Stay ConnectedThis Constitution is an every-two-weeks podcast ordained and established by the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, the home of Utah’s Civic Thought & Leadership Initiative.
Co-hosted by Savannah Eccles Johnston and Matthew Brogdon, This Constitution equips listeners with the knowledge and insights to engage with the most pressing political questions of our time, starting with Season 1, focusing on the powers and limits of the U.S. presidency.
Copyright: © 2024 This Constitution
Women in colonial America were legally invisible. Married women could not own property, vote, serve on juries, or speak publicly on politics. Yet the American Revolution was a watershed, inviting women into political life as boycotters, writers, and even voters. What opened that window, and why did it close so abruptly?
In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston sits down with Rosemarie Zagarri, distinguished university professor of history at George Mason University and author of Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Together they trace women's political engagement from the colonial period through the Revolution, the 1790s, and the backlash that followed, and how it all foreshadowed 1848.
They begin with the legal and social position of women before 1776, when politics was understood as an exclusively male realm. The conversation turns to how the Revolution's bottom-up resistance movement, including tax protests, boycotts, and the Daughters of Liberty, pulled women in for practical reasons: they were the chief purchasers of British goods. Zagarri explains how women like Mercy Otis Warren and Phillis Wheatley moved from private sentiment to public political authorship, and how Abigail Adams's "Remember the Ladies" captured the unintended consequences of revolutionary rhetoric.
The episode explores New Jersey's 1776 constitution, whose gender-neutral language allowed unmarried women and widows with property to vote. Zagarri details how the rise of political parties in the 1790s led both Federalists and Democratic-Republicans to court female supporters, and how the 1807 New Jersey legislature disenfranchised women and free Blacks amid fraud accusations. The backlash, she argues, was reinforced by new "scientific" claims about bodily difference and the ideology of separate spheres. The conversation closes with republican motherhood, women's continued reform work, and the long road to Seneca Falls.
Tune in to discover how the Revolution opened a window for women's political participation, and why that window, though forced shut, never fully closed.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Rosemarie Zagarri
Savannah Eccles Johnston
America was born with a promise and a lie. Frederick Douglass lived in the gap. How did a fugitive slave become one of the nation’s most radical constitutional thinkers? Why did he reject the Garrisonian view of the Constitution as a “covenant with death” and come to see it as anti-slavery?
In this episode of This Constitution, Matthew Brogdon sits down with Bradley Rebeiro, law professor at Brigham Young University and author of Until the Last Yoke Is Broken: The Constitutional Vision of Frederick Douglass. Together they trace slavery and race from the Revolution through Dred Scott, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
They begin with slavery in 1776, Somerset v. Stewart, Black enlistment in the Continental Army, Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, and gradual emancipation in the North. The conversation turns to Black citizenship, the Naturalization Act of 1790, and Dred Scott’s claim that Blacks had “no rights which white men are bound to respect.” Rebeiro explains Douglass’s response that Taney could not change the nature of things by his words, and his view that the executive may interpret the Constitution independently.
The episode explores Douglass’s 1852 “Change of Opinion Announced,” his break with Garrisonians, and his argument that the Constitution was anti-slavery in principle but betrayed in administration. That conviction drove his push for Black enlistment and his focus on suffrage as the hallmark of citizenship.
Tune in to discover how Douglass’s “rational hope” challenges America to meet its founding principles.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Bradley Rebeiro
Matthew Brogdon
Related Episodes
Could the American Revolution have ended not on a battlefield, but in a mutinous meeting at Newburgh? What happens when the army that won independence is told there’s no money to pay it? Can a republic survive when its officers have just grievances and the power to enforce them? And how did George Washington stop a coup without firing a shot, by reaching for his spectacles?
In this episode of The Constitution, Matthew Brogdon sits down with Greg Jackson, America 250 Professor in Constitutional Studies at UVU, history faculty member, National Security Studies Program fellow, and author of Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome. Greg also hosts the popular podcast History That Doesn't Suck.
Together, they explore the financial crisis behind the Newburgh Conspiracy, the role of Alexander Hamilton and Robert and Gouverneur Morris, and George Washington's extraordinary intervention at the Temple of Virtue. When Washington reaches for his spectacles and tells his officers, "You'll have to forgive me. I've grown blind in service to my country," his vulnerability changes the course of the meeting.
The conversation examines Washington's often-overlooked third Cincinnatus moment, his defense of civilian authority, and the lessons Newburgh offers about military power, public duty, and the fragile foundations of the Constitution.
Tune in to discover how close America came to losing its experiment in self-government, and how Washington helped pull it back from the brink.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Greg Jackson
Matthew Brogdon
Related Episodes
The American Revolution was fought on battlefields, but victory depended on winning another fight overseas: the battle for international support. As the colonies challenged the British Empire, American diplomats had to convince foreign powers that the new nation deserved recognition, financial assistance, and a place among the nations of the world.
In this episode, Matthew Brogdon and Savannah Eccles Johnston examine the diplomatic efforts that helped secure American independence. They explore the early mission of Silas Deane, Benjamin Franklin’s remarkable success in France, John Adams’ efforts to gain support from the Netherlands, and John Jay’s crucial role in negotiating the Treaty of Paris. Along the way, they examine how these diplomats navigated competing European interests and built alliances that changed the course of the Revolution.
The hosts also explore why the founders viewed diplomacy as essential to America’s survival and why international reputation mattered so much to the new republic. While American soldiers won victories on the battlefield, Franklin, Adams, and Jay helped secure the recognition and independence that allowed the United States to become a lasting nation.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Savannah Eccles Johnston
Matthew Brogdon
Congress went to war in 1775 against the most powerful empire in the world, but could a legislative body actually run a war? With no executive departments, no Pentagon, and little experience managing a national military, the Second Continental Congress had to figure out how to transform colonial militias into a Continental Army, appoint a commander in chief, supply the troops, and direct a war that stretched across thousands of miles.
In this episode, Matthew Brogdon and Savannah Eccles Johnston examine Congress's extraordinary experiment in wartime government. They trace the creation of the Continental Army and George Washington's appointment as commander-in-chief, explore why Congress chose Washington over other experienced military officers, and examine the committee system Congress created to manage everything from military supplies to naval affairs. They also look at the disastrous invasion of Canada, where strategic theories collided with the realities of distance, supply, weather, and an inexperienced army.
The hosts then explore Congress's struggles with military appointments, political maneuvering, and the Conway Cabal, while examining Washington's careful relationship with civilian authority. Finally, they show how the Revolutionary War experience influenced the Constitution's division of war powers between Congress and the president, including the crucial distinction between Congress's power to declare war and the president's responsibility as commander-in-chief. Tune in to discover why the Revolutionary experience convinced the framers that Congress could create the conditions for war, but should not be the institution directing military operations.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Savannah Eccles Johnston
Matthew Brogdon
The American Revolution wasn't fought only on battlefields. It unfolded in homes, farms, towns, and military camps, where women faced shortages, violence, displacement, and the enormous responsibility of keeping families and communities alive.
In this episode, Savannah Eccles Johnston speaks with historian Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History (Emerita) at Baruch College, and author of Revolutionary Mothers, about the essential and often-overlooked role women played in the Revolution. They explore how women became central to colonial boycotts, managed farms while men were away, worked alongside the Continental Army, carried military intelligence, and sometimes disguised themselves as men to enlist.
Carol also explains how the Revolution changed women's civic identity. Their wartime contributions challenged long-standing assumptions about women's intellectual and moral abilities and helped expand educational opportunities after independence.
Tune in to discover why the Revolution cannot be fully understood without women and how adding their experiences transforms the story from a series of military campaigns into a complex home-front war involving an entire society.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Savannah Eccles Johnston
Carol Berkin
The American Revolution wasn't won by ideals alone. It required an army. But how do you build a fighting force from scratch when your citizens believe standing armies are the tools of tyrants? And how does that ragtag collection of farmers, apprentices, and adventurers end up creating something far more lasting than military victory: a shared national identity?
In this episode, Matthew Brogdon and Savannah Eccles Johnston examine the extraordinary challenge of forging the Continental Army. They trace the journey from the spontaneous militia mobilization around Boston to Washington's desperate Christmas gamble at Trenton, from the crisis of expiring enlistments to Baron von Steuben's legendary training regimen.
Along the way, they explore the remarkable story of Deborah Sampson, who served 17 months disguised as a man, and consider what motivated ordinary people to endure years of deprivation, disease, and danger.
The hosts also examine Washington's deliberate strategy to transcend regional loyalties by mixing regiments from different states, establishing uniform drills and symbols, and creating an institution where shared suffering forged common purpose. They reveal how this experience shaped Washington's postwar vision for a national university and federal city, and why the Continental Army became the training ground for America's first generation of national leaders.
Tune in to discover how a desperate, underfed, perpetually dissolving army became the crucible of American nationhood, and why Washington believed that what worked for the army could work for the entire country.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Savannah Eccles Johnston
Matthew Brogdon
The Southern Campaign is one of the most overlooked turning points of the American Revolution. This episode asks a sharper question: what happened when the fight for independence stopped looking like British regulars against American patriots and started looking like Americans fighting Americans?
In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Matthew Brogdon examine why the British turned south after failing to defeat Washington in the North. The British believed the South offered better odds because of loyalist support, economic dependence on British trade, and cultural ties to England. At first, the strategy seemed to work. Savannah fell, Charleston was captured, and Camden shattered much of the Southern Continental Army.
But the South changed the character of the war. Johnston and Brogdon explore how the Revolution became deeply personal, dividing families, communities, and regions between loyalists and patriots. They discuss Southern honor culture, violent reprisals, backcountry resistance, and why some historians describe this period as America’s first civil war.
Tune in to learn how Nathanael Greene, Daniel Morgan, and the militia fighters helped reverse British momentum. The episode covers Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, and the collapse of Cornwallis’ Southern strategy. It reveals one of the Revolution’s clearest lessons: holding territory is not the same as controlling a people.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Savannah Eccles Johnston
Matthew Brogdon
Are Americans Declaration People or Constitution People?
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are two of America’s most important founding documents, but this episode asks a deeper civic question: which one actually defines who Americans are?
In this Fourth of July episode, Savannah Eccles Johnston is joined by Dr. Leah Murray, Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Philosophy and Director of the Walker Institute of Politics & Public Policy at Weber State University. Together, they explore whether Americans are more emotionally shaped by the Declaration’s ideals or more practically shaped by the Constitution’s institutions.
The conversation examines the Declaration as the “heart” of America and the Constitution as its “head.” The Declaration gives the country its moral purpose: equality, liberty, natural rights, and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution gives the country a structure for living together despite disagreement, ambition, self-interest, and competing visions of the good.
Tune in to learn why the Fourth of July is not just a celebration of independence, but a reminder of the truths America is still trying to live up to. Johnston and Murray discuss civic education, local politics, legitimate disagreement, the meaning of equality, and why Americans may need to recover the founding ideas they have forgotten.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Dr. Leah Murray
Savannah Eccles Johnston
What Happens When an Army Freezes and a Government Can’t Supply It?
Valley Forge is remembered as one of the great symbols of American endurance, but this episode asks a deeper constitutional question: what happens when a revolution depends on a government too weak to supply its own army?
In this episode, co-hosts Savannah Eccles Johnston and Matthew Brogdon tell the story of the Continental Army’s brutal winter after the British captured Philadelphia. Washington chose to camp just 18 miles from the occupied city, close enough to pressure the British but far enough to avoid surprise attack. What followed was a six-month test of survival: 9,000 soldiers entered, thousands lived in cramped log cabins, and hunger, disease, cold, and supply failures pushed the army to the edge.
The episode explores what Valley Forge revealed about the weakness of Congress, the limits of state cooperation, and the danger of relying on civic virtue when food, clothing, and money disappear. Johnston and Brogdon also discuss Martha Washington’s role in restoring morale, the performance of Cato, Baron Friedrich von Steuben’s transformation of the army, and how Black soldiers’ service helped shape Washington’s changing views on slavery.
Tune in to learn why Valley Forge was not only a military turning point, but also a constitutional warning. The army survived, but barely, and the lessons learned there would help shape the case for a stronger national government.
In This Episode
Notable Quotes
Resources and Links
This Constitution
Savannah Eccles Johnston
Matthew Brogdon
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
