Liberty Chronicles

Shownotes: Kevin Gutzman is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. He has a PhD from the University of Virginia and much of his research has focused on precisely that state. Three of his books—Virginia’s American Revolution, James Madison and the Making of America, and Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary—flesh out what Gutzman takes to be...

Reformist minded and very far from the Hartford Wits, to be sure, but the Jeffersonians were still fundamentally the agents of a different sort of American elite. While these white male mechanics and yeoman farmers made for a more democratic ruling elite than the great colonial landholders and office-mongers, they remained relatively content with driving slaves, dominating women and children, and...

Benjamin Lay was a fearless firework of “isms.” Part Quaker, part philosopher, part sailor, abolitionist, and commoner, Lay was also “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.” Joining us this week is Marcus Rediker, one of the most important living historians and Lay’s most recent biographer. Further Readings/References: Marcus Rediker’s website His Amazon author’s page Be...

Few concepts or examples in history have a total sample size of exactly one. With history-making resolve, the slaves in Haiti seized their freedom, which revolutionary Paris only begrudgingly recognized. When the planters, the British, the Spanish, and finally Napoleon himself tried to re-enslave them, they simply refused and resolved themselves to fight to the death for the liberties they’d won....

 Who are the actual revolutionists?—the radicals or extremists who end up overpowering the moderates and installing the new regime? Further Readings/References: Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, Revised Edition. Vintage. 1965. Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. New York: New York University Press. 2009. Palmer, R.R. The Age of Democratic Revolution: A...

It is Reformation Day, and a particularly special one at that. 500 years ago today—as goes the legend—Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. In Luther’s day, Halloween was All Saint’s Eve—part of Allhallowsmas or Hallowstide, a three-day, ritual-packed observance of Christianity’s early martyrs and first saints dating to the eighth century. The unconverted Roma...

Sheldon Richman can be found  on Twitter @Sheldon Richman , readers can find his articles at the  Libertarian Institute , and his books at  Amazon . Beard, Charles. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, 1913. Hyneman & Lutz (eds.) American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805, Two Volumes. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1983. Morgan, Edmund. The Birth of...

In 1741, African slaves, Spanish sailors, Irish servants and soldiers, and antinomian Dissenters conspired to burn New York’s Fort George and murder the city’s wealthy and powerful inhabitants. They hatched their plot at John Hughson’s tavern and spread word to the surrounding countryside and down Long Island. At the sight of flames from the city, country slaves and servants should rise up, kill t...

The colonists governed themselves and had little need for imperial management; colonists all over disparaged the idea of monarchy and Tom Paine smashed it to pieces; the world’s most powerful state lost its most vigorous appendages, and the settlers expanded all sorts of civil rights to new cohorts. We remember the triumphant victory of a new nation-state, and the gains made by some toward exercis...

Mauritius is a rare example of a Creole culture from the start. There really aren’t many of these in world history. The island had no indigenous human beings and the first human visitors to the island were Muslims from East Africa and Arabia in the medieval era. There were no permanent settlements there until the 17th century when the Dutch arrived. Bernardin de St. Pierre, Paul and Virginia, 1788...

For two decades, New Orleans was a town with about 400 riotous, irreligious, desperate individuals. Jean-Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville always hoped the French Empire would take more interest in the area—it was the gateway to wider America, the key to the continent’s greatest river, its richest soils, and a highway for the Indian trade. If only it actually had people in it! Further Readings/Referenc...

Spanish Missionaries intended to project power, but the Indians held the balance of power and Spanish authorities proved unable to control either mission culture or powerful native groups across the countryside. Further Readings/References: Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press. 2007. H...

Along with Frederick Douglass, the most famous slave in history was probably Olaudah Equiano.  On Equiano’s Middle Passage, he shared space belowdecks with other Africans from possibly dozens of ethnic groups, speaking different languages. Once loaded into the ship’s hold, they were all outsiders. Music by Kai Engel Further Readings Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroqu...

Peter Leeson is the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. His work often reads as forays into high weirdness, voyages to strange unknown countries penetrated only by the light of economic reasoning. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Princeton University Press. 2011. WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird. Stanford University Press. 2017. Ho...

The Golden Age of Piracy raises the question: Who among you would turn down the opportunity to play Master to a small continent? Would you submit passively to be dominated by the world? Would we respect the lives and liberties of those weaker than ourselves, or would we, too, given the right opportunities, proclaim ourselves King? Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the G...

In 1716, pirates regularly declared war on all nation-states, they tested the extreme limits of life and death, and quite literally challenged God to dare pass judgment over an angry pirate. If the Lord knew what was good for him, he would mind his own damned business and move along. A true pirate had no home but Hell.   Further Readings/References: “The Legend of Libertalia” on Libertarianism.org...

Each new generation has the ability to dramatically improve upon their world. Neil Howe challenges us to think generationally. Neil Howe wondered why Boomers were so different from their GI elders. In the late 1980s, he developed an intricate yet broad theory of generational change. His model has been very influential, inspiring figures from Al Gore to Glenn Beck and Steve Bannon. Neil Howe joins...

In his 1743 memoir, “The Infortunate,” Moraley detailed his sad circumstances and vague notions of bettering them in the Americas. In what appeared to him a chance encounter, an unknown man encouraged this flight of fancy and signaled that he would join William in Pennsylvania. After plying young Moraley with pints and sweet stories about American abundance, the two prepared and signed William’s i...

The Salem trials were largely the result of a combination of personal animus, avarice, and cruelty within a deeply occultist culture. New England courts executed nineteen witches and subjected many repented convicts to purifying torture. One thing only ended the feverish trials: accusers gradually turned on the affluent and influential after using up the easier targets of marginalized and poor wom...

By the mid-1630s, the English and Native populations were roughly equal in number and power. Parity meant all sides had a practical interest in peaceful coexistence, at least in the real experiences of daily life. The first generation of settlers could show little more force than occasional raids on Indian villages, burning the cornfield here and there, and other small-scale acts of violence. Wave...

Few contemporary or historical accounts of Bacon’s rebellion agree in every particular about the movement’s motivations and outcomes. For the Jacksonian Democrat, George Bancroft, Virginians had enjoyed free government for three generations on the edge of the wilderness. For Bancroft and nationalist historians, this was the prelude to the American Revolution—it was the people seizing their governm...

The Antinomians did not just push for religious and political freedoms in the American colonies. Their ideas traversed the Atlantic and influenced groups in Britain, as well. During the upheaval of the English Civil War, the British Antinomians seized the opportunity to shape their world, creating a slew of new religious denominations and fighting for their liberty. Rediker & Linebaugh. Many-Heade...

True radicals who would actually live and let live have been in short supply since Bradford destroyed Morton’s maypole and the Puritan divines banished Anne Hutchinson. The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637), Transcript Thomas Morton’s Observations of the Puritans Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Linebaugh received a PhD in Early Modern British history from the University of Warwick in 1974, where he studied under EP Thompson, one of the most important and influential historians of the 20th century. Linebaugh is the author of a good many hugely important articles and books, among which are The London Hanged , Magna Carta Manifesto , and Stop Thief! Linebaugh is also the co-author of...

On July 25, 1609, aboard the Virginia Company’s slowing sinking ship the Sea Venture, a company of colonial gentlemen-adventurers, indentured servants, and sailors, all struggled for their lives. The crew plugged holes and splits with every available means and everyone —even the genteel and lordly—took turns carrying water for a time. Aboard the Sea Venture, circumstances forced rich and poor alik...