David Otersen is a history enthusiast with a particular interest in Constitutional Law. He studied at the University of Maryland, where he majored in Government and Politics and earned Dean’s List distinctions.
History is frequently more complicated than it initially appears, and accordingly, it may be surprising to discover that when George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States, he was constitutionally ineligible for office. Similarly, when John Adams became the first Vice President nine days earlier, he too was constitutionally ineligible for […]
Algernon Sidney was a seventeenth-century British political theorist, Member of Parliament, and Whig politician who was executed for treason on December 7, 1683, during the reign of Charles II. At his trial, the most incriminating evidence presented by the prosecution was a series of anti-monarchical passages from a seized manuscript of Sidney’s reformist treatise, Discourses […]
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared America’s Independence from the British Empire. Approximately five years later, on March 1, 1781, Congress recorded Maryland’s procrastinated ratification of the Articles of Confederation and concomitantly gave them legal effect. The Articles of Confederation are generally regarded as America’s first Constitution, though in many respects they […]
Clemson University Professor C. Bradley Thompson is a nationally recognized historian and Revolutionary Era scholar whose most recent book, America’s Revolutionary Mind, has earned copious praise and widespread acclaim. It is well-deserved. Nevertheless, Professor Thompson’s work is not without flaws as it renews, unnecessarily, the erroneous and ahistorical argument that God, as referenced in the […]
On November 21, 1789, the people of the state of North Carolina ratified the United States Constitution. On May 29, 1790, the people of the State of Rhode Island also ratified the U.S. Constitution. Yet, despite the good-faith acts of these two states and their citizens, the respective admission into the United States of both […]
