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
George Washington played three very important public roles during his lifetime. He served as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and as the first President of the United States.
In addition to these important public roles, Washington also played a role that was very important to him. He served as a farmer and agricultural innovator.
Douglas Bradburn, the CEO and President of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, joins us so we can explore the history of Washington’s storied estate and his agricultural practices. Plus, we’ll also discover all that Mount Vernon has to offer us as a historic site.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/183
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What was it like to live through an extraordinary time?
The 1740s and 1750s proved to be an extraordinary time for many ordinary New Englanders. It was a period when itinerant preachers swept through the region and asked its people to question the fundamental assumptions of their religion: What did it mean to be a Puritan? What did it mean to be a Protestant Christian?
Douglas Winiarski, a Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and the author of the Bancroft prize-winning book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England, helps us explore the religious landscape of New England during the 18th century and how New Englanders answered these powerful questions during the extraordinary period known as the Great Awakening.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/182
Listener Meet up
Las Vegas Meet up: Saturday April 21, 4pm, Wyndham Grand Desert Hotel Lobby
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Why did early Americans choose to become patriots or loyalists during the American Revolution?
How did they make the decision to either stand with or against their neighbors?
Did political beliefs really drive them to support one side of the imperial conflict over the other?
In this episode, we explore answers to these questions about how and why Americans chose to support the sides they did during the American Revolution, by looking at the lives of two young soldiers from Connecticut: Moses Dunbar and Nathan Hale.
Taking us through the lives, politics, and decisions of these young men is Virginia DeJohn Anderson, a professor of history at the University of Colorado-Boulder and author of The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/181
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The legacy of Alexander Hamilton tells us that he was Thomas Jefferson’s political rival, a man who fought to secure strong powers for the national government, and the first Secretary of the Treasury.
What Hamilton’s legacy doesn’t tell us is that he also fought for states rights and championed civil liberties for all Americans, even those Americans who had supported the British during the American Revolution.
Kate Elizabeth Brown, an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Huntington University in Indiana and author of Alexander Hamilton and the Development of American Law, joins us to explore more about the Alexander Hamilton we don’t know, the Hamilton who helped develop American law.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/180
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Douglas Winiarski answers your questions about religion in early New England with details from his book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England.
Darkness Falls on the Land of Light is the story of how ordinary New Englanders living through extraordinary times ended up giving birth to today’s evangelical movement. Doug performed a close reading of letters, diaries, and testimonies to write this book and his outstanding scholarship in this book was recognized with a 2018 Bancroft Prize.
Download the FREE OI Reader app for Bonus Content and Sample Chapters from Darkness Falls on the Land of Light
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The Confederation period is one of the most neglected aspects of United States History. And yet, it’s a very important period. Between 1781 and 1789, the Confederation Congress established by the Articles of Confederation had to deal with war, economic depression, infighting between the states, trouble in the west, foreign meddling, and domestic insurrection. It’s a critical period where no one knew whether the United States would survive as an independent nation.
George William Van Cleve, a researcher in law and history at the University of Seattle Law School and author of We Have Not A Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution, takes us into the Confederation period so we can discover more about the Articles of Confederation, the government it established, and the problems that government confronted.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/179
*Correction: After production we noticed that in her second question to George, Liz noted the Articles of Confederation has a history that begins in 1787. Liz misspoke. The Second Continental Congress drafted the Articles of Confederation in 1777, ratified them in 1781, and they remained the active constitution of the United States until 1789, when the Constitution of 1787 went into effect on March 4, 1789.
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In 1535, Spanish holdings in the Americas proved so great that the Spanish government created the Viceroyalty of New Spain to govern all territory north of the Isthmus of Panama.
The jurisdiction of New Spain included areas of upper and lower California and large areas of the American southwest and southeast, including Florida.
Karoline Cook, author of Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America, serves as our guide as we explore some of the political, cultural, and religious history of New Spain. Specifically, how Spaniards and Spanish Americans used ideas about Muslims and a group of “new Christian” converts called Moriscos to define who could and should be able to settle and help colonies North America.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048
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Did you know that maps have social lives?
Maps facilitate a lot of different social and political relationships between people and nations. And they did a lot of this work for Americans throughout the early American past.
Martin Brückner, a Professor of English at the University of Delaware, joins us to discuss early American maps and early American mapmaking with details from his book The Social Life of Maps in America.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/177
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What did it mean to be a person and to also be a commodity in early America?
Daina Ramey Berry, author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, takes us behind the scenes of her research so we can explore how early Americans valued and commodified enslaved men, women, and children.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/176
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Just how personal was the American Revolution?
What could the event and war mean for individual people and families?
Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Loyal Son: The War in Ben Franklin’s House, guides as as we explore what the Revolution meant for Benjamin Franklin and his family and how the Revolution caused a major rift between Franklin and his beloved son, William.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/176
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