Ben Franklin's World

Abigail Adams lived through and participated in the American Revolution. As the wife of John Adams, she used her position to famously remind Adams and his colleagues to "remember the ladies" when they created laws for the new, independent United States. In this episode, Woody Holton, a Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Abigail Adams: A Life, helps us explore a...

Over the course of his long life, Benjamin Franklin traveled to and lived in London on two different occasions. The first time he went as a teenager. The second, as a man and colonial agent. All told he spent nearly 18 years living in the heart of the British Empire. How did Franklin’s experiences in London shape his opportunities and view of the world? George Goodwin, author of Benjamin Franklin...

How did everyday men and women experience life in the colonial America? How did the American Revolution transform their work and personal lives? Marla Miller, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the author of Betsy Ross and the Making of America, guides us through the life of Betsy Ross with an aim to help us answer these questions. Show Notes: https://www.benfran...

What about the British Redcoats? When we discuss the military history of the American War for Independence, we tend to focus on specific battles or details about the men who served in George Washington’s Continental Army. Rarely do we take the opportunity to ask questions about the approximately 50,000 men who served in the British Army that opposed them. Don N. Hagist, independent scholar and aut...

What drove George Washington to become a Patriot during the American Revolution? How did he overcome the ill-trained and inexperienced troops, inadequate pay, and supply problems that plagued the Continental Army to win the War for American Independence? Robert Middlekauff, professor emeritus of colonial and early United States history at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals the answers...

Mercy Otis Warren wasn’t your typical early American woman. She was a woman with strong political viewpoints, which she wrote about and published for the world to see and consider. Did anyone take her views seriously? Did her writings sway public opinion in the direction of her political views? In this episode, Rosemarie Zagarri, a professor of history at George Mason University and author of A Wo...

How do you get people living in thirteen different colonies to come together and fight for independence? What ideas and experiences would even unite them behind the fight? Patriot leaders asked themselves these very questions, especially as the American Revolution turned from a series of political protests against imperial policies to a bloody war for independence. What’s more, Patriot leaders als...

How did the framers draft the Constitution of 1787? What powers does the Constitution provide the federal government? Why do we elect the President of the United States by an electoral system rather than by popular vote? These are some of the many questions you’ve asked since November 2016. And today we’re going to explore some answers. Michael Klarman, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Har...

Most histories of American abolitionism begin just before the Civil War, during the Antebellum period. But the movement to end chattel slavery in America began long before the United States was a nation. Manisha Sinha, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of the award-winning book The Slaves Cause: A History of Abolition, takes us through the early American origins of...

The Declaration of Independence stands first in a series of documents that founded the United States. It also stands as an early step in the long process of establishing a free, independent, and self-governing nation. Since 1776, more than 100 nation-states and freedom organizations have used the Declaration of Independence as a model for their own declarations and proclamations of independence. G...

Nathaniel Bowditch worked as a navigator, mathematician, astronomer, and business innovator. Over the course of his lifetime, his fellow Americans hailed him as the “American Sir Isaac Newton.” Tamara Thornton, a professor of history at the University of Buffalo and author of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed America...

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He also played a central role in the European adoption of Indian or Native American slavery. When we think of slavery in early America, we often think of the practice of African and African-American chattel slavery. However, that system of slavery wasn’t the only system of slavery that existed in North America. Systems of Indian slavery existed too. In fact...

Did you know that Connecticut and Virginia once invaded Pennsylvania? During the 1760s, Connecticut invaded and captured the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania just as Virginia invaded and captured parts of western Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania stood powerless to stop them. In this episode, Patrick Spero, the Librarian of the American Philosophical Society and author of Frontier Country: The Pol...

George Washington was an accomplished man. He served as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, first President of the United States, and on top of all that he was also a savvy businessman who ran a successful plantation. George Washington was also a slaveholder. In 1789, he and his wife Martha took 7 slaves to New York City to serve t...

What do the objects we purchase and use say about us? If we take the time to think about the material objects and clothing in our lives, we’ll find that we can actually learn a lot about ourselves and other people. The same holds true when we take the time to study the objects and clothing left behind by people from the past. Jennifer Van Horn, an Assistant Professor of History and Art History at...

If early Americans desired slaves mostly to produce sugarcane, cotton, rice, indigo, and tobacco, what would happen if Europeans and early Americans stopped purchasing those products?
 Would boycotting slave-produced goods and starving slavery of its economic sustenance be enough to end the practice of slavery in North America? Julie Holcomb, an Associate Professor of Museum Studies at Baylor Univ...

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 h...

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...

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 Eng...

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 emp...

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 tha...

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 a...

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...

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 t...

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, join...