Ben Franklin's World

When we think about early American slavery, our minds evoke images of plantations where enslaved men and women were forced to labor in agricultural fields and inside the homes of wealthy Americans.

These images depict the practice of chattel slavery; a practice where early Americans treated slaves as property that they could buy, sell, trade, and use as they would real estate and draught animals.

But, did you know that some early Americans practiced a different type of slavery?

We investigate the practice of Native American or indigenous slavery, a little-known aspect of early American history, with Brett Rushforth, author of Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France.

This episode originally published as Episode 064.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/197

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
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Complementary Episodes

• Episode 021: Eugene Tesdahl, Smuggling in Colonial America & Living History
• Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelright
• Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas
• Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England
• Episode 184: David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

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We live in an age of information. The internet provides us with 24/7 access to all types of information—news, how-to articles, sports scores, entertainment news, and congressional votes.

But what do we do with all of this knowledge? How do we sift through and interpret it all?

We are not the first people to ponder these questions.

Today, Alejandra Dubcovsky, an Associate Professor at University of California Riverside and author of Informed Power: Communication in the Early South, takes us through the early American south and how the Native Americans, Europeans, and enslaved Africans who lived there acquired, used, and traded information.

This episode originally published as Episode 082.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/196

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• BFWorld Newsletter Sign up

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas
• Episode 168: Andrea Smalley, Wild By Nature: Colonists and Animals in North America
• Episode 171: Jessica Stern, Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America
• Episode 178: Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America
• Episode 184: David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

Helpful Show Links

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

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In 1705 a group of colonists in Simsbury, Connecticut founded a copper mine, which the Connecticut General Assembly purchased and turned into a prison in 1773.

How did an old copper mine function as a prison?

Morgan Bengel, a Museum Assistant at the Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine, a Connecticut State Historic Site, helps us investigate both the history of early American mining and the history of early American prisons by taking us on a tour of the Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine in East Granby, Connecticut.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/195

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 079: James Horn, What is a Historical Source? (Colonial Jamestown)
• Episode 080: Jen Manion, Liberty’s Prisoners: Prisons and Prison Life in Early America
• Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances
• Episode 170: Wendy Warren: New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England
• Episode 181: Virginia DeJohn Anderson: The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale and Moses Dunbar

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
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As part of its mission, the National Park Service seeks to protect and preserve places saved by the American people so that all may experience the heritage of the United States. These places include those with historical significance.

Supervisory Park Ranger Garrett Cloer joins us to explore the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site so we can discover more about the Siege of Boston (1775-76) and the birth of the Continental Army and the life and work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/194

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Daniel Livesay, Children of Uncertain Fortune

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 026: Robert Middlekauff, George Washington’s Revolution
• Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773
• Episode 129: John Bell, The Road to Concord
• Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History
• Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers
• Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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In 1959, the Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press published Lester J. Cappon’s The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams. It was the first time that all 380 letters between Jefferson and the Adamses appeared in a single volume.

Why did Lester Cappon and the Omohundro Institute undertake this great project? And how did they put together this important documentary edition?

Karin Wulf, Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, takes us behind-the-scenes of The Adams-Jefferson Letters and its publication.

Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Lester J. Cappon ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters
• Karin Wulf
• Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship and Rivalry of Adams and Jefferson
• Klepp and Wulf ed, The Diary of Hannah Callander
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale
• Charles F. Hobson, Papers of John Marshall
• Louis B. Wright ed., Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia
• National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHCRP)
• Ronald Hoffman and Sally Mason ed., The Carroll Papers (2001)
• Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black
• Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic
• Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs
• Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Two drafters and signers of the Declaration of Independence, two diplomats who served the United States abroad in Europe, and two men who went on to serve as vice president and president of the United States. Both men left indelible marks on American society.

Adams and Jefferson are two founders who captivate the attention of and greatly interest Americans today, so in honor of the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the 192nd anniversary of their deaths, we will explore their lives and relationship.

Barbara Oberg and Sara Georgini, two historians and documentary editors, join us from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson and the Papers of John Adams Documentary Editing Projects so we can explore the lives and relationships of John and Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/193

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Discover the relationship between “Abigail and Tom”
• The Great Courses Plus (Free Trial)

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 007: Sara Georgini, John Adams and The Adams Papers Editorial Project
• Episode 018: Danielle Allen, Our Declaration
• Episode 117: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson
• Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
• Episode 145: Rosemarie Zaggari, Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution
• Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator
• Episode 188: Terri Halperin, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
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The Jersey Devil is a monster legend that originated in New Jersey’s early American past.

How and why did this legend emerge? And, what can it tell us about New Jersey’s past?

Brian Regal, an Associate Professor of History at Kean University and the co-author of The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created A Monster, takes us into New Jersey’s past by taking us through the origins of the New Jersey Devil story.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/192

Meet Ups

• Boston History Camp, July 7
• Boston Meet Up: July 8, 10am Meet at the corner of Park Street and Tremont Street on Boston Common
• Cleveland Meet up at Shooters on the Water July 21, 4pm

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Molly Wash, American Baroque
• Sign up for the Ben Franklin’s World Email List 

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 053: Emerson W. Baker: A Storm of Witchcraft
• Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce: The Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy
• Episode 138: Patrick Spero, Frontier Politics in Early America
• Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution
• Episode 169: Thomas Kidd, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin
• Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and its Culture

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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King Philip’s War is an event that appears over and over again in books about colonial America.

So when you have an event that has been as studied as King Philip’s War has been, is there anything new that we can learn about it by re-examining it in our own time?

Lisa Brooks, an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College believes the answer to this question is “yes.” And today, she’s going to help us re-examine and re-think what we know about King Philip’s War by introducing us to new people, new ways we can look at known historical sources, and to different ways we can think about what we know about this event with details from her book Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/191

Meet Ups

• Boston History Camp, July 7
• Boston Meet Up: July 8, 10am Meet at the corner of Park Street and Tremont Street on Boston Common

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Great Courses Plus (Free Trial)

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 053: Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft
• Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Europeans and Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast
• Episode 181: Virginia DeJohn Anderson, The Martyr and the Traitor
• Episode 184: David Silverman, Thundersticks
• Episode 189: Sam White, The Little Ice Age

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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As many as 70 percent of Americans consider themselves to be members of the middle class. But if you consider income as a qualifier for membership, only about 50 percent of Americans qualify for membership.

So what does it meant to be middle class and why do so many Americans want to be members of it?

Jennifer Goloboy, an independent scholar based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the author of Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era, helps us explore the origins of the American middle class so we can better understand what it is and why so many Americans want to be a part of it.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/190

Meet Ups

• Boston History Camp, July 7
• Boston Meet Up: July 8, 10am Meet at the corner of Park Street and Tremont Street on Boston Common

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792
• Join the BFWorld listener community on Facebook

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 012: Dane Morrison, True Yankees: The South Seas & the Discovery of American Identity
• Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man
• Episode 126: Rebecca Brannon, The Reintegration of American Loyalists
• Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Revolt
• Episode 159: The Revolutionary Economy
• Episode 161: Smuggling in the American Revolution

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

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We’re living in a period of climate change. Our Earth has been getting warmer since the mid-19th century.

So how will humans adapt to and endure this period of global warming? Will they adapt to it and endure?

It turns out the people of early America also lived through a period of climate change and their experiences may hold some answers for us.

Sam White, an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University and author of A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter, joins us to explore the Little Ice Age and how it impacted initial European exploration and colonization of North America.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/189

Meet Ups

• Boston History Camp
• Boston Meet Up: July 8, 10am Meet at the corner of Park Street and Tremont Street on Boston Common

Episode 200

• Tell Liz what would you like to know about early American history?

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Great Courses Plus (Free Trial)

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 015: Joyce Chaplin, Round About the Earth
• Episode 049: Malcolm Gaskill, How the English Became America
• Episode 079: James Horn, What Are Historical Sources (Colonial Jamestown)
• Episode 116: Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years’ War
• Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

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

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