Ben Franklin's World

On July 1, 1790, Congress passed “An Act for Establishing the temporary and permanent Seat of the Government of the United States.” This act formalized a plan to move the capital of the United States from New York City to Philadelphia, for a period of 10 years, and then from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., where the United States government would make its permanent home.

What buildings did Congress have erected to house the government?

Lindsay Chervinsky works for the White House Historical Association as the White House Historian and she joins us to explore the history of one of the earliest buildings in Washington D.C., the White House.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/265

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
• Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator 
• Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams & Jefferson
• Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress
• Episode 222: Adam Costanzo, The Early History of Washington D.C.
• Episode 256: Christian Koot, Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake

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The Treaty of Paris 1783 ended the American War for Independence, but it did not bring peace to North America. After 1783, warfare and violence continued between Americans and Native Americans. So how did the early United States attempt to create peace for itsnew nation? 

Michael Oberg, a Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York-Geneseo and the author of Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, joins us to investigate how the United States worked with the Haudenosaunee or Six Nations peoples to create peace through the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/264

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 029: Colin Calloway, The Victory With No Name
• Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
• Episode 184: David J. Silverman, Thundersticks
• Episode 179: George Van Cleve, After the Revolution 
• Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region

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• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

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*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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Did you know that imagination once played a key role in the way Americans understood and practiced medicine?

Sari Altschuler, an Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern University and author of The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States, joins us to investigate the ways early American doctors used imagination in their practice and learning of medicine.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/263

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 005: Jeanne Abrams, Revolutionary Medicine
• Episode 116: Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years War
• Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments
• Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Revolt
• Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early Republic
• Episode 251: Cameron Strang, Frontiers of Science

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Helpful Links

*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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History is an important tool when it comes to understanding American law.

History is what the justices of the United States Supreme Court use when they want to ascertain what the framers meant when they drafted the Constitution of 1787 and its first ten amendments in 1789. History is also the tool we use when we want to know how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments have changed over time.


Sarah Seo, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, Fourth Amendment expert, and the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, joins us to investigate how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has changed over time and how that change has impacted the way the Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable search and seizures.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/262 Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man
• Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773
• Episode 160: The Politics of Tea
• Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution
• Episode 259: The Bill of Rights & How Legal Historians Work
• Episode 260: Creating the First Ten Amendments
• Episode 261: Creating the Fourth Amendment

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• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

Helpful Links

*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution doesn’t always make headlines, but it’s an amendment that undergirds foundational rights. It’s also an amendment that can show us a lot about the intertwined nature between history and American law.  


In this 3rd episode of our 4th Doing History series, we explore the early American origins of the Fourth Amendment with Thomas Clancy, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Mississippi School of Law and an expert on the Fourth Amendment.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/261

Series Resources

• Lauren Duval, "Domestic Tranquility: Privacy and the Household in Revolutionary America"
• Joseph Adelman, "Articles of Amendment: Copying "The" Bill of Rights"
• Gautham Rao, Friends in All the Right Places: The Newest Legal History
• Doing History 4 Legal Lexicon; or A Useful List of Terms You Might Not Know" 
• "Doing History 4: Bibliography" 

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
• Episode 145: Rosemarie Zagarri, Mercy Otis Warren
• Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution
• Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment
• Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth
• Episode 259: The Bill of Rights & How Legal Historians Work
• Episode 260: Creating the First Ten Amendments

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• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

Helpful Links

*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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How and why did Congress draft the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution?

In the United States, we use the Constitution and Bill of Rights to understand and define ourselves culturally. Americans are a people with laws and rights that are protected by the Constitution because they are defined in the Constitution. And the place where the Constitution defines and outlines our rights is within its First Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights.

In this second episode of our 4th Doing History series, we’re investigating how and why Congress drafted the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution. Our guide for this investigation is Kenneth Bowling, a member of the First Federal Congress Project and a co-editor of A Documentary History of the First Federal Congress.


Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/260

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute

Production of this episode was made possible by a grant from the Roller-Bottimore Foundation of Richmond, Virginia.

Series Resources

• Joseph Adelman, "Articles of Amendment: Copying "The" Bill of Rights"
• Gautham Rao blog post: Friends in All the Right Places: The Newest Legal History
• Doing History 4 Legal Lexicon; or A Useful List of Terms You Might Not Know" 
• "Doing History 4: Bibliography" 

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
• Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the U  nited States Constitution
• Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution
• Episode 179: George Van Cleve, Governance During the Critical Period
• Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress
• Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights

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• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
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Helpful Links

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Law is all around us. And the basis of American Law comes not only from our early American past, but from our founding documents.

This episode begins our 4th Doing History series. Over the next four episodes, we’ll explore the early American origins of the Bill of Rights as well as the history of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment will serve as our case study so we can see where our rights come from and how they developed from the early American past.

In this episode we go inside the United States National Archives to investigate the Constitution and Bill of Rights. During our visit we’ll speak with Jessie Kratz, First Historian of the National Archives, and Mary Sarah Bilder, the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College, to better understand our founding documents and the laws they established.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/259

About the Series

Law is all around us. The Doing History: Why the 4th? series uses the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment as case studies to examine where our rights come from and how they developed out of early American knowledge and experiences. It also uses the history of the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment to explore the history of law as a field of study and how this field of study differs from other historical subjects and how historians and lawyers use and view the history of the law differently.

The Doing History series explores early American history and how historians work. It is part of Ben Franklin’s World, which is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop

Series Resources

• Gautham Rao blog post: "Friends in All the Right Places: The Newest Legal History"
• Jonathan Gienapp, “Constitutional Originalism and History” 

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 038: Carolyn Harris, Magna Carta & Its Gifts to North America
• Episode 062: Carol Berkin, The Bill of Rights
• Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Revising the Constitutional Convention
• Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution
• Episode 210: Considering John Marshall, Part 1
• Episode 211: Considering John Marshall, Part 2

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• Spotify
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• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

Helpful Links

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The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776 with 12 colonies and one abstention. The delegation from New York abstained from the vote. And Pennsylvania voted in favor of independence because two of its delegates were persuaded not to attend the vote given their opposition.

John Dickinson was one of the two delegates who absented himself from the vote. Later, he would refuse to sign the Declaration of Independence. But why?  


Jane Calvert, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and the Director/Editor of The John Dickinson Writings Project, joins us to explore the life, religion, and political views of John Dickinson. 


Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/258

Listener Meet Up

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 088: Michael McDonnell, The History of History Writing
• Episode 145: Rosemarie Zagarri, Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution
• Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator
• Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution
• Episode 160: The Politics of Tea
• Episode 179: George Van Cleve, Governance During the Critical Period 
• Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment

Listen!

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

Helpful Links

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What was it like to live as a woman of faith in early republic America? What was it like to live as a Catholic in the early United States?

Catherine O’Donnell, an Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University and author of Elizabeth Seton: American Saint, helps us investigate answers to these questions by taking us through the life of the United States’ first saint: Elizabeth Ann Seton.


Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/257

Atlanta Meet Up

• October 12, 4pm at Atkins Park Restaurant. RSVP Here

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Ben Franklin's World Shop
• Babbel.com Try learning a new language for Free!

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelright
• Episode 116: Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years’ War
• Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic
• Episode 209: Considering Biography
• Episode 212: Researching Biography
• Episode 214: Christopher Grasso, Skepticism & American Faith

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• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

Helpful Links

*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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How do empires come to be? How are empires made and who makes them? What role do maps play in making empires?

Christian Koot is a Professor of History at Towson University and the author of A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake. Christian has researched and written two books about the seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch World to better understand empires and how they are made. Today, he joins us to take us through his research and to share what one specific map, Augustine Herrman’s 1673 map Virginia and Maryland, reveals about empire and empire making.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/256

Augustine Herrman’s Map, Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Babbel--Try learning a new language for Free!

Production of this episode was made possible by a grant from the Roller-Bottimore Foundation of Richmond, Virginia.

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 138: Patrick Spero, Frontier Politics in Early America
• Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution 
• Episode 177: Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America
• Episode 186: Max Edelson, The New Map of the British Empire
• Episode 209: Considering Biography
• Episode 242: David Young, A History of Early Delaware
• Episode 250: Virginia, 1619

Listen!

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

Helpful Links

*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices