Stay ConnectedThis is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history.
Copyright: © Liz Covart 2024
What would you risk for freedom?
Would you risk your safety? You family? Your life?
During the American Revolution, enslaved women faced these impossible choices when the British Army promised freedom to those who dared to escape. In honor of Black History Month, we’re revisiting an extraordinary chapter of resilience and bravery: the stories of enslaved women who seized the chance to chart their own destinies amid the chaos of war.
Join Karen Cook-Bell for an exploration of enslaved women who self-emancipated during the American Revolution.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/322
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons' Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
🎧 Episode 142: A History of Abolition
🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution's African American Soldiers
🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore's New World
🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
💚 Spotify
CONNECT
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Did you know that John Adams, not George Washington, solidified the precedents of the executive branch and the presidency?
Lindsay Chervinsky, an award-winning presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library, has written a book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. She joins us to investigate the presidency of the United States’ second president, John Adams.
Lindsay’s Website | Book | Instagram
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 040: For Fear of an Elected King
🎧 Episode 117: The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson
🎧 Episode 188: The Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798
🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams and Jefferson
🎧 Episode 203: Alexander Hamilton
🎧 Episode 279: The Cabinet: Creation of An American Institution
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
💚 Spotify
CONNECT
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
January 20th, marked Inauguration Day in the United States, the day a new president and his administration takes office. So it seems a fitting time for us to revisit a conversation we had in 2020 about the creation of the Executive Branch, and more specifically, the creation of the president’s cabinet.
Lindsay Chervinsky is an award-winning presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. In 2020, she published her first book called The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/279
Complementary Episodes
SUPPORT OUR WORK
🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World
REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 Join the BFW Listener Community
🌍 Join the History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts
💚 Spotify
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora
CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify
*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Do you know what time it is?
In early America, this question wasn’t as simple to answer as it is today. Urban dwellers in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston often wondered about the time—but few owned their own watches or clocks. So, how did they keep track of the hours?
In this episode, we dive into the fascinating world of early American timekeeping. Bob Frishman, a horologist—a specialist in clocks and watches—and a scholar of horology, joins us to explore how timepieces and their makers shaped community life and craftsmanship in the 18th century. Along the way, we’ll uncover the remarkable story of Edward Duffield, a Philadelphia clockmaker who wasn’t just a master craftsman but also a close friend and neighbor of Benjamin Franklin.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/402
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 149: Benjamin Franklin in London
🎧 Episode 175: The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House
🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin
🎧 Episode 244: Shoe Stories from Early America
🎧 Episode 292: Craft in Early America
🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 1
🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 2
🎧 Episode 332: Occupied Philadelphia
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
💚 Spotify
CONNECT
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
To close out our mini-series on Tea in early America, we’re going to revisit Episode 160: The Politics of Tea. This episode was part of our Doing History: To the Revolution series with the Omohundro Institute in 2017.
In this episode, we’ll revisit how early Americans went from attending tea parties to holding the Boston Tea Party. We’ll also explore more in-depth information about how tea became a central part of many early Americans’ lives.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/160
SUPPORT OUR WORK
🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World
REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 Join the BFW Listener Community
🌍 Join the History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts
💚 Spotify
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora
CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify
*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
During the early days of the American Revolution, British Americans attempted to sway their fellow Britons with consumer politics.
In 1768 and 1769, they organized a non-consumption movement of British goods to protest the Townshend Duties. In 1774, they arranged a non-importation and non-exportation movement to protest the Tea Act and Coercive Acts.
Why did the colonists protest the Tea Act and Coercive Acts? Why did they chose to protest those acts with the consumer politics of a non-importation/non-exportation program?
James Fichter, the author of Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776, joins us to explore the Tea Crisis of 1773 and the resulting non-importation/non-exportation movement the colonists organized after Parliament passed the Coercive Acts.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/401
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
CONNECT
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Episode 401, we’ll be exploring the Tea Crisis and how it led to the non-importation/non-exportation movement of 1774-1776.
Our guest historian, James Fichter, references the work of Mary Beth Norton and her “The Seventh Tea Ship” article from The William and Mary Quarterly.
In this BFW Revisited episode, we’ll travel back to December 2016, when we spoke with Mary Beth Norton about her article and the Tea Crisis of 1773.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/112
Complementary Episodes
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How do historians define Ben Franklin’s “world?” What historical event, person, or place in the era of Ben Franklin do they wish you knew about?
In celebration of the 400th episode of Ben Franklin’s World, we posed these questions to more than 20 scholars. What do they think? Join the celebration and discover more about the world Ben Franklin lived in.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/400
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 114: Karin Wulf, The History of the Genealogy
🎧 Episode 285: Elections & Voting in the Early Republic
🎧 Episode 300: Vast Early America
🎧 Episode 389: Indigenous Justice in Early America
🎧 Episode 393: Politics and Political Culture in the Early American Republic
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
💚 Spotify
CONNECT
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In our last episode, Episode 399, we discussed Denmark Vesey’s revolt and the way biblical texts and scripture enabled Vesey to organize what would have been the largest slave revolt in United States history if the revolt had not been thwarted before Vesey could put it into action.
Early American history is filled with revolts against enslavers that were thwarted and never made it past the planning stage. But, one uprising that did move beyond planning and into action was the Southampton Rebellion or Nat Turner’s Revolt in August 1831.
In this BFW Revisited episode, Episode 133, which was released in May 2017, we met with Patrick Breen, an Associate Professor of History at Providence College. Patrick joined us to investigate Nat Turner’s Revolt with details from his book The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/133
Complementary Episodes
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Denmark Vesey’s failed revolt in 1822 could have been the largest insurrection of enslaved people against their enslavers in United States history. Not only was Vesey’s plan large in scale, but Charleston officials arrested well over one hundred rumored participants.
Jeremy Schipper, a Professor in the departments for the Study or Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto and the author of Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Scripture and Slavery on Trial, joins us to investigate Vesey’s planned rebellion and the different ways Vesey used the Bible and biblical texts to justify his revolt and the violence it would have wrought.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/399
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 052: Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy
🎧 Episode 124: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America
🎧 Episode 133: Nat Turner’s Rebellion
🎧 Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions
🎧 Episode 190: Origins of the American Middle Class
🎧 Episode 226: Making the State of South Carolina
🎧 Episode 384: Making Maine: A Journey to Statehood
🎧 Episode 390: Objects of Revolution
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter
👩💻 BFW Listener Community
🌍 The History Explorers Club
LISTEN 🎧
💚 Spotify
CONNECT
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
