Once the United States achieved its independence, how did white Americans expect to educate the new republic's youth? How did questions about education become a flash point in the battle between Federalists and Republicans over the meaning of the American Revolution and the nation's soul?

On today's episode, Dr. Mark Boonshoft of Norwich University joins Jim Ambuske to discuss how ideas about education were part of a larger argument about who should rule, and who should rule at home as Americans struggled to form a more perfect union.

About Our Guest:

Mark Boonshoft is an Assistant Professor of History at Norwich University in Northfield, VT. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2015, and then spent two years as a post-doctoral research fellow at the New York Public Library working on the Early American Manuscripts Project. His scholarship has appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic, New York History, and The American Revolution Reborn, and he is currently working on a manuscript, tentatively titled, Monarchical Education and the Making of the American Republic, 1730-1812. He is also a recipient of the Amanda and Greg Gregory Fellowship.

About Our Host:

Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. leads the Center for Digital History at the Washington Library. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, Ambuske graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA Law, Ambuske co-directed the 1828 Catalogue Project and the Scottish Court of Session Project.  He is currently at work on a book about emigration from Scotland in the era of the American Revolution as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press.