Ben Franklin's World

Did you know that John Adams, not George Washington, solidified the precedents of the executive branch and the presidency?

Lindsay Chervinsky, an award-winning presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library, has written a book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. She joins us to investigate the presidency of the United States’ second president, John Adams.

Lindsay’s Website | Book | Instagram

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

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🎧 Episode 040: For Fear of an Elected King

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🎧 Episode 188: The Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798

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

🎧 Episode 203: Alexander Hamilton

🎧 Episode 279: The Cabinet: Creation of An American Institution

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January 20th, marked Inauguration Day in the United States, the day a new president and his administration takes office. So it seems a fitting time for us to revisit a conversation we had in 2020 about the creation of the Executive Branch, and more specifically, the creation of the president’s cabinet.

Lindsay Chervinsky is an award-winning presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. In 2020, she published her first book called The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/279

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Do you know what time it is?

In early America, this question wasn’t as simple to answer as it is today. Urban dwellers in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston often wondered about the time—but few owned their own watches or clocks. So, how did they keep track of the hours?

In this episode, we dive into the fascinating world of early American timekeeping. Bob Frishman, a horologist—a specialist in clocks and watches—and a scholar of horology, joins us to explore how timepieces and their makers shaped community life and craftsmanship in the 18th century. Along the way, we’ll uncover the remarkable story of Edward Duffield, a Philadelphia clockmaker who wasn’t just a master craftsman but also a close friend and neighbor of Benjamin Franklin.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/402

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🎧 Episode 149: Benjamin Franklin in London

🎧 Episode 175: The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House

🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin

🎧 Episode 244: Shoe Stories from Early America

🎧 Episode 292: Craft in Early America

🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 1

🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 2

🎧 Episode 332: Occupied Philadelphia

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To close out our mini-series on Tea in early America, we’re going to revisit Episode 160: The Politics of Tea. This episode was part of our Doing History: To the Revolution series with the Omohundro Institute in 2017.

In this episode, we’ll revisit how early Americans went from attending tea parties to holding the Boston Tea Party. We’ll also explore more in-depth information about how tea became a central part of many early Americans’ lives.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/160

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During the early days of the American Revolution, British Americans attempted to sway their fellow Britons with consumer politics.

In 1768 and 1769, they organized a non-consumption movement of British goods to protest the Townshend Duties. In 1774, they arranged a non-importation and non-exportation movement to protest the Tea Act and Coercive Acts.

Why did the colonists protest the Tea Act and Coercive Acts? Why did they chose to protest those acts with the consumer politics of a non-importation/non-exportation program?

James Fichter, the author of Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776, joins us to explore the Tea Crisis of 1773 and the resulting non-importation/non-exportation movement the colonists organized after Parliament passed the Coercive Acts.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/401

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In Episode 401, we’ll be exploring the Tea Crisis and how it led to the non-importation/non-exportation movement of 1774-1776.

Our guest historian, James Fichter, references the work of Mary Beth Norton and her “The Seventh Tea Ship” article from The William and Mary Quarterly.

In this BFW Revisited episode, we’ll travel back to December 2016, when we spoke with Mary Beth Norton about her article and the Tea Crisis of 1773.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/112

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How do historians define Ben Franklin’s “world?” What historical event, person, or place in the era of Ben Franklin do they wish you knew about?

In celebration of the 400th episode of Ben Franklin’s World, we posed these questions to more than 20 scholars. What do they think? Join the celebration and discover more about the world Ben Franklin lived in.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/400

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🎧 Episode 114: Karin Wulf, The History of the Genealogy

🎧 Episode 285: Elections & Voting in the Early Republic

🎧 Episode 300: Vast Early America

🎧 Episode 389: Indigenous Justice in Early America

🎧 Episode 393: Politics and Political Culture in the Early American Republic

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In our last episode, Episode 399, we discussed Denmark Vesey’s revolt and the way biblical texts and scripture enabled Vesey to organize what would have been the largest slave revolt in United States history if the revolt had not been thwarted before Vesey could put it into action.

Early American history is filled with revolts against enslavers that were thwarted and never made it past the planning stage. But, one uprising that did move beyond planning and into action was the Southampton Rebellion or Nat Turner’s Revolt in August 1831.

In this BFW Revisited episode, Episode 133, which was released in May 2017, we met with Patrick Breen, an Associate Professor of History at Providence College. Patrick joined us to investigate Nat Turner’s Revolt with details from his book The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/133

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Denmark Vesey’s failed revolt in 1822 could have been the largest insurrection of enslaved people against their enslavers in United States history. Not only was Vesey’s plan large in scale, but Charleston officials arrested well over one hundred rumored participants.

Jeremy Schipper, a Professor in the departments for the Study or Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto and the author of Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Scripture and Slavery on Trial, joins us to investigate Vesey’s planned rebellion and the different ways Vesey used the Bible and biblical texts to justify his revolt and the violence it would have wrought.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/399

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🎧 Episode 052: Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy

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🎧 Episode 133: Nat Turner’s Rebellion

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🎧 Episode 190: Origins of the American Middle Class

🎧 Episode 226: Making the State of South Carolina

🎧 Episode 384: Making Maine: A Journey to Statehood

🎧 Episode 390: Objects of Revolution

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This week is Thanksgiving week in the United States. On Thursday, most of us will sit down with friends, family, and other loved ones and share a large meal where we give thanks for whatever we’re grateful for over the last year.

In elementary school, we are taught to associate this holiday and its rituals with the religious separatists, or pilgrims, who migrated from England to what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. We are taught that at the end of the fall harvest, the separatists sat down with their Indigenous neighbors to share in the bounty that the Wampanoag people helped them grow by teaching the separatists how to sow and cultivate crops like corn in the coastal soils of New England.

In this BFW Revisited episode, Episode 291, we investigate the arrival of the Mayflower and the Indigenous world the separatists arrived in. We’ll also explore how the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples interacted with their new European neighbors and how they contended with the English people who were determined to settle on their lands.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/291

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🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World
REQUEST A TOPIC
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*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.

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