Liberty Chronicles

Calhoun’s vision of Americans conquering space seemed even more possible with Samuel Morse’s invention of the magnetic telegraph.

How did Justice Abram Smith of Wisconsin challenge the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850?

Who created the Republican Party?

This is an updated version of our episode from July 3, 2018. We discuss how John C. Calhoun led the charge in believing slavery to be a “positive good”.

Who was Stephen Douglas and, more importantly, what did his political attitude represent in a time defined by scheming politicians? 

What would prevent the United States from the impending disastrous split over the “slavery issue”?

Our lengthy debate about who Van Buren really was as a person and as a President continues with new thoughts from Jeff Hummel. 

The Loco-Focos were out there leading the young America cultural movement: integrating Whigish abolitionism, even when Van Buren had left them behind.

Our conversation about how all history is revisionist and open to creativity with Michael Douma continues this week.

Michael Douma joins us for the first part of a two-part series to discuss how we should see the past as as an interpretative history.

Timothy Sandefur joins us this week to discuss how Frederick Douglass does not align perfectly into the accepted political factions of today. 

1848 changed American politics forever, and early Libertarianism was at the center of it.

Martin Van Buren was intellectually committed to laissez-faire and limited government, but the devil is always in the details.

The Polk years began in a sort of uneasy truce between radicals and conservatives. 

In 1844, America’s first libertarians made a serious mistake. The kind of mistake with the potential to destroy their whole movement.