Euro-American expansion and U.S. policies in the decades prior to the Indian Removal Act. He also considers the removal experience among the Seneca-Cayugas, Wyandots, and other Indian communities in the Sandusky River region of northwestern Ohio. Bowes uses the 1833 Treaty of Chicago as a lens through which to examine the forces that drove the divergent removals of various Potawatomi communities from northern Illinois and Indiana. And in exploring the experiences of the Odawas and Ojibwes in Michigan Territory, he analyzes the historical context and choices that enabled some Indian communities to avoid relocation west of the Mississippi River.

John P. Bowes is Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University and received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, including Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West, The Trail of Tears: Removal in the South, Black Hawk and the War of 1832: Removal in the North, The Choctaw, and Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal.]]>3896falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/017-john-quincy-adams-and-the-transformation-of-american-politics-with-william-j-cooper--14612288
Aware of this reputation yet convinced that Adams deserves a reconsideration, award-winning historian William J. Cooper has reframed the sixth president’s life in an entirely original way, demonstrating that Adams should be considered our lost Founding Father, his morality and political philosophy the final link to the great visionaries who created our nation. As Cooper demonstrates, no one else in his generation―not Clay, Webster, Calhoun, or Jackson―ever experienced Europe as young Adams did, who at fourteen translated from French at the court of Catherine the Great. In fact, Adams’s very exposure to the ideas of the European Enlightenment that had so influenced the Founding Fathers, including their embrace of reason, were hardly shared by his contemporaries, particularly those who could not countenance slaves as equal human beings.

Such differences, as Cooper narrates, became particularly significant after Adams’s failed presidency, when he, along with his increasingly reclusive wife, Louisa Catherine Adams, returned to Washington as a Massachusetts congressman in 1831. With his implacable foe Andrew Jackson in the White House, Adams passionately took up the antislavery cause. Despite raucous opposition from southern and northern politicians, Adams refused to relent, his protests so vehement that Congress enacted the gag rule in the 1830s specifically to silence him. With his impassioned public pronouncements and his heroic arguments in the Amistad trial, a defiant Adams was no longer viewed as a failed president but a national, albeit curmudgeonly, hero, who finally collapsed on the floor of the House chamber in 1848 and died in the capital three days later. Ironically, Adams’s death and the extraordinary obsequies produced an outpouring of national, and bipartisan, grief never before seen in the nineteenth century, as if the country had truly lost its last Founding Father.

William J. Cooper is a Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Southern Historical Association. He was born in Kingstree, South Carolina, and received his A.B. from Princeton and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the LSU faculty since 1968 and is the author of The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877–1890; The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856; Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860; Jefferson Davis, American; Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era; and The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14612288Fri, 27 Apr 2018 12:13:56 +0000Daniel GullottaLong relegated to the sidelines of history as the hyperintellectual son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), has never basked in the historical spotlight. Remembered, if at all, as an ineffective president during an especially...
Aware of this reputation yet convinced that Adams deserves a reconsideration, award-winning historian William J. Cooper has reframed the sixth president’s life in an entirely original way, demonstrating that Adams should be considered our lost Founding Father, his morality and political philosophy the final link to the great visionaries who created our nation. As Cooper demonstrates, no one else in his generation―not Clay, Webster, Calhoun, or Jackson―ever experienced Europe as young Adams did, who at fourteen translated from French at the court of Catherine the Great. In fact, Adams’s very exposure to the ideas of the European Enlightenment that had so influenced the Founding Fathers, including their embrace of reason, were hardly shared by his contemporaries, particularly those who could not countenance slaves as equal human beings.

Such differences, as Cooper narrates, became particularly significant after Adams’s failed presidency, when he, along with his increasingly reclusive wife, Louisa Catherine Adams, returned to Washington as a Massachusetts congressman in 1831. With his implacable foe Andrew Jackson in the White House, Adams passionately took up the antislavery cause. Despite raucous opposition from southern and northern politicians, Adams refused to relent, his protests so vehement that Congress enacted the gag rule in the 1830s specifically to silence him. With his impassioned public pronouncements and his heroic arguments in the Amistad trial, a defiant Adams was no longer viewed as a failed president but a national, albeit curmudgeonly, hero, who finally collapsed on the floor of the House chamber in 1848 and died in the capital three days later. Ironically, Adams’s death and the extraordinary obsequies produced an outpouring of national, and bipartisan, grief never before seen in the nineteenth century, as if the country had truly lost its last Founding Father.

William J. Cooper is a Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Southern Historical Association. He was born in Kingstree, South Carolina, and received his A.B. from Princeton and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the LSU faculty since 1968 and is the author of The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877–1890; The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856; Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860; Jefferson Davis, American; Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era; and The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics.]]>3401falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/016-bourgeois-equality-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-world-with-deirdre-n-mccloskey--14595792
Why? Most economists—from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty—say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. “Our riches,” she argues, “were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea.” Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove “trade-tested betterment.” Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of “add institutions and stir” doesn’t work, and didn’t. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas—ideas for electric motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk. Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, yielding a unique respect for betterment and its practitioners, and upending ancient hierarchies. Commoners were encouraged to have a go, and the bourgeoisie took up the Bourgeois Deal, and we were all enriched.

Deirdre N. McCloskey is an emerita distinguished professor of economics and of history, and professor of English and of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her training at Harvard University and is the author of sixteen other books, including If You’re So Smart, The Secret Sins of Economics, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, Crossing: A Memoir, all published by the University of Chicago Press, and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14595792Sat, 21 Apr 2018 20:15:50 +0000Daniel GullottaThere’s little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre N. McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The...
Why? Most economists—from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty—say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. “Our riches,” she argues, “were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea.” Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove “trade-tested betterment.” Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of “add institutions and stir” doesn’t work, and didn’t. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas—ideas for electric motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk. Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, yielding a unique respect for betterment and its practitioners, and upending ancient hierarchies. Commoners were encouraged to have a go, and the bourgeoisie took up the Bourgeois Deal, and we were all enriched.

Deirdre N. McCloskey is an emerita distinguished professor of economics and of history, and professor of English and of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her training at Harvard University and is the author of sixteen other books, including If You’re So Smart, The Secret Sins of Economics, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, Crossing: A Memoir, all published by the University of Chicago Press, and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.]]>2719falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/015-daniel-walker-howe-s-what-hath-god-wrought-2007-with-miles-smith-iv-history-of-history-4--14552297
A panoramic narrative, What Hath God Wrought portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America’s economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. Howe examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs–advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans–were the true prophets of America’s future. In addition, Howe reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women’s rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe’s story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.

Miles Smith is an Assistant Professor at Regent University and is a visiting assistant professor at Hillsdale College. He earned his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University and is currently working on a volume about the religious life of Andrew Jackson with William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. You can follow him on Twitter at @IVMiles.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14552297Mon, 16 Apr 2018 15:38:06 +0000Daniel GullottaThe Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. In this Pulitzer prize-winning, critically acclaimed addition to the series, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle...
A panoramic narrative, What Hath God Wrought portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America’s economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. Howe examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs–advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans–were the true prophets of America’s future. In addition, Howe reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women’s rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe’s story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.

Miles Smith is an Assistant Professor at Regent University and is a visiting assistant professor at Hillsdale College. He earned his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University and is currently working on a volume about the religious life of Andrew Jackson with William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. You can follow him on Twitter at @IVMiles.]]>2434falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/014-the-female-poisoner-in-jacksonian-america-with-sara-l-crosby--14530966
This difference in outcome doesn’t mean that poisonous women didn’t preoccupy Americans. In the decades following Andrew Jackson’s first presidential bid, Americans buzzed over women who used poison to kill men. They produced and devoured reams of ephemeral newsprint, cheap trial transcripts, and sensational “true” pamphlets, as well as novels, plays, and poems. Female poisoners served as crucial elements in the literary manifestos of writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe to George Lippard and the cheap pamphleteer E. E. Barclay, but these characters were given a strangely positive spin, appearing as innocent victims, avenging heroes, or engaging humbugs.

My guest today is Sara L. Crosby and she will explain how Jacksonian America used the figure of the female poisoner.

Sara L. Crosby is an associate professor of English at Ohio State University, where she works on early- and antebellum-American crime writing and print culture. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of Poisonous Muse: The Female Poisoner and the Framing of Popular Authorship in Jacksonian America.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14530966Fri, 13 Apr 2018 12:21:48 +0000Daniel GullottaThe nineteenth century was, we have been told, the “century of the poisoner,” when Britain and the United States trembled under an onslaught of unruly women who poisoned husbands with gleeful abandon. That story, however, is only half true. While...
This difference in outcome doesn’t mean that poisonous women didn’t preoccupy Americans. In the decades following Andrew Jackson’s first presidential bid, Americans buzzed over women who used poison to kill men. They produced and devoured reams of ephemeral newsprint, cheap trial transcripts, and sensational “true” pamphlets, as well as novels, plays, and poems. Female poisoners served as crucial elements in the literary manifestos of writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe to George Lippard and the cheap pamphleteer E. E. Barclay, but these characters were given a strangely positive spin, appearing as innocent victims, avenging heroes, or engaging humbugs.

My guest today is Sara L. Crosby and she will explain how Jacksonian America used the figure of the female poisoner.

Sara L. Crosby is an associate professor of English at Ohio State University, where she works on early- and antebellum-American crime writing and print culture. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of Poisonous Muse: The Female Poisoner and the Framing of Popular Authorship in Jacksonian America.]]>2269falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/013-the-aaron-burr-conspiracy-with-james-e-lewis-jr--14404770
Burr was said to have enticed some people with plans to liberate Spanish Mexico, others with promises of land in the Orleans Territory, still others with talk of building a new empire beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The Burr Conspiracy was a cause célèbre of the early republic―with Burr cast as the chief villain of the Founding Fathers―even as the evidence against him was vague and conflicting. Rather than trying to discover the real intentions of Burr or his accusers―Thomas Jefferson foremost among them―James E. Lewis Jr. in The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis looks at how differing understandings of the Burr Conspiracy were shaped by everything from partisan politics and biased newspapers to notions of honor and gentility. He also traces the enduring legacy of the stories that were told and accepted during this moment of uncertainty. The Burr Conspiracy offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of the United States at a time when it was far from clear to its people how long it would last.

James E. Lewis Jr. is a professor of history at Kalamazoo College. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia and his books include The Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson’s Noble Bargain? and John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union. His most recent book is The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis. ]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14404770Fri, 06 Apr 2018 11:28:14 +0000Daniel GullottaIn 1805 and 1806, Aaron Burr, former vice president of the newly formed American republic, traveled through the Trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he was arrested and tried for treason in 1807. My today,...
Burr was said to have enticed some people with plans to liberate Spanish Mexico, others with promises of land in the Orleans Territory, still others with talk of building a new empire beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The Burr Conspiracy was a cause célèbre of the early republic―with Burr cast as the chief villain of the Founding Fathers―even as the evidence against him was vague and conflicting. Rather than trying to discover the real intentions of Burr or his accusers―Thomas Jefferson foremost among them―James E. Lewis Jr. in The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis looks at how differing understandings of the Burr Conspiracy were shaped by everything from partisan politics and biased newspapers to notions of honor and gentility. He also traces the enduring legacy of the stories that were told and accepted during this moment of uncertainty. The Burr Conspiracy offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of the United States at a time when it was far from clear to its people how long it would last.

James E. Lewis Jr. is a professor of history at Kalamazoo College. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia and his books include The Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson’s Noble Bargain? and John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union. His most recent book is The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis. ]]>3445falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/012-robert-v-remini-s-andrew-jackson-and-the-bank-war-1967-with-stephen-w-campbell-history-of-history-3--14389729
Published in 1967, in Andrew Jackson and the Bank War Robert V. Remini begins by discussing the antagonists in the Bank War: Jackson and Biddle. He states that "the destruction of the Bank occurred because it got caught between [these] two willful, proud, and stubborn men..." He then goes on to details of the struggle, "emphasizing the ways in which the War transformed the presidential office: how Jackson capitalized on the struggle to strengthen the executive branch of the government and infuse it with much of the power it enjoys today."

Joining me in this discussion of about Andrew Jackson and the Bank War by one of the greatest historians of Andrew Jackson is Dr. Stephen W. Campbell.

Dr. Campbell received his Ph.D. In History from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2013, completing his dissertation on the "Bank War" with a particular emphasis on newspaper editors and political institutions. His first book, developed from this thesis, is scheduled to come out in the fall of 2018 with the University of Kansas Press. He is currently a lecturer at Pasadena City College.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14389729Fri, 30 Mar 2018 13:09:29 +0000Daniel GullottaOne of the most controversial issues during the presidency of Andrew Jackson centered around the future of the Second Bank of the United States. During the changing economic and social conditions of the 1820's and 1830's, there was much hostility...
Published in 1967, in Andrew Jackson and the Bank War Robert V. Remini begins by discussing the antagonists in the Bank War: Jackson and Biddle. He states that "the destruction of the Bank occurred because it got caught between [these] two willful, proud, and stubborn men..." He then goes on to details of the struggle, "emphasizing the ways in which the War transformed the presidential office: how Jackson capitalized on the struggle to strengthen the executive branch of the government and infuse it with much of the power it enjoys today."

Joining me in this discussion of about Andrew Jackson and the Bank War by one of the greatest historians of Andrew Jackson is Dr. Stephen W. Campbell.

Dr. Campbell received his Ph.D. In History from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2013, completing his dissertation on the "Bank War" with a particular emphasis on newspaper editors and political institutions. His first book, developed from this thesis, is scheduled to come out in the fall of 2018 with the University of Kansas Press. He is currently a lecturer at Pasadena City College.]]>2349falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/011-american-nationalisms-with-benjamin-e-park--14367625
Benjamin E. Park received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He also spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. His scholarship focuses on the religious, political, and cultural history of America between the Revolution and Civil War, often within an Atlantic context.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14367625Fri, 23 Mar 2018 14:10:27 +0000Daniel GullottaAmerica was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. This episode's guests, Benjamin E. Park, traces how Americans imagined novel forms of nationality during...
Benjamin E. Park received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He also spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. His scholarship focuses on the religious, political, and cultural history of America between the Revolution and Civil War, often within an Atlantic context.]]>3183falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/010-andrew-jackson-the-rule-of-law-and-the-american-nation-with-j-m-opal--14300644
Despite his reverence for the "sovereign people," however, Jackson spent much of his career limiting that sovereignty, imposing new and often unpopular legal regimes over American lands and markets. He made his name as a lawyer, businessman, and official along the Carolina and Tennessee frontiers, at times ejecting white squatters from native lands and returning slaves to native planters in the name of federal authority and international law. On the other hand, he waged total war on the Cherokees and Creeks who terrorized western settlements and raged at the national statesmen who refused to "avenge the blood" of innocent colonists. During the long war in the south and west from 1811 to 1818 he brushed aside legal restraints on holy genocide and mass retaliation, presenting himself as the only man who would protect white families from hostile empires, "heathen" warriors, and rebellious slaves.

He became a towering hero to those who saw the United States as uniquely lawful and victimized. And he used that legend to beat back a range of political, economic, and moral alternatives for the republican future.

This episode's guest is J.M. Opal who reinterprets Andrew Jackson, this grim and principled man, whose version of American nationhood continues to shape American democracy.

J.M. Opal is Associate Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England and the editor of Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine. His most recent book is Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14300644Thu, 15 Mar 2018 22:05:11 +0000Daniel GullottaMost Americans know Andrew Jackson as a frontier rebel against political and diplomatic norms, a "populist" champion of ordinary people against the elitist legacy of the Founding Fathers. Many date the onset of American democracy to his 1829...
Despite his reverence for the "sovereign people," however, Jackson spent much of his career limiting that sovereignty, imposing new and often unpopular legal regimes over American lands and markets. He made his name as a lawyer, businessman, and official along the Carolina and Tennessee frontiers, at times ejecting white squatters from native lands and returning slaves to native planters in the name of federal authority and international law. On the other hand, he waged total war on the Cherokees and Creeks who terrorized western settlements and raged at the national statesmen who refused to "avenge the blood" of innocent colonists. During the long war in the south and west from 1811 to 1818 he brushed aside legal restraints on holy genocide and mass retaliation, presenting himself as the only man who would protect white families from hostile empires, "heathen" warriors, and rebellious slaves.

He became a towering hero to those who saw the United States as uniquely lawful and victimized. And he used that legend to beat back a range of political, economic, and moral alternatives for the republican future.

This episode's guest is J.M. Opal who reinterprets Andrew Jackson, this grim and principled man, whose version of American nationhood continues to shape American democracy.

J.M. Opal is Associate Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England and the editor of Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine. His most recent book is Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation.]]>3379falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/009-jefferson-s-three-daughters-two-free-one-enslaved-with-catherine-kerrison--14237290
To share the stories of these women is Catherine Kerrison.

Catherine Kerrison is an associate professor of history at Villanova University, where she teaches courses in Colonial and Revolutionary America and women's and gender history. She holds a Ph.D. in American history from the College of William and Mary. Her first book, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, won the Outstanding Book Award from the History of Education Society. Her most recent book is Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14237290Fri, 09 Mar 2018 08:43:24 +0000Daniel GullottaThomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school...
To share the stories of these women is Catherine Kerrison.

Catherine Kerrison is an associate professor of history at Villanova University, where she teaches courses in Colonial and Revolutionary America and women's and gender history. She holds a Ph.D. in American history from the College of William and Mary. Her first book, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, won the Outstanding Book Award from the History of Education Society. Her most recent book is Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America.]]>3976falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/008-how-the-war-of-1812-truly-ended-the-american-revolution-with-willard-sterne-randall--14178466


Despite persistent attempts by the British to control American trade waters, the United States asserted the doctrine of neutral rights and developed the world’s second largest merchant fleet as it absorbed the French Caribbean trade. American ships carrying trade increased five-fold between 1790 and 1800, its tonnage nearly doubling again between 1800 and 1812, ultimately making the United States the world’s largest independent maritime power.

To chart this epic fifty-year conflict is Willard Sterne Randall.

After a successful seventeen-year career as a journalist, Willard Sterne Randall pursued graduate study at Princeton University, where he received a Master of Arts in History. He taught American history at John Cabot University in Rome and at the University of Vermont and Champlain College, where he was the Distinguished Scholar in History and is a Professor Emeritus. He is the author of several books, including Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor, Alexander Hamilton: A Life, and most recently, Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14178466Fri, 02 Mar 2018 12:59:43 +0000Daniel GullottaTypically, historians have treated the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 as two separate wars of independence. No Founding Father could divine that the Revolutionary Period of 1763 to 1783 had concluded only one part, the first phase of...


Despite persistent attempts by the British to control American trade waters, the United States asserted the doctrine of neutral rights and developed the world’s second largest merchant fleet as it absorbed the French Caribbean trade. American ships carrying trade increased five-fold between 1790 and 1800, its tonnage nearly doubling again between 1800 and 1812, ultimately making the United States the world’s largest independent maritime power.

To chart this epic fifty-year conflict is Willard Sterne Randall.

After a successful seventeen-year career as a journalist, Willard Sterne Randall pursued graduate study at Princeton University, where he received a Master of Arts in History. He taught American history at John Cabot University in Rome and at the University of Vermont and Champlain College, where he was the Distinguished Scholar in History and is a Professor Emeritus. He is the author of several books, including Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor, Alexander Hamilton: A Life, and most recently, Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution.]]>3189falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/007-slaveholders-at-the-helm-of-american-foreign-policy-with-matthew-karp--14120318
According to my guest, these leaders were nationalists, not separatists. Their “vast southern empire” was not an independent South but the entire United States, and only the election of Abraham Lincoln broke their grip on national power. Fortified by years at the helm of U.S. foreign affairs, slaveholding elites formed their own Confederacy—not only as a desperate effort to preserve their property but as a confident bid to shape the future of the Atlantic world.

To unpack this fascinating relationship between slavery and American foreign policy is Matthew Karp.

Matthew Karp is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and is a historian of the U.S. Civil War era and its relationship to the nineteenth-century world. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and joined the Princeton University faculty in 2013. His first book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy explores the ways that slavery shaped U.S. foreign relations before the Civil War. This Vast Southern Empire received the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, the James Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Karp is now at work on a book about the emergence of anti-slavery mass politics in the United States and in particular the radical vision of the Republican Party in the 1850s. You can him follow on Twitter @karpmj.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14120318Fri, 23 Feb 2018 13:00:52 +0000Daniel GullottaWhen the United States emerged as a world power in the years before the Civil War, the men who presided over the nation’s triumphant territorial and economic expansion were largely southern slaveholders. As presidents, cabinet officers, and diplomats,...
According to my guest, these leaders were nationalists, not separatists. Their “vast southern empire” was not an independent South but the entire United States, and only the election of Abraham Lincoln broke their grip on national power. Fortified by years at the helm of U.S. foreign affairs, slaveholding elites formed their own Confederacy—not only as a desperate effort to preserve their property but as a confident bid to shape the future of the Atlantic world.

To unpack this fascinating relationship between slavery and American foreign policy is Matthew Karp.

Matthew Karp is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and is a historian of the U.S. Civil War era and its relationship to the nineteenth-century world. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and joined the Princeton University faculty in 2013. His first book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy explores the ways that slavery shaped U.S. foreign relations before the Civil War. This Vast Southern Empire received the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, the James Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Karp is now at work on a book about the emergence of anti-slavery mass politics in the United States and in particular the radical vision of the Republican Party in the 1850s. You can him follow on Twitter @karpmj.]]>3029falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/006-eugene-genovese-s-roll-jordan-roll-1974-with-joshua-d-rothman-history-of-history-2--14068953
Talking with me about Roll, Jordan, Roll and its complex legacy is Joshua D. Rothman.

Joshua Rothman is the History Department Chair at the University of Alabama and is the Co-Director of Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia and is the author of Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson and Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861. He is currently at work on a book about the managing partners of Franklin and Armfield, the most significant domestic slave trading firm in American history.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14068953Fri, 16 Feb 2018 15:19:59 +0000Daniel GullottaWhen Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made was published in 1974, the study of American slavery would change forever. Written by Eugene D. Genovese, an often controversial figure, the book would become as controversial as its author. Rather...
Talking with me about Roll, Jordan, Roll and its complex legacy is Joshua D. Rothman.

Joshua Rothman is the History Department Chair at the University of Alabama and is the Co-Director of Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia and is the author of Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson and Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861. He is currently at work on a book about the managing partners of Franklin and Armfield, the most significant domestic slave trading firm in American history.]]>4602falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/005-john-adams-thomas-jefferson-friends-divided-with-gordon-s-wood--14012392
But in the crucible of revolution, an unlikely friendship was born and continued to blossom while the pair were in France together. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond.

But as the early 19th century came into focus and the Age of Jackson began to dawn, these two men were nudged into reconciliation.

To explain this fascinating tale of friendship, division, and resolution is Gordon S. Wood.

Dr. Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. He was the recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution and  The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 won a 1970 Bancroft Prize. In 2010 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. His other works include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America. His most recent work is Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and is published by Penguin Press. Friends Divided also available as an audiobook with Audible.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/14012392Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:43:32 +0000Daniel GullottaAccording to Proverbs 13:20, "You are the company you keep," but if you looked at the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, you could not find men so different. Jefferson was a political radical and envisioned himself as a champion of...
But in the crucible of revolution, an unlikely friendship was born and continued to blossom while the pair were in France together. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond.

But as the early 19th century came into focus and the Age of Jackson began to dawn, these two men were nudged into reconciliation.

To explain this fascinating tale of friendship, division, and resolution is Gordon S. Wood.

Dr. Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. He was the recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution and  The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 won a 1970 Bancroft Prize. In 2010 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. His other works include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America. His most recent work is Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and is published by Penguin Press. Friends Divided also available as an audiobook with Audible.]]>3688ageofjackson,americanhistory,history,vastearlyamericafalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/004-the-battle-of-new-orleans-in-history-memory-with-joseph-f-stoltz-iii--13942689
But why did the United States and the British clash in the first place? How did the Battle of New Orleans come to be fought, and why did it matter so much? Who were these men, and how did they become involved? How did Jackson's army win despite the size of the British army? After the battle, how did Jackson become a popular figure? And what does it mean for Americans today?

To help me answer these questions, I have enlisted Joseph F. Stoltz III.

Joseph F. Stoltz III is a historian at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon where he oversees the library’s digital humanities initiatives. He received his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University and previously was the Rowan Post-doctoral fellow in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy. His first book is A Bloodless Victory: the Battle of New Orleans in History and Memory (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). ]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/13942689Tue, 06 Feb 2018 11:42:32 +0000Daniel GullottaThe last major American battle in the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans (December 14, 1814 - January 18, 1815) has been considered by some historians to be the birth of the Age of Jackson. The American forces included militia fighters,...
But why did the United States and the British clash in the first place? How did the Battle of New Orleans come to be fought, and why did it matter so much? Who were these men, and how did they become involved? How did Jackson's army win despite the size of the British army? After the battle, how did Jackson become a popular figure? And what does it mean for Americans today?

To help me answer these questions, I have enlisted Joseph F. Stoltz III.

Joseph F. Stoltz III is a historian at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon where he oversees the library’s digital humanities initiatives. He received his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University and previously was the Rowan Post-doctoral fellow in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy. His first book is A Bloodless Victory: the Battle of New Orleans in History and Memory (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). ]]>2310ageofjackson,twitterstorians,vastearlyamericatwitterstorfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/003-slavery-abolition-in-antebellum-america-with-manisha-sinha--13951099
But slavery alone did not define this period, as anti-slavery forces formed and mobilized in bold new ways as well. This era coincided with the formation of state and national anti-slavery societies, the publication of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, large-scale slave uprisings, and the expansion of abolitionist efforts to awaken the nation's moral conscience. But beyond these means and movements, slaves in their every day lives continued to resist and rebel, demanding their freedom and their equal place in American society.

Manisha Sinha joins me to help examine these complex issues and unpack this rich period.

Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft Prize. Her most recent book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press, 2016) has won numerous awards, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Best Book Prize by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, the James A. Rawley Award for the Best Book on Secession and the Sectional Crisis, and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/13951099Fri, 02 Feb 2018 14:00:05 +0000Daniel GullottaIt has been claimed that the Age of Jackson, the age in which democracy supposedly expanded to greater heights, is really the age of slavery and white supremacy. White racism in the early 19th century reached new depths and, with the presidency of...
But slavery alone did not define this period, as anti-slavery forces formed and mobilized in bold new ways as well. This era coincided with the formation of state and national anti-slavery societies, the publication of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, large-scale slave uprisings, and the expansion of abolitionist efforts to awaken the nation's moral conscience. But beyond these means and movements, slaves in their every day lives continued to resist and rebel, demanding their freedom and their equal place in American society.

Manisha Sinha joins me to help examine these complex issues and unpack this rich period.

Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft Prize. Her most recent book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press, 2016) has won numerous awards, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Best Book Prize by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, the James A. Rawley Award for the Best Book on Secession and the Sectional Crisis, and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians.]]>2521blackhistorymonth,twitterstorians,vastearlyamericafalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/002-arthur-m-schlesinger-jr-s-the-age-of-jackson-1945-with-richard-aldous-history-of-history-1--13890479
Despite the picture of Andrew Jackson on its cover and the evocative title, The Age of Jackson is less a biography of Andrew Jackson and more study of democracy's expansion in early 19th century America. In fact, when Schlesinger does reference Jackson, he is typically viewed through others, coming across as a mythical being and a larger than life figure. Key to Schlesinger's thesis is Jacksonian white-male suffrage, in which he sees the origins of modern-day American egalitarianism. As one can imagine, casting Jacksonian Democracy has an egalitarian force is where the bulk of the criticism of The Age of Jackson comes from today. The weakness of The Age of Jackson is most glaring in its silences, as it does not mention Indian removal at all and only references slavery in passing. Because of these problematic features, the book has not aged well for many. Many find its thesis unconvincing, if not counterfactual, such as Daniel Walker Howe. Yet The Age of Jackson is not without its modern-day fans and champions, like Sean Wilentz.

But what about the man behind the book? Who was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and how did he come to write The Age of Jackson? What is The Age of Jackson about and what insights can we glean from it? Does it have any value for us today?

To help with this first historiographical reflection, I have asked Richard Aldous to join me on the podcast.

Richard Aldous is a professor of history at Bard College,where he holds the Eugene Meyer Chair. He is the author and editor of eleven books, including the first biography of Schlesinger, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian. Aldous’s writing appears regularly in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Book Review, and The American Interest, where he is a contributing editor.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/13890479Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:30:06 +0000Daniel GullottaThis podcast takes its name from the term popularized by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Jackson (1945). While early Mormonism and the Second Great Awakening may have gotten me into American Religious History, it...
Despite the picture of Andrew Jackson on its cover and the evocative title, The Age of Jackson is less a biography of Andrew Jackson and more study of democracy's expansion in early 19th century America. In fact, when Schlesinger does reference Jackson, he is typically viewed through others, coming across as a mythical being and a larger than life figure. Key to Schlesinger's thesis is Jacksonian white-male suffrage, in which he sees the origins of modern-day American egalitarianism. As one can imagine, casting Jacksonian Democracy has an egalitarian force is where the bulk of the criticism of The Age of Jackson comes from today. The weakness of The Age of Jackson is most glaring in its silences, as it does not mention Indian removal at all and only references slavery in passing. Because of these problematic features, the book has not aged well for many. Many find its thesis unconvincing, if not counterfactual, such as Daniel Walker Howe. Yet The Age of Jackson is not without its modern-day fans and champions, like Sean Wilentz.

But what about the man behind the book? Who was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and how did he come to write The Age of Jackson? What is The Age of Jackson about and what insights can we glean from it? Does it have any value for us today?

To help with this first historiographical reflection, I have asked Richard Aldous to join me on the podcast.

Richard Aldous is a professor of history at Bard College,where he holds the Eugene Meyer Chair. He is the author and editor of eleven books, including the first biography of Schlesinger, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian. Aldous’s writing appears regularly in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Book Review, and The American Interest, where he is a contributing editor.]]>3440aldous,america,antebellum,history,jackson,schlesingerfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/001-what-is-the-age-of-jackson-with-mark-r-cheathem--13838782To answer these questions, I enlisted the help of Mark R. Cheathem.
Mark R. Cheathem is a professor of history at Cumberland University and received his Ph.D. in history from Mississippi State University. He has written several books, including the award-winning Andrew Jackson, Southerner, and is the author of the upcoming The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson, to be published later this year. Since 2015, Dr. Cheathem had been the project director and co-editor of the Papers of Martin Van Buren. He also runs the website Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics.
Join me as I asked Dr. Cheathem about what was the Age of Jackson!]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/13838782Fri, 19 Jan 2018 06:08:27 +0000Daniel GullottaHello everyone! Thank you for joining me on the maiden voyage of the Age of Jackson Podcast. I am really excited to be sharing with you my passion and love for this period of American History. Not only are some of the people larger than life but some...To answer these questions, I enlisted the help of Mark R. Cheathem.
Mark R. Cheathem is a professor of history at Cumberland University and received his Ph.D. in history from Mississippi State University. He has written several books, including the award-winning Andrew Jackson, Southerner, and is the author of the upcoming The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson, to be published later this year. Since 2015, Dr. Cheathem had been the project director and co-editor of the Papers of Martin Van Buren. He also runs the website Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics.
Join me as I asked Dr. Cheathem about what was the Age of Jackson!]]>3657america,captalism,history,jacksonian,politics,sex,slavery,trump,usafalsefull