Ben Franklin's World

In 1621, the Pilgrims of Plimoth Colony and their Wampanoag neighbors celebrated their first harvest. Today we remember this event as the first Thanksgiving. But what do we really know about this holiday and the people who celebrated it? So much of what we know about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving comes to us through myth and legend, which is why Rebecca Fraser, author of The Mayflower: The Families, The Voyage, and the Founding of America, joins us to help suss out fact from fiction.

How do historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past? Good biographies rely on telling the lives of people using practiced historical methods of thorough archival research and the sound interrogation of historical sources. But what does this practice of historical methods look like? Erica Dunbar, author of Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge, shows us how she recovered the life of Ona Judge from the archives.

As part of the Omohundro Institute's Doing History series on biography, Episode 212 offers us a new conversation with Erica Dunbar, the author of Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge. The new episode will explore how historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past using the story of Ona Judge. In preparation for this new episode, here is our original conversation with Erica Dunbar about Ona Judge.

Can a biography help us explore big historical questions? Can knowing about the life of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, help us better understand the Supreme Court and how it came to occupy the powerful place it has in the United State government? The Doing History: Biography series continues and explores these questions with Richard Brookhiser, author of John Marshall: The Man Who Made The Supreme Court.

For 34 years, John Marshall presided as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his service, Marshal transformed the nation’s top court and its judicial branch into the powerful body and co-equal branch of government we know it as today. The Doing History: Biography series continues as Joel Richard Paul, author of Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times, joins us to explore the life of John Marshall and how he wrote his biography.

Biography. Since the earliest days of the United States, Americans have been interested in biography. But why? What is it about the lives of others that makes the past so interesting and fun to explore? This episode marks the start of the Omohundro Institute’s 4-episode Doing History series about biography. This series will take us behind-the-scenes of biography and how historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past.

2018 marks the 241st anniversary of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga and the 240th anniversary of the Franco-American Alliance. But was the victory that prompted the French to join the American war effort, truly the "turning point" of the War for Independence? National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick joins us to explore the two events he sees as better turning points in the American War for Independence: Benedict Arnold’s treason and the French Navy’s participation in the war.

What in the first 40 years of his life made Benjamin Franklin the genius he became? Ben Franklin serves as a great window on to the early American past because as a man of “variety” he pursued many interests: literature, poetry, science, business, philosophy, philanthropy, and politics. But one aspect of Franklin's life has gone largely unstudied: his childhood and early life. Nick Bunker joins us to explore how family and youthful experiences shaped Franklin as a great scientist and diplomat.

Between 1500 and the 1860s, Europeans and Americans forcibly removed approximately 12 million African people from the African continent, transported them to the Americas, and enslaved them. Why did Europeans and Americans enslave Africans? How did they justify their actions? Katherine Gerbner, author of Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, leads us on an exploration of ways Christianity influenced early ideas about slavery and its practice.

La Presidente? The Presidentess? The First Lady of the Land? The United States Constitution defines the Executive Branch of the government, the powers it has, and the role of the chief executive. But what about the position of the President’s spouse? Jeanne Abrams joins us to explore the lives and work of the first First Ladies with details from her book, First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison and the Creation of an Iconic American Role.

Aaron Burr: Revolutionary War hero, talented lawyer, Vice President, and Intriguer of treason? Between 1805 and 1807, Aaron Burr supposedly intended to commit treason by dividing the American union. How did Americans learn about and respond to this treasonous intrigue? James Lewis Jr., author of The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis, guides us through what we know and don’t know about about Aaron Burr’s supposed plot to divide the American union.

Hamilton the Musical hit Broadway in August 2015 and since that time people all around the world have been learning about a man named Alexander Hamilton. Or, at least they’ve been learning about the musical’s character Alexander Hamilton. But who was Alexander Hamilton as a real person? Joanne Freeman, one of the foremost experts on the life of Alexander Hamilton, joins us to explore this large question so we can discover more about the man who helped to create the United States.

Matt Wasniewski, the Historian of the United States House of Representatives and Terrance Ruckner, a Historical Publications Specialist in the Office of the Historian at the United States House of Representatives, lead us on an exploration of why and how the United States Constitution established a bicameral Congress and how and why the House of Representatives took the shape and form that it did during its early meetings.

How do you unite the disparate peoples of the United States into one national people? Americans grappled with many questions about what it meant to be an American after the American Revolution. Catherine Kelly, author of Republic of Taste: Art, Politics, and Everyday Life in Early America, joins us to explore the world of art, politics, and taste in the early American republic and how that world contributed to the formation of American identity, character, and virtue.

What would you like to know about Early American History? It turns out, you wanted to know about the establishment of schools, how the colonial postal service worked, and about aspects of health and hygiene in early America. In this listener-inspired Q&A episode, we speak with Johann Neem, Joseph Adelman, and Ann Little to explore these aspects of early American history and to get answers to your questions about them.