More than half a million Indigenous people were enslaved within the present-day borders of the United States.

Historian Linford Fisher spent fifteen years in archives across North America, the Caribbean, and Britain to investigate this forgotten history. What he found was not a second story running alongside African slavery. It was something different in kind. Europeans and early Americans enslaved people who lived on land they intended to possess. This practice made slavery a tool of dispossession.

The American Revolution is where this process accelerated. Lin and Lorén Spears, a Narragansett tribal citizen and the executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, trace how the Revolution opened space for captive raiding on the western frontier, how Native nations weighed which side to take during the war, and how their Stolen Relations digital project is recovering the names of the Natives early Americans enslaved.

Lin’s Website | Book |

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/449

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:23 The Declaration's Overlooked Grievance Against Indigenous People

00:02:29 The Other Revolutionary War

00:03:20 Investigating the Hidden History of Indigenous Enslavement

00:07:07 Uncovering the Scale of Indigenous Enslavement

00:13:43 Building Stolen Relations Through Archival and Tribal Collaboration

00:20:51 Decolonizing Archival Records

00:30:40 Connection Between Indigenous Enslavement & Land Dispossession

00:33:53 How Native Nations Navigated the American Revolution

00:37:16 From Colonial Experimentation to Revolutionary Expansion

00:41:15 How the American Revolution Expanded Indigenous Slavery

00:45:20 How Indigenous Nations Weighed Neutrality, Alliance, & Survival

00:52:51 The Declaration of Independence's Impact on Indigenous Communities

01:01:10 The Treaty of Paris, 1783 and the Continuation of Indigenous Dispossession

01:03:51 The Uncertain End of Indigenous Enslavement

01:11:59 Commemorating the American Revolution Through Indigenous History

01:24:36 Revolution to Freedom Through Indigenous Sovereignty

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES

🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America

🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canadaigua

🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion & the Political Economy of Plunder

🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1

🎧 Episode 368: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 2

🎧 Episode 406: Threads of Power

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The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But what did liberty and equality mean for the peoples the Declaration never named—the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations who had governed the vast Great Lakes homeland they called Anishinaabewake for generations before a single European sailed its waters?

In this revisited conversation, historian Michael Witgen, Professor of History at Columbia University and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, takes us inside the Anishinaabe world and reveals how the new United States set about transforming it.

The answer, Witgen shows us, wasn't simple conquest. It was something more elaborate, more profitable, and in some ways more insidious: what he calls the political economy of plunder—a system engineered to strip Indigenous peoples of their homelands while funneling the wealth of that dispossession directly into the settler colonial economy.

Michael's Website | Book

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES

🎧 Episode 051: A History of Early Detroit

🎧 Episode 064: Native American Slavery in New France

🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America

🎧 Episode 223: A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region

🎧 Episode 286: Native Sovereignty

🎧 Episode 310: History of the Blackfeet

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The engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence is on display at the National Archives building in Washington, DC. Millions of visitors flock to see it and the other Charters of Freedom. But how did it end up there and why do people approach it with religious reverence?

In this episode, we explore how the Declaration took on its symbolic role as the founding text of the United States.

Pauline's Book

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00:00 Introduction

00:06:30 Introducing Mary Beth Norton

00:07:17 American Scripture: Pauline Maier

00:10:00 Graduate School with Pauline Maier

00:13:36 The State of Historians' Thinking in the 1990s

00:15:23 Other Declarations of Independence

00:21:08 Thomas Jefferson's Drafting of the Declaration

00:23:44 Why Create a Parchment Copy of the Declaration?

00:28:24 How the Declaration Became American Scripture

00:30:32 The Impact of American Scripture

00:32:10 Situating the Declaration in the American Revolution

00:35:39 The Role of the Parchment Copy Today

00:40:12 Closing Thoughts on Pauline Maier

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES

🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft

🎧 Episode 155: Pauline Maier's American Revolution

🎧 Episode 294: 1774: The Long Year of Revolution

🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence

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For the Haudenosaunee, the Six Nations People, the American Revolution brought not liberty, but land loss, displacement, and the dismantling of their world. The new United States seized land from Haudenosaunee nations regardless of which side they supported during the Revolution. And yet the Haudenosaunee survived, and Haudenosaunee women are central to this story.

In this revisited episode, Maeve Kane, Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany and author of Shirts Powdered Red, reveals how Haudenosaunee women used cloth, trade, and cultural creativity as tools of sovereignty and survival across three centuries of colonial pressure.

Maeve's Website | Book |

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/406

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES

🎧 Episode 021: Smuggling in Colonial America & Living History

🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America

🎧 Episode 223: A native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region

🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canandaigua

🎧 Episode 353: Women and the Making of Catawba Identity

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Five men served on the Continental Congress’s Declaration Committee. We know three of them well: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. But who were the other two?

In this episode, we explore the lives and contributions of Robert R. Livingston of New York and Roger Sherman of Connecticut.

Historians Geoff Benton and Michael Morand join us as we uncover the stories of the other Committee members.

Clermont State Historic Site: Website

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/447

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00:00 Introduction

00:04:46 The Lee Resolution and the Committee of Five

00:05:26 Robert R. Livingston's Early Life

00:06:56 Colonial New York Politics

00:11:02 Livingston's Appointment to the Second Continental Congress

00:15:20 Why Livingston Chosen for Declaration Committee

00:18:44 Livingston's feud with John Adams

00:19:18 Livingston Misses the Vote for Independence

00:20:50 Livingston Becomes Chancellor of New York State

00:24:06 Livingston's Role in Steam Navigation

00:26:15 Clermont State Historic Site

00:32:35 Roger Sherman's Early Life

00:36:47 Sherman's Family and Life in New Haven

00:37:43 Sherman's Involvement in the Imperial Crisis

00:40:38 Sherman's Role in the Second Continental Congress

00:42:28 Why Sherman Chosen For Declaration Committee

00:43:42 Sherman's Role in Drafting the Declaration

00:46:16 The Connecticut Compromise, 1787

00:50:28 What Made Sherman Effective in Legislatures

00:53:47 1776 in Context

00:58:10 Conclusion

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES

🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft

🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship and Rivalry of Adams & Jefferson

🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July

🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?

🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence

🎧 Episode 439: When the Declaration of Independence Was News

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Every American knows Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but was he really its sole architect?

In this revisited episode, we sit down with three scholars to pull back the curtain on how the Declaration came to be written. Danielle Allen of Harvard University, Patrick Spero of the American Philosophical Society, and Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia reveal that the Declaration was never one man's work.

Together, they show how John Adams — not Jefferson — was the intellectual architect behind "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." How Benjamin Franklin changed the Declaration with just four or five surgical edits. And what the Second Continental Congress cut from Jefferson's original draft, including his striking grievance blaming King George III for the international slave trade.

Originally recorded in 2017 as part of Ben Franklin's World's Doing History to the Revolution series, this episode pairs with Episode 446 and Episode 447 to mark the Declaration's 250th anniversary.

Danielle’s Website | Book

Patrick's Website | Book

Peter's Website | Book

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/141

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES

🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration

🎧 Episode 440: Jefferson's Cut Grievance

🎧 Episode 443: How Independence Happend, Pt 1: The Lee Resolution, 1776

🎧 Episode 444: How Independence Happened, Pt 2: The Model Treaty

🎧 Episode 445: How Independence Happened, Pt 3: Articles of Confederation

🎧 Episode 446: The Declaration of Independence at 250

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250 years after its signing, the Declaration of Independence remains an unfinished document. Its famous assertion "that all men are created equal" and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stands not as a settled truth, but as a call every generation of Americans must answer on its own terms.

What did the founders mean by "all men are created equal?" Who did they believe was eligible to pursue life, liberty, and happiness? And how are the generations living in the United States today thinking through their own answers?

Four historians join us to explore these questions. Robert Parkinson and Steve Sarson draw on their new books to help us understand what it meant in 1776. Anthea Hartig and Virginia Scharff show us how two 250th anniversary museum exhibitions use objects to make the Declaration's living legacy tangible, and to remind us that its promises have always been claimed not just in words, but in action.
Rob's Book | Steve's Book | Smithsonian Exhibit | Autry Exhibit
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:00:44 Celebrating the Declaration of Independence
00:03:50 The Declaration As An Ongoing Experiment
00:04:14 Anthea Hartig on the National Museum of American History
00:05:30 Virginia Scharff on the Autry Museum of the American West
00:07:58 Robert Parkinson on Understanding the Declaration
00:19:17 Steve Sarson on the Declaration's Philosophical Argument
00:21:10 The Original Meaning of the Declaration
00:34:47 Conclusion
00:41:16 The Massachusetts Historical Society's Declaration Exhibit
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration
🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of Happiness
🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence
🎧 Episode 439: When the Declaration of Independence Was News in 1776
🎧 Episode 440: Jefferson's Cut Grievance
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The man Congress chose to draft the United States’ first constitution refused to vote for independence.

John Dickinson wrote a bold plan, one with a strong central government, religious liberty protections that included women, and a question in the margins about whether Congress should abolish slavery. Congress stripped out nearly all of these ideas and provisions. What replaced it sparked a debate over federal vs. state power that has never gone away.

This is the third episode in our How Independence Happened series. In Part 1, we explored Richard Henry Lee's Virginia Resolution of June 7, 1776. In Part 2, we examined the Model Treaty and how the new United States made foreign alliances. In this third part, we're joined by historians Jane Calvert and Jonathan Gienapp so we can investigate the Articles of Confederation, the third element of independence.

Jane's Website | Book
Jonathan's Website | Book
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/445
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:03:34 The Articles of Confederation
00:08:29 Why A Confederation Was Important
00:12:49 Why the Second Continental Congress Create A Formal Union
00:21:44 Drafting the Articles of Confederation
00:22:38 John Dickinson's Role in Drafting the Articles
00:45:50 The Founding Generation's Ideas About Government
01:05:40 Viewing the Articles of Confederation in Context
01:13:07 The Unwritten Constitution of the People
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 179: Governance During the Critical Period
🎧 Episode 258: John Dickinson, Life, Religion, & Politics
🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder
🎧 Episode 366: James Wilson & the U.S. Constitution
🎧 Episode 443: How Independence Happened, Pt 1: The Lee Resolution
🎧 Episode 444: How Independence Happened, Pt 2: The Model Treaty
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Declaring independence on July 2, 1776 was only the beginning. To actually become a nation, the United States needed something else: foreign allies, international recognition, and the credibility to negotiate as an equal among the world's great powers.

Five days after Richard Henry Lee introduced his famous Virginia Resolution, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five — John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Robert Morris, and Benjamin Harrison — to figure out how to achieve international recognition. The result was the Model Treaty: a document we almost never discuss today, but one that Adams considered his most important contribution to Congress and the nation.

Historians Sara Georgini and Eliga Gould guide us through Adams's revolutionary blueprint for American foreign policy and how the founders understood that the United States would need to become a "treaty worthy" nation before France would take them seriously.

This is the second episode in a three-part series.

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Declaring independence on July 2, 1776, was only the beginning.

To actually become a nation, the United States needed something else: foreign allies, international recognition, and the credibility to negotiate as an equal among the world's great powers.

Five days after Richard Henry Lee introduced his famous Virginia Resolution, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five — John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Robert Morris, and Benjamin Harrison — to figure out how to achieve international recognition. The result was the Model Treaty: a document we almost never discuss today, but one that Adams considered his most important contribution to Congress and the nation.

Historians Sara Georgini and Eliga Gould guide us through Adams's revolutionary blueprint for American foreign policy and the founders' understanding that the United States would need to become a "treaty-worthy" nation before France would take it seriously.

This is the second episode in a three-part series.

Sara’s Website | Book 

Lige's Website | Book
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/444
 
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00  Introduction
00:00:21  Three Legs of Independence
00:01:17   The Second Continental Congress Votes Independence
00:02:58  The Second Leg of Independence: Foreign Alliances
00:03:28  The Model Treaty
00:07:12  Why the Virginia Resolution Included Foreign Alliances
00:19:00  Specifics of the Model Treaty
00:21:30  Founders' Goals for the Model Treaty
00:28:21  The Model Treaty Drafting Committee
00:41:20  The Model Treaty as a Document
00:39:15 The Story of Common Sense
00:50:07  Commercial Alliances
01:04:42  The Model Treaty's Place in the American Revolution
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 007: John Adams & the Adams Papers Documentary Project
🎧 Episode 128: American Revolutions: A Continental History
🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Jefferson & Adams
🎧 Episode 432: How France & Spain Helped Save the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 433: Entangled Alliances: Haiti, France, & the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 443: How Independence Actually Happened, Pt 1: The Lee Resolution
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