Ben Franklin's World

The Alien and Sedition Acts consisted of four laws enacted by the United States government in 1798. The United States passed these laws during a time of great uncertainty, a time when many Americans feared for the very survival for their nation.

But why did Americans fear for the United States’ existence and why did they think four laws that limited citizenship and freedom of speech would protect and secure their young republic?

Terri Halperin, an instructor at the University of Richmond and author of The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution, will help us find answers to these questions by taking us through the Alien and Sedition Acts and how they came to be.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/188

Send Liz your questions about early American history for Episode 200!

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Complementary Episodes

• Episode 007: John Adams and the Adams Papers Documentary Editing Project
• Episode 017: François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French
• Episode 052: Ronald Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy
• Episode 076: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution
• Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions
• Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans

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Our present-day American culture is obsessed with sports. To cite just two pieces of evidence of this, on average, more than 67,000 fans attend each National Football League game and more than 30,000 fans attend each Major League Baseball game. This is to say nothing of the millions of fans who watch these sports on television or listen to them on the radio.

When did America become a place filled with sports nuts? When did the business of professional sports become a thing in the United States?

Early American history has answers for us as does Kenneth Cohen, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the author of They Will Their Game: Sporting Culture and the Making of the American Republic.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/187

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Complementary Episodes

• Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce: The Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy
• Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America
• Episode 140: Tamara Thornton, Nathaniel Bowditch: 19th-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea
• Episode 144: Robert Parkinson, The Common Cause of the American Revolution

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As a result of Great Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War, British North America expanded so that it stretched from the Atlantic seaboard west to the Mississippi River and from Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence south to Florida. Plus, it also included islands in the Caribbean.

How exactly would Great Britain, centered on a small island over 3,000 miles away, govern this new, expanded North American empire?

Max Edelson, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence, helps us explore this question by taking us on an investigation of the Board of Trade and its General Survey of North America.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/186

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Complementary Episodes

• Bonus: Mapping America’s War for Independence
• Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution
• Episode 152: Origins of the American Revolution
• Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World: The British Empire and the American Revolution
• Episode 177: Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America

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Who should determine our culture and the morals our society follows?

Culture, or the intellectual achievements, attitudes, and behaviors of our particular places and social groups, is all around us. It impacts how we think and act as members of families, local communities, states, and nations.

Culture is important. So how do we establish culture? Who sets the unwritten social rules and ideas that we adopt and live by?

Joyce Goodfriend, a professor of history at the University of Denver and author of Who Should Rule at Home? Confronting the Elite in British New York City, helps us investigate these questions by taking us through the history of early New York City and how its culture evolved between 1664 and 1776.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/185

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• Episode 009: Peter G. Rose, How the Dutch Brought Us Santa, Presents, and Treats
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• Episode 182: Douglas Winiarski, The Great Awakening in New England

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Early North America was a place rife with violent conflict. Between the 17th and 19th centuries we see a lot of conflict between different Native American peoples, Native American peoples and colonists, colonists from one empire versus colonists from another empire, settlers from one state quarreling with settlers from another state, and in the 19th century, we also see strife between Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans.

Today, we’re going to explore some of the causes of the violent conflict that took place in early America by looking specifically at Native America and the ways Native Americans used guns to shape their lives and the course of North American colonial and indigenous history.

Our guide for this exploration is David J. Silverman, a professor of history at George Washington University and the author of Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/184

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Complementary Episodes

• Episode 064: Brett Rushforth: Native American Slavery in New France
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• Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America
• Episode 171: Jessica Stern, Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America

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George Washington played three very important public roles during his lifetime. He served as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and as the first President of the United States.

In addition to these important public roles, Washington also played a role that was very important to him. He served as a farmer and agricultural innovator.

Douglas Bradburn, the CEO and President of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, joins us so we can explore the history of Washington’s storied estate and his agricultural practices. Plus, we’ll also discover all that Mount Vernon has to offer us as a historic site.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/183

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• Episode 033: Douglas Bradburn, George Washington & His Library
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• Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave Ona Judge

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What was it like to live through an extraordinary time?

The 1740s and 1750s proved to be an extraordinary time for many ordinary New Englanders. It was a period when itinerant preachers swept through the region and asked its people to question the fundamental assumptions of their religion: What did it mean to be a Puritan? What did it mean to be a Protestant Christian?

Douglas Winiarski, a Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and the author of the Bancroft prize-winning book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England, helps us explore the religious landscape of New England during the 18th century and how New Englanders answered these powerful questions during the extraordinary period known as the Great Awakening.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/182

Listener Meet up

• Las Vegas Meet up: Saturday April 21, 4pm, Wyndham Grand Desert Hotel Lobby

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Why did early Americans choose to become patriots or loyalists during the American Revolution?

How did they make the decision to either stand with or against their neighbors?

Did political beliefs really drive them to support one side of the imperial conflict over the other?

In this episode, we explore answers to these questions about how and why Americans chose to support the sides they did during the American Revolution, by looking at the lives of two young soldiers from Connecticut: Moses Dunbar and Nathan Hale.

Taking us through the lives, politics, and decisions of these young men is Virginia DeJohn Anderson, a professor of history at the University of Colorado-Boulder and author of The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/181

Listener Meet ups

• Sacramento Meet up: Saturday April 14, 4pm, Firestone Public House

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• Bonus: J.L. Bell, The Boston Stamp Act Riots
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The legacy of Alexander Hamilton tells us that he was Thomas Jefferson’s political rival, a man who fought to secure strong powers for the national government, and the first Secretary of the Treasury.

What Hamilton’s legacy doesn’t tell us is that he also fought for states rights and championed civil liberties for all Americans, even those Americans who had supported the British during the American Revolution.

Kate Elizabeth Brown, an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Huntington University in Indiana and author of Alexander Hamilton and the Development of American Law, joins us to explore more about the Alexander Hamilton we don’t know, the Hamilton who helped develop American law.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/180

Listener Meet ups

• Sacramento Meet up: Saturday April 14, 4pm, Firestone Public House

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
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Complementary Episodes

• Episode 057: Max Edling, War, Money, and the American State
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• Episode 179: George Van Cleve, The Articles of Confederation

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Douglas Winiarski answers your questions about religion in early New England with details from his book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England.

Darkness Falls on the Land of Light is the story of how ordinary New Englanders living through extraordinary times ended up giving birth to today’s evangelical movement. Doug performed a close reading of letters, diaries, and testimonies to write this book and his outstanding scholarship in this book was recognized with a 2018 Bancroft Prize.

Download the FREE OI Reader app for Bonus Content and Sample Chapters from Darkness Falls on the Land of Light

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
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