A Donkey, A Suit, and a Quixote for George Washington
byAt the beginning of March 1777, Arthur Lee, a delegate to the United States Congress, urgently requested to meet with the Marquis de Grimaldi,…
Articles of Confederation
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The Intellectual Origin of the US Constitution Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: An Important Contribution from Maryland
byScholars generally view that the Framers of the United States Constitution “recalled the historical tyrannies of Great Britain and France in establishing the prohibitions…
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John Rutledge: President of South Carolina, 1776–1778
byJohn Rutledge was born into Charleston’s elite in 1739 and by April 1775 had established himself as a defender of English rights in the…
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Partly National, Partly Federal: James Madison, the Amphictyonic Confederacy, and the Republican Balance
byFollowing the Constitutional Convention’s completion of the United States Constitution in the Fall of 1787, many of those involved in its creation embarked on…
2
The Revolutionary Language and Behavior of the Whiskey Rebels
byThe image of a nation united in the aftermath of the American Revolution, content with hard-fought for and hard-won independence, is largely a grade…
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The Colonists’ American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607–1783
byThe Colonists’ American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783, by Guy Chet (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020) To my way of thinking, when we try…
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The Constitutional Convention Debates the Electoral College
byIn the last two decades, the Electoral College has come under harsh, though derivative, criticism as a result of the presidential elections in 2000…
This Week on Dispatches: Christopher Warren on Documents of the American Revolution
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Christopher Warren, historian and Curator of American History in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the…
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Documents of the Revolution: A Continuum of Conviction
byThose familiar with American history know that the Articles of Confederation served as the first constitution of the unified states during the American Revolution….
This Week on Dispatches: Keith Muchowski on Rufus King, Forgotten Founder
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews professor and librarian Keith Muchowski on Rufus King, forgotten founder. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles…
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Fending Chaos: The Early Years of Rufus King, Forgotten Founder
byThere are many ways to reach Jamaica, Queens, via public transit. From Brooklyn or Manhattan one could catch a Queens-bound F Train and remain…
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Impeachment: The Framers Debate and Discuss
byAuthor’s Note: Selections from all resolutions and working drafts are italicized. Most of what we know about the framers’ discussions comes from James Madison’s…
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Isaac Roosevelt: Merchant, Federalist, Banker, New Yorker
byOn Saturday September 17, 1938 New York governor Herbert H. Lehman and 5,000 others assembled in Poughkeepsie to observe the sesquicentennial of the Empire…
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The Constitution Counted Free Women and Children—And It Mattered
byAs adopted by the Constitutional Convention, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution mandated that the population numbers forming the basis for…
The Annapolis Convention of 1786: A Call for a Stronger National Government
bySpeaking at South Carolina’s ratification convention in 1788, Charles Pinckney derided the Articles of Confederation as a “miserable, feeble mockery of government.” Pinckney was…
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Contributor Question: Best Strategic Defeat?
byThis month, we asked our contributors to consider the many changes of fortune that occurred over the tumultuous four decades that transformed thirteen British…
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How Robert Morris’s “Magick” Money Saved the American Revolution
byThe year 1780 ended badly, and the new year boded worse for America’s War of Independence. Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold’s treason and defection to…
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The Constitutional Debate over a Standing National Navy
byThere is a gap in most histories of the United States Navy. The blank space lies between the end of the American Revolution and…
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Who Picked the Committees at the Constitutional Convention?
byThrough four months in the summer of 1787, passionate arguments over political principles filled the Pennsylvania State House while hard-nosed political horse-trading buzzed in…
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The Counterbalance: Explaining James Madison
byThe charge was leveled often in his own time, as it has been ever since: James Madison is and was a hypocrite—a man inconstant…
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George Washington or John Hanson: Who Was the First President?
byPerhaps you’ve seen this mythbuster: “WHO WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? I suspect George Washington was your best guess….
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Coercive Powers Amendment
byOn June 12, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee to prepare a plan of confederation for the young colonies. The articles directed the…
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Tax Day and the Founders
byMyth: The framers were anti-tax, and it is no accident they failed to provide for income taxes in the Constitution. Busted: “No taxation without…