founders

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• 4/9/2023
  

  Why Did Madison Write the Second Amendment?

  by Carl T. Bogus

  Understanding the political peril that ensnared both the pre-ratification Constitution and James Madison himself makes it clear that the Second Amendment was written to ensure that southern state militias would be sufficiently armed to suppress slave revolts even if abolitionists controlled Washington. 

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• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  8/9/2022
  

  The Rediscovery of David McCullough

  by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

  A presidential historian now at work on her own book on John Adams reflects on how McCullough's blockbuster inspired her own career, and his hits and misses as a chronicler of overlooked or forgotten people and events in American history. 

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• SOURCE: KERA
  7/21/2022
  

  Thomas S. Kidd on the Hypocrisies of Thomas Jefferson

  Kidd's new book examines the ways that slavery and religion complicate the moral picture of the founder.   

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/22/2022
  

  What Conservative Justices Get Wrong About the Founders

  by Timothy C. Leech

  It's preposterous to argue that the Founders, men of the Enlightenment generation, would have intended for the constitution they drafted to be immutable and unchanging. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/7/2022
  

  Did George Washington Have an Enslaved Son?

  West Ford founded the freedmen's town of Gum Springs near Mount Vernon in 1833. Today a preservation effort to protect the town is tied to a bitter conflict with Mount Vernon over whether West Ford was also the unacknowledged son of George Washington. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  2/21/2022
  

  Were the Founders a Bunch of Wealthy Oligarchs?

  by Willard Sterne Randall

  Charles Beard's progressive-era analysis of the founding portrayed the Founders as men of wealth pursuing their own interests; we know the reality was more complicated. 

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• 1/23/2022
  

  Patrick Henry and the Defense of Democracy

  by John A. Ragosta

  Patrick Henry has become a hero of the Tea Party and the January 6 insurrectionists. But his famous demand for liberty or death doesn't capture his personal commitments to liberty under the rule of law and acceptance of the outcomes of elections. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  11/10/2021
  

  The Changing Same of U.S. History

  by David Waldstreicher

  Historians have returned to the question of whether the Constitution is the problem or the solution with renewed vigor and high stakes. Those accusing ideological rivals of "doing politics, not history" are not innocent of the same charge. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/14/2021
  

  Why Can't our Political System Address our Biggest Problems? Blame the Founders

  by Max Boot

  From COVID to guns to infant mortality to health care, the United States does worse than other industrial democracies at managing basic problems. It's time to recognize that design flaws of the system are a big part of the problem. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/13/2021
  

  There’s a Very Good Reason ‘Washington Slept Here’

  by Nathaniel Philbrick

  "Today the phrase 'Washington slept here' is a historical joke, but during the two years of intermittent travel at the beginning of his presidency, all those nights spent in taverns and homes across the country were essential to establishing an enduring Union."

• 
• 9/19/2021
  

  For Constitution Day, Let's Toast the Losers of the Convention

  by Richard Hall

  "On Constitution Day, I say drink a toast to the losers. Let us study their criticisms of our imperfect system."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/30/2021
  

  A Conflict Among the Founders Still Shapes the Infrastructure Debate

  by Susan Nagel

  "The lack of a clearly defined constitutional role for the federal government in funding infrastructure improvements left it to the men who had been competing to enrich themselves to figure out what role the national government ought to play."

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• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  7/23/2021
  

  America's Founding was Imperfect. Just Ask the Founders

  by George Thomas

  "The American founding was imperfect. America’s founders weren’t just aware of the point, they insisted on it."

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• SOURCE: TIME
  7/4/2021
  

  You Can't Tell the Story of 1776 Without Talking About Race and Slavery

  by Robert G. Parkinson

  John Adams worked diligently in the years after the Declaration to craft an origin story of common purpose that obscured the importance of issues of race and slavery to the pursuit of independence. 

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• 6/6/2021
  

  America's First Peaceful (Just Barely!) Transfer of Power

  by Akhil Reed Amar

  While the selection of Thomas Jefferson as the third president in 1801 (after an electoral college deadlock) is touted as a crucial peaceful transfer of presidential power from one party to another, the transition was far more fraught with peril than most realize. 

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• SOURCE: WBUR
  5/17/2021
  

  'The Words That Made Us': Scholar Akhil Reed Amar On How To Better Understand The Constitution

  "Scholar Akhil Reed Amar says the one thing every single American shares is the United States Constitution. He shares why he wants Americans to better understand the words that made us."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/4/2021
  

  The Year That Changed Everything

  by Akhil Reed Amar

  A legal historian and constitutional scholar considers the founding document in terms of the process of its founding. Neither cynical nor purely idealistic, the Constitution did submit to ratification by a broad vote, but pursued national security by institutionalizing the slave power. 

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• SOURCE: Charleson City Paper
  3/3/2021
  

  Historian Richard Bell Talks Hamilton’s Facts, Fictions at Library Society

  University of Maryland historian Richard Bell says that the hit play was welcome for drawing attention to the challenges of the founding era, but didn't really address the dynamics of racism in colonial society. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/10/2021
  

  A Forgotten Black Founding Father

  by Danielle Allen

  The figure of Black abolitionist Prince Hall has been discussed for his advocacy for abolition in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but there remains a deeper work of historical reconstruction to understand his connections to family, community and civil society in the founding era. 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  2/15/2021
  

  ‘George Washington’ Review: Our Founding Politician

  David Stewart's new book on George Washington highlights his political skills and careful work at cultivating allies. Far from being an apolitical leader, Washington was a skilled operator whose greatest achievement was avoiding the stigma of politics.