Author: Keith Muchowski

Keith Muchowski is a librarian and professor at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in Brooklyn. He also volunteers with the National Park Service at Federal Hall National Memorial. He blogs at thestrawfoot.com.

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Autobiography and Biography Posted on

Richard Varick in History and Memory: Colonial Lawyer, Continental Officer, Mayor of New York City

The Fourth of July celebration of 1831 was shaping up similarly to the ones Americans had been commemorating for over half a century. A sizable crowd squeezed into the Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building to hear lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key deliver an Independence Day oration. In Boston’s Park Street Church the […]

by Keith Muchowski
Culture Posted on

The Politics and Iconography of Tammany in the Early American Republic

On the morning of Saturday, July 14, 1804 the funeral cortège for Alexander Hamilton proceeded northward to Trinity Church where the former Revolutionary War officer and treasury secretary would be interred. Fittingly there was a substantial turnout; in addition to family, friends and the curious public were members of the Society of the Cincinnati, the […]

by Keith Muchowski
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Constitutional Debate Posted on

Creating Order: Rufus King and the Nascent American Republic

On the afternoon of April 30, 1789, George Washington stepped onto the balcony of the freshly-renovated and renamed Federal Hall on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and took the presidential oath of office. Then, stepping into the Senate chamber, now-President Washington gave his inaugural address. He began plaintively, admitting in his opening line that “Among […]

by Keith Muchowski