BOOK REVIEW: When the Declaration of Independence Was News by Emily Sneff. (Oxford University Press, 2026) $29.99 hardcover Most accounts of the Declaration of Independence focus on the events leading up to the pivotal July 2, 1776, vote on independence. Taking a different tack, historian Emily Sneff, in a book based on her Ph.D. thesis, […]
Although some readers may be familiar with the Civil War’s Invalid Corps, which wrought value and service from even grievously wounded men during that conflict, few probably know that America’s first such organization appeared during the Revolutionary War. Like its later counterpart, Washington’s Corps of Invalids provided the nation valuable service and roles for men […]
On a brisk day in February of 1786, John Adams stepped into the home of Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, the envoy from the Barbary State of Tripoli. Adams spent much of his political and diplomatic career being taken as a nobody, described by his former friend turned political enemy Jonathan Sewall as having, “none of the […]
BOOK REVIEW: One Nation Under Law: The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence by Carlton F.W. Larson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026. $33.00 paperback) Carlton F.W. Larson’s monograph One Nation Under Law: The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence published by Cambridge University Press, discusses the origins of the Declaration of Independence. Through looking at […]
When Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris in 1784, he carried with him the ideals of the American Revolution. Buoyed by the success of a revolution against the British empire, the soon-to-be appointed Minister to France found himself attempting to reconcile Republican principles with the complex political realities of Paris. It marked an intriguing reversal for […]
After two hundred and fifty years, there couldn’t possibly be any more stories hiding away in the Declaration of Independence, right? The shelves groan with the collective weight of all the books written about it, not to mention the untold gallons of ink expended by social commentators, historians, political scientists, cultural critics, activists, radicals, and […]