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
As part of the Omohundro Institute's Doing History series on biography, Episode 212 offers us a new conversation with Erica Dunbar, the author of Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge.
The new episode will explore how historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past using the story of Ona Judge. In preparation for this new episode, here is our original conversation with Erica Dunbar about Ona Judge.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/137
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Can a biography help us explore big historical questions?
Can knowing about the life of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, help us better understand the Supreme Court and how it came to occupy the powerful place it has in the United State government?
The Doing History: Biography series continues and explores these questions with Richard Brookhiser, author of John Marshall: The Man Who Made The Supreme Court.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/211
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For 34 years, John Marshall presided as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his service, Marshal transformed the nation’s top court and its judicial branch into the powerful body and co-equal branch of government we know it as today.
The Doing History: Biography series continues as Joel Richard Paul, a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings Law School and author of Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times, joins us to explore the life of John Marshall and how he wrote his biography.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/210
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Biography. Since the earliest days of the United States, and even before the thirteen colonies came together to forge a nation, Americans have been interested in biography. But why?
What is it about the lives of others that makes the past so interesting and fun to explore?
This episode marks the start of the Omohundro Institute’s 4-episode Doing History series about biography. This series will take us behind-the-scenes of biography and how historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/209
About the Series
The Doing History: Biography series explores the genre of biography, how it relates to and is different from the genre of history, and how historians and biographers can best uncover and understand the lives of people from the past.
The Doing History series explores early American history and how historians work. It is part of Ben Franklin’s World, which is produced by the Omohundro Institute.
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2018 marks the 241st anniversary of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga and the 240th anniversary of the Franco-American Alliance. But was the victory that prompted the French to join the American war effort, truly the "turning point" of the War for Independence?
National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick joins us to explore the two events he sees as better turning points in the American War for Independence: Benedict Arnold’s treason and the French Navy’s participation in the war.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/208
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What in the first 40 years of his life made Benjamin Franklin the genius he became?
Benjamin Franklin serves as a great window on to the early American past because as a man of “variety” he pursued many interests: literature, poetry, science, business, philosophy, philanthropy, and politics.
But one aspect of Franklin’s life has gone largely unstudied: his childhood and early life.
Nick Bunker, author of Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity, joins us to explore Benjamin Franklin’s early life and how family, childhood, and youthful experiences shaped him as a scientist and diplomat.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/207
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Between 1500 and the 1860s, Europeans and Americans forcibly removed approximately 12 million African people from the African continent, transported them to the Americas, and enslaved them.
Why did Europeans and Americans enslave Africans? How did they justify their actions?
Katherine Gerbner, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and author of Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, leads us on an exploration of ways Christianity influenced early ideas about slavery and its practice.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/206
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La Presidente? The Presidentess? The First Lady of the Land?
The Second Article of the United States Constitution defines the Executive Branch of the government, the powers it has, and the role of the chief executive, the President of the United States. But what about the position of the President’s spouse?
Jeanne Abrams, a Professor at the University Libraries and the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, joins us to explore the lives and work of the first First Ladies of the American Republic with details from her book, First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison and the Creation of an Iconic American Role.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/205
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Aaron Burr: Revolutionary War hero, talented lawyer, Vice President, and Intriguer of treason?
Between 1805 and 1807, Aaron Burr supposedly intended to commit treason by dividing the American union. How did Americans learn about and respond to this treasonous intrigue?
James Lewis Jr., a Professor of History at Kalamazoo College and author of The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis, guides us through what we know and don’t know about about Aaron Burr’s supposed plot to divide the American union.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/204
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Hamilton the Musical hit Broadway in August 2015 and since that time people all around the world have been learning about a man named Alexander Hamilton. Or, at least they’ve been learning about the musical’s character Alexander Hamilton.
But who was Alexander Hamilton as a real person?
Joanne Freeman, a Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, and one of the foremost experts on the life of Alexander Hamilton, joins us to explore this large question so we can discover more about the man who helped to create the United States.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/203
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