Conversations at the Washington Library

In the 18th and 19th centuries, North Americans looked up at the sky in wonder at the cosmos and what lay beyond earth’s atmosphere. But astronomers like Benjamin Banneker, Georgia surveyors, Cherokee storytellers, and government officials also saw in the stars ways to master space on earth by controlling the heavens above. And print technology became a key way for Americans of all stripes to find ways to understand their own place in the universe and their relationship to each other. On today’s show, Dr. Gordon Fraser joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new book, Star Territory: Printing the Universe in Nineteenth-Century America, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021. Fraser is a Lecturer and Presidential Fellow in American Studies, University of Manchester in England, and Fraser and Ambuske were joined today by Dr. Alexandra Montgomery as guest co-host, who is heading up the Washington Library’s ARGO initiative. And yes, they talk about aliens.

When delegates assembled in Philadelphia in the Summer of 1787 to write a new Constitution, they spent months in secret writing a document they hoped would form a more perfect Union. When we talk about the convention, we often talk of the Virginia Plan, the Connecticut Compromise, the 3/5ths clause, and other major decisions that shaped the final document. What’s harder to see are the long days the delegates spent haggling over numerous proposed amendments, precise words, phrases, and ideas that contorted the constitution into its final form. It’s a process that helped create many of the political institutions that we too often take for granted these days. On today’s show, Dr. Nicholas Cole joins Jim Ambuske to chat about using the Quill Project to demystify the past moments that shaped our political and legal futures. Cole is a Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford, where he is the director of the Quill Project, a digital initiative that investigates the historical origins of some of the world’s foundational legal texts. And as you’ll learn, little moments in the constitutional process can mean a lot. With this episode, we close the books on 2021. Thanks for joining us this past year, we appreciate the opportunity to be in your ears, and we look forward to seeing you in 2022. Have a safe and happy holiday season.

For most Americans, Thomas Paine is the radical Englishman, and former tax collector, who published Common Sense in early 1776. His claim that hereditary monarchy was an absurdity and that the “cause of America was in great measure the cause of all mankind” galvanized American rebels into thinking more seriously about independence than they had only a few months before.  Paine would go on to publish The American Crisis and other writings during the America Revolution before trying to find his place in the new United States after the war.  But in the early 1790s, Paine took up his pen once again, this time to defend the French Revolution, from its British critics, including his frenemy, Edmund Burke. The result was a two-part work entitled Rights of Man, a treatise that imagined a world that in some ways looks very similar to our own.  On today’s show, Dr. Frances Chiu joins Jim Ambuske to chat about her new guide book to Paine’s Rights of Man, published by Routledge in 2020. Chiu, who teaches at the New School, is a historian of 18thand 19th century Gothic horror, as well as British reform and radicalism. Her guide book is a handy tool for understanding Paine’s ideas and their origins, with some far older than you might imagine.

On this week's show, we bring you Episode 1 of Intertwined: The Enslaved Community at George Washington's Mount Vernon. Entitled "Passages," it features the life of Sambo Anderson, who was just a boy when he was captured in West Africa, survived the Middle Passage, and purchased by an ambitious George Washington sometime in the late 1760s. During his years of enslavement at Mount Vernon, Anderson became a carpenter, a husband, and a father. In this episode, we tell the story of Anderson’s life to explore the rise of slavery in the Chesapeake Bay region, George and Martha Washington’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade, and the laws that marked the boundaries between slavery and freedom in Virginia. Featuring: Dr. Brenda Stevenson, Hillary Rodham Clinton Endowed Chair in Women’s History, St. John’s College, Oxford University Dr. Lorena Walsh, Research Historian Emerita, Colonial Williamsburg Dr. John C. Coombs, Professor of History, Hampden-Sydney College Dr. Lynn Price Robbins, historian of George and Martha Washington and Early America Jessie MacLeod, Associate Curator, George Washington’s Mount Vernon Full transcripts, show notes, and bibliographies available at www.georgewashingtonpodcast.com.

Intertwined tells the story of the more than 577 people enslaved by George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon. Told through the biographies of Sambo Anderson, Davy Gray, William Lee, Kate, Ona Judge, Nancy Carter Quander, Edmund Parker, Caroline Branham, and the Washingtons, this eight-part podcast series explores the lives and labors of Mount Vernon’s enslaved community, and how we interpret slavery at the historic site today. Intertwined is narrated by Brenda Parker and is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association and CD Squared. Find Intertwined on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Learn more, subscribe to the show, and find full transcripts, show notes, and bibliographies available at www.georgewashingtonpodcast.com.

Although you might not realize it, in the years before the American Revolution, Nova Scotia was all the rage. People concocted various schemes to settle it, and the British government saw it as one of the keys to its new vision of empire after the Seven Years' War. Nova Scotia has a fascinating, often troubled history. Indigenous peoples and European powers competed for the land, and access to the colony’s lucrative fishing grounds, drawing maps to stake their claims, making war, and in the case of the British, using settlers to box out other competing interests, in a strategy that our guest today calls “weaponized settlement.” On today’s episode, Dr. Alexandra Montgomery joins Jim Ambuske to chat about her research on Nova Scotia as an imperial place, and as a site of land dispossession, in the era of the American Revolution. Montgomery is our Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital History and Cartography of the American Revolution here at the Washington Library. And in addition to telling us about an exciting new digital mapping project we’re working on these days, you’ll also learn about the donair, a Nova Scotian treat that should be on the top of your bucket list. About Our Guest: Alexandra L. Montgomery holds a PhD in early American history from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on the role of the state and settler colonialism in the eighteenth century, particularly in the far northeast. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital History and Cartography of the American Revolutionary War Era at Mount Vernon, where she is assisting in the creation of a new digital maps portal in collaboration with the Leventhal Map and Education Center.

In May 1796, an enslaved woman named Ona Judge fled the presidential household in Philadelphia and escaped to freedom on a ship headed for New Hampshire. Judge’s successful flight was one of many such escapes by the sea in the 18th and 19th centuries. Enslaved people boarded ships docked in ports great and small and used coastal water ways and the ocean as highways to freedom. We often learn about the Underground Railroad in school, but what about its aquatic component?  On today’s episode, Dr. Timothy D. Walker joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new edited volume, Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad, which was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2021. Walker is a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and along with the contributors to Sailing to Freedom, Walker guides us towards new horizons in our quest to better understand this history.  About Our Guest: Dr. Timothy Walker (B.A., Hiram College, 1986; M.A., Ph.D., Boston University, 2001) is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.  At UMD, he serves as Fulbright Program Advisor (faculty and students); prior posts include Director of Tagus Press and Director of the UMass in Lisbon Study Abroad Program.

To kick off Season 6, we bring you the story of America’s Favorite Fighting Frenchmen. In 1777, the Marquis de Lafayette sailed from France with a commission as a major general in the Continental Army. Unlike many other European soldiers of fortune, Lafayette paid his own way and had no expectation that he would be placed at the head of American forces. We best remember Lafayette for his service in the American Revolution, his close relationship with George Washington, and the key to the Bastille that now hangs in the main entrance to Washington’s Mount Vernon. But Lafayette was more than meets the eye. On today’s show, podcasting legend and author Mike Duncan joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new book, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution, published by PublicAffairs Books in 2021. You may know Duncan from his two podcasts, The History of Rome and Revolutions, and in his latest book, he tackles a complex man who was at the center of the Age of Democratic Revolutions. It’s great to be back with you; we have a great season ahead of us, and we have a brand new segment in which our guests talk about the work that inspires them. About our Guest: Mike Duncan is one of the most popular history podcasters in the world and author of the New York Times–bestselling book, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. His award-winning series, The History of Rome, remains a legendary landmark in the history of podcasting. Duncan’s ongoing series, Revolutions, explores the great political revolutions that have driven the course of modern history. His most recent book is Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution.

In the eighteenth century, the Myaamia people inhabited what are now parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. More commonly known in English as the Miami, the Myaamia figure prominently in the early history of the United States, especially in the 1790s, when war chief Mihšihkinaahkwa (or Little Turtle) co-led an alliance of Miami and Shawnee warriors that defeated successive American armies in the Ohio valley before meeting defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. In the battle’s wake, through treaty and subterfuge, Americans dispossessed the Myaamia of their lands, removing them first to Kansas in the mid-nineteenth century before final resettlement in Oklahoma not long after. Not only did the Myaamia lose their homelands, their language and culture suffered as well, lapsing into silence as the community fractured and native speakers passed away.  But as George Ironstrack tells us on today’s episode, not all is lost, and through the power of education and a lot of hard work, what was once silenced is now heard again in Myaamia communities from the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana to northeastern Oklahoma.  Ironstrack is a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Assistant Director of the Myaamia Center at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. The Center is a major educational and research institution dedicated to revitalizing Myaamia language and culture, and a leader in using digital technology to explore the indigenous past. Ironstrack spoke to Jim Ambuske about the history of the Myaamia people, and the work that he and his colleagues are doing at the Myaamia Center to awaken a sleeping language.  Be sure to check out the Myaamia Center's many digital resources, including the Miami-Illinois Digital Archive. About Our Guest:  George Ironstrack is a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Assistant Director of the Myaamia Center at Miami University. He has participated in Myaamia language renewal projects as both a student and a teacher since the mid-1990s. Examples of his work can be found on the Myaamia Community Blog: aacimotaatiiyankwi.org. 

Consuls are essential to American foreign relations. Although they may not be as flashy or as powerful as an Ambassador like Thomas Jefferson or John Quincy Adams, they’re often the go-to people when an American gets in trouble abroad or when a trade deal needs to get done. Consuls operate in cities and towns throughout the world, helping to advance American interests and maintain good relations with their host countries, all while helping you replace your lost passport. Much has changed about the consular service since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when a consul could earn fees for his services, such as getting you out of a scrape with the local authorities But as today’s guests demonstrates, consuls were and are the backbone of American diplomacy. Dr. Abby Mullen joins Jim Ambuske to discuss her work on American consuls in the early Republic and her podcast, Consolation Prize, a show dedicated to telling the stories of these consuls, and the wider world in which they lived. Mullen is Term Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University where she is also one of the key members of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. About Our Guest: Abby Mullen holds a PhD in history from Northeastern University (2017). Her dissertation, "Good Neighbourhood with All: Conflict and Cooperation in the First Barbary War, 1801-1805," investigates how the U.S. Navy forged international connections in the Mediterranean during the First Barbary War.Mullen is the PI on Tropy, a Mellon Foundation-funded software development project. She is also technical lead on All the Appalachian Trails, a project to create an interactive map of the history of the Appalachian Trail over the last 100 years. Mullen teaches digital history courses at George Mason University.

If you pull any decent history book off your shelf right now, odds are that it’s filled with quotes from letters, diaries, or account books that help the author tell her story and provide the evidence for her interpretation of the past. It’s almost always the case that the quotation you read in a book is just one snippet of a much longer document. Perhaps, for example, Catharine Greene’s letters to her husband Nathanael offer the reader insight into some aspect of the family business she was running while Nathanael served in the southern theater of the War of Independence. But what about the rest of the document? What about the quiet moments when someone like Martha Washington asks after a family member, describes the state of their own health, or apologizes for a hurried scrawl, the result of the writer trying to catch the next post? And as valuable as collections like George Washington’s papers are, how can we write more nuanced and complete histories of the American past by reading letters by early American women? On today’s show, we welcome Kathryn Gehred, who is tackling that question by exploring the lives of early American women, one letter at a time. Gehred is a Research Editor at The Washington Papers Project based at the University of Virginia, where she is also on the team at the Center for Digital Editing, which is publishing documentary editions of historical manuscript collections online. Gehred is also the host of the new podcast, Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant. On each episode, Gehred and her guests break down a letter written by early American women and put it in context to show what is often obscured by the so-called juicier quotes you might find in your favorite book. Gehred joins Jim Ambuske today to talk about her podcast, how her training as an early American women’s historian, Monticello tour guide, and documentary editor informs her approach to it, and some of the exciting letters she’s discussed so far. And as a special treat, stick around after the credits role for a preview of Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant featuring Gehred’s conversation with our colleague Samantha Snyder about a letter from Elizabeth Willing Powel to George Washington. About our Guest: Kathryn Gehred is a Research Editor at The Washington Papers Project at the University of Virginia. She is also on the staff of the Center for Digital Editing. A historian of early American women, Gehred is the host of the podcast Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant, a women’s history podcast which showcases the kinds of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century women’s letters that don’t always make it into the history books.

On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key began composing "The Star-Spangled Banner after witnessing the British attack on Fort McHenry. Of all the things he could have done after seeing that flag, why did Key write a song?  And how did his new composition fit into a much longer history of music as a form of political persuasion in the Early Republic? On today’s episode, Dr. Billy Coleman joins us explore the power of music in the early United States, and how Federalists in particular used it as a kind of weapon to advance their vision of a harmonious nation led by elites. He also helps us understand why music as a form of historical evidence is a remarkable way to get inside the heads, and the hearts, of people from ages past. Coleman is the Kinder Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Political History at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865, (UNC Press, 2020). Coleman and his collaborator, the music producer Running Notch, have also created a soundtrack for the book, featuring modern interpretations of some of the most important political songs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.nFind the soundtrack here or search for “Harnessing Harmony” on Spotify. You’ll hear clips from a couple of these tunes over the course of today’s program, but make sure you stick around after the credits roll for an exclusive opportunity to hear the complete versions of "Hail, Columbia" and "Jefferson and Liberty," which appear “ courtesy of Running Notch from the “Book Soundtrack” to Billy Coleman’s Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788–1865 (UNC Press). About Our Guest:  Billy Coleman, Ph.D. is the Kinder Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Political History at the University of Missouri. His research articles also appear in the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of the Early Republic. His new project, “Making Music National in a Settler State,” is exploring the transnational origins of national music in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Dr. Coleman is currently the North American-based Book Reviews Editor for the peer-reviewed journal, American Nineteenth Century History. 

In 1784, King Charles III of Spain sent George Washington a token of his esteem. Knowing that Washington had long sought a Spanish donkey for his Mount Vernon estate, the king permitted a jack to be exported to the new United States. Washington named the donkey Royal Gift in recognition of its royal origin, and the donkey became somewhat of a minor celebrity when he disembarked from his ship in 1785. As it turns out, Spanish jacks like Royal Gift were highly prized animals in the Atlantic world. And in this case the Spanish, who had supported the United States during the American Revolution, saw an opportunity to use a donkey as a way to shore up diplomatic relations with the new republic and protect their interests in North America. On today’s show, Professor José Emilio Yanes joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new book, El Regalo de Carlos III A George Washington: El periplo de Royal Gift. Yanes is a veterinarian and Associate Professor at the University of Salamanca in Spain. As the title of his work suggests, it is a Spanish language book, one that makes use of manuscripts in Spanish archives to flesh out Royal Gift’s story. We spoke last fall with the help of his friend and collaborator, Allan Winn, Jr., who it so happens is a native of Alexandria, Virginia who has lived in Spain for many years now and runs Allan School of English in Zamora. If Spanish happens to be your mother tongue, or if you are like me and you are desperately trying to get better at it, please check out the Spanish-language version of this episode, which will appear in your podcast feed. Before we get started, we ask that you do us a quick favor. If you like the show, please drop us a review through your favorite podcast app. We’d really appreciate. And be sure to check out our new website for the show, which we think will make it easier for you to find your favorite episodes. You can find us at www.georgewashingtonpodcast.com. About Our Guests: José Emilio Yanes Garcia is Superior Polytechnic School of Zamora and Associate Professor at the University of Salamanca (Spain). He is the author of El Regalo de Carlos III A George Washington: El periplo de Royal Gift (2019). Allan R. Winn, Jr. is a native of Alexandria, Virginia who now resides in Zomora, Spain. He is the proprietor of Allan School of English. Winn assisted Yanes with translation work in El Regalo de Carlos III A George Washington and provided translation for this episode.

The American Revolution dismembered a protestant empire. In the years during and after the war, states disestablished their churches, old and new denominations flourished, and Americans enshrined religious freedom into their state and federal constitutions. But claiming religious freedom in a democracy was not the same as enjoying it. In the republic’s early years, Joseph Smith, who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his Mormon brethren learned all too well the difference between ideal and reality. In Missouri and elsewhere, Smith and his fellow Mormons faced persecution for their beliefs, yet had faith that American democracy would help right these wrongs. But as it became clear that state and federal officials would not intervene, Smith arrived at a bold conclusion--he would run for president in 1844 on one of the most radical platforms in American history. On today’s show, Dr. Spencer W. McBride joins Jim Ambuske to talk about Smith, Mormonism, and the politics of religion in the early republic. McBride is the author of the new book Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom, published by Oxford University Press in 2021. About Our Guest: Spencer W. McBride, Ph.D., is an Associate Managing Historian of the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the author of Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. He has written about the evolving role of religion in American politics for the Washington Post and the Deseret News. He is also the creator and host of The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast.

In the eighteenth century, death stalked early Americans like a predator hunting its prey. In Virginia, as in other colonies, death made children orphans and wives widows, making a precarious existence all that much more challenging. For the Virginia elite, death also created opportunities for widows and widowers alike to protect their interests, their property, and their social standing through advantageous re-marriages. But the predator’s teeth never dulled, and when it took another life some Virginians like Mary Washington turned to devotional texts for comfort and for the strength to press onward. Historians have not looked favorably on George Washington’s mother over the past few decades, finding her to be difficult, stubborn, and often a drag on her more famous son. Yet as today’s guest tells us, those observations take their cue from George himself, and ignore the full shape of her life, one in which death was a constant companion. Dr. Martha Saxton joins Jim Ambuske today to discuss her new book, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington. Dr. Saxton is Professor of History, Women’s, and Gender Studies emerita at Amherst College. And as you’ll hear, books like Matthew Hale’s Contemplations, Moral and Divine offered Mary solace in a world in which death was very much a part of life. About our Guest: Martha Saxton, Ph.D., is Professor of History, Women’s, and Gender Studies emerita at Amherst College. She is the author of Being Good: Women's Moral Values in Early America, (Hill and Wang, 2003), and The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington (Hill and Wang, 2019).