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
Historians use archives to create the histories we love to read, watch, and listen to. So we’re going into one archive to investigate how historians use them and to discover more about the religious lives of the Adams Family.
Sara Georgini, Series Editor of The Papers of John Adams, invites us to join her inside the Massachusetts Historical Society so we can take a closer look at the historical details provided by the Adams Papers and the role these manuscripts played in helping her write her book, Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/231
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Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, Patrick Carr, and Crispus Attucks. These are the five men who died as a result of the shootings on Boston’s King Street on the night of March 5, 1770.
Of these five victims, evidence points to Crispus Attucks falling first, and of all the victims, Crispus Attucks is the name we can recall.
Why is that?
To help us answer this question and to conclude our 3-episode series on the Boston Massacre, we’re joined by Mitch Kachun, a Professor of History at Western Michigan University and the author of First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/230
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Within days of the Boston Massacre, Bostonians politicized the event. They circulated a pamphlet about “the Horrid Massacre” and published images portraying soldiers firing into a well-assembled and peaceful crowd.
But why did the Boston Massacre happen? Why did the British government feel it had little choice but to station as many 2,000 soldiers in Boston during peacetime? And what was going on within the larger British Empire that drove colonists to the point where they provoked armed soldiers to fire upon them?
Patrick Griffin, the Madden-Hennebry Family Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, joins us to answer these questions as we continue our 3-episode investigation of the Boston Massacre.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/229
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On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered in Boston’s King Street and confronted a a sentry and his fellow soldiers in front of the custom house. The confrontation led the soldiers to fire their muskets into the crowd, five civilians died.
What happened on the night of March 5, 1770 that led the crowd to gather and the soldiers to discharge their weapons?
Eric Hinderaker, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Utah and the author of Boston’s Massacre, assists our quest to discover more about the Boston Massacre.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/228
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In the 21st century, we are all creators and users of content. We take original photos with our smartphones, generate blog posts, digital videos, and podcasts. Some of us write books and articles. And nearly everyone contributes content to social media.
Given all of the information and content we generate and use, it’s really important for us to understand the principles of copyright and fair use, principles that have an early American past.
Kyle Courtney, a lawyer, librarian, and Copyright Advisor for Harvard University, will serve as our guide through the early American origins of copyright and fair use.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/227
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What do we mean by “the state?”
How is a “state” produced?
Is “the state” something everyone can participate in producing?
Ryan Quintana, an Associate Professor of History at Wellesley College and the author of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina, joins us to answer these questions with a look at the creation and development of the State of South Carolina.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/226
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In 1738, a cooper named Benedict Arnold petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for a divorce from his wife Mary Ward Arnold. Benedict claimed that Mary had taken a lover and together they had attempted to murder him with poison.
How did this story of love, divorce, and attempted murder unfold? What does it reveal about the larger world of colonial America and the experiences of colonial American men and women?
Elaine Forman Crane, a Distinguished Professor of History at Fordham University, takes us through the Arnolds’ story with details from her book, The Poison Plot: A Tale of Adultery and Murder in Colonial Newport.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/225
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The Atlantic World has brought many disparate peoples together, which has caused a lot of ideas and cultures to mix.
How did the Atlantic World bring so many different peoples and cultures together? How did this large intermixing of people and cultures impact the development of colonial America?
Kevin Dawson, an Associate Professor of History at the University of California-Merced and author of Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora, joins us to explore answers to these questions with an investigation of the African Diaspora and African and African American aquatic culture.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048
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During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ohio River Valley proved to be a rich agrarian region. Many different Native American peoples prospered from its land both in terms of the the land’s ability to produce a wide variety of crops and its support of a wide variety of small fur-bearing animals for the fur trade.
Susan Sleeper-Smith, a Professor of History at Michigan State University and author of Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women and the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792, helps us explore this unique region and the important roles it played in the early American past.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/223
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Have you ever wondered how the capital of the United States came to be situated at Washington D.C.?
The banks of the Potomac River represent an odd place to build a national city, a place that would not only serve as the seat of government for the nation, but also as an economic, cultural, and intellectual hub. Still in 1790, the United States Congress passed the Residence Act and mandated that it would establish a new, permanent capital along the banks of the Potomac River. Why?
Adam Costanzo, a Professional Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi and author of George Washington’s Washington: Visions for the National Capital in the Early American Republic, joins us to consider questions of the national capital’s location and construction.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/222
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