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
In Colonial America, clergymen stood as thought leaders in their local communities. They stood at the head of their congregations and many community members looked to them for knowledge and insight about the world around them.
So what happened to these trusted, educated men during the American Revolution? How did they choose their political allegiances? And what work did they undertake to aid or hinder the revolutionary cause?
Spencer McBride, an editor at the Joseph Smith Papers documentary editing project, joins us to explore some of the ways politics and religion intersected during the American Revolution with details from his book, Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/134
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The institution of African slavery in North America began in late August 1619 and persisted until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in December 1865.
Over those 246 years, many slaves plotted and conspired to start rebellions, but most of the plotted rebellions never took place. Slaveholders and whites discovered them before they could begin. Therefore, North America witnessed only a handful of slave revolts between 1614 and 1865. Nat Turner’s Rebellion in August 1831 stands as the most deadly.
Patrick Breen, an Associate Professor of History at Providence College and author of The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt joins us to investigate the ins and outs of this bloodiest of North American slave revolts.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/133
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When we explore the history of early America, we often look at people who lived and the events that took place in North America. But what about the people who lived and worked in European metropoles?
What about Native Americans?
Today, we explore early American history through a slightly different lens, a lens that allows us to see interactions that occurred between Native American peoples and English men and women who lived in London. Our guide for this exploration is Coll Thrush, an Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and author of Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of the Empire.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/132
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The United States has a complicated history when it comes to ideas of empire and imperialism. Since it’s earliest days, the United States has wanted the power that came with being an empire even while declaring its distaste for them.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence, which severed the 13 American colonies’ ties to the most powerful empire in the mid-to-late 18th-century world, also had strong views about empire: Thomas Jefferson wanted the United States to become a great and vast “Empire of Liberty.”
Frank Cogliano, a Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh and author of Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy, joins us to explore how Thomas Jefferson came to be a supporter and promoter of empires.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/131
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On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere rode to Lexington, Massachusetts to spread the alarm that the Regulars were marching. Revere made several important rides between 1774 and 1775, including one in September 1774 that brought the Suffolk Resolves to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
So why is it that we remember Paul Revere’s ride to Lexington and not any of his other rides?
Why is it that we remember Paul Revere on the night of April 18, 1775 and nothing about his life either before or after that famous ride?
Why is it that Paul Revere seems to ride quickly into history and then just as quickly out of it?
In this episode we speak with four scholars to explore Paul Revere’s ride through history.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/130
About the Series
The mission of episodes in the Doing History: To the Revolution series is to ask not just “what is the history of the American Revolution?” but “what are the histories of the American Revolution?”
Episodes in this series will air beginning in Fall 2017.
The Doing History series is part of a partnership between Ben Franklin’s World and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
Be sure to check out Doing History season 1: Doing History: How Historians Work.
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How did the colonists of Massachusetts go from public protests meant to shame government officials and destroy offending property, to armed conflict with British Regulars in Lexington and Concord?
John Bell, the prolific blogger behind Boston1775.net and the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War, leads us on an investigation of what brought colonists and redcoats to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/129
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Historians often portray the American Revolution as an orderly, if violent, event that moved from British colonists’ high-minded ideas about freedom to American independence from Great Britain and the ratification of the Constitution of 1787.
But was the American Revolution an orderly event that took place only between Great Britain and her North American colonists? Was it really about high-minded ideas?
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor joins us to explore the American Revolution as a Continental event with details from his book, American Revolutions: A Continental History. 1750-1804.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/128
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In many ways, the Enlightenment gave birth to the United States. Enlightened ideas informed protests over imperial governance and taxation and over whether there should be an American bishop.
If we want to understand early America, we need to understand the Enlightenment.
Caroline Winterer, a Professor of History at Stanford University and author of American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason, takes us through her ideas about the Enlightenment and how it influenced early America.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/127
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What happened to the loyalists who stayed in the United States after the War for Independence?
After the war, 60,000 loyalists and 15,000 slaves evacuated the United States. But thousands more opted to remain in the new nation.
Rebecca Brannon, an Associate Professor of History at James Madison University and author of From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of South Carolina Loyalists, joins us to explore what happened to the loyalists who stayed.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/126
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Early America was a diverse place. It contained many different people who had many different traditions that informed how they lived…and died.
How did early Americans understand death? What did they think about suicide?
Terri Snyder, a Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton and author of The Power to Die: Slavery and Suicide in British North America, helps us answer these questions, and more, as she takes us on an exploration of slavery and suicide in British North America.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/125
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