Showing titles in Colonial Period

The dramatic and tragic story of the only successful Native American uprising against the Spanish, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

In Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world.

George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart. In George Washington's Final Battle, Robert P. Watson brings this tale to life, telling how the country's first president tirelessly advocated for a capital on the shores of the Potomac.

In The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution, Dan Robinson presents a new history of politics in colonial America and the imperial crisis, tracing how ideas of Europe and Europeanness shaped British-American political culture. Reconstructing colonial debates about the European states system, European civilization, and Britain's position within both, Robinson shows how these concerns informed colonial attitudes towards American identity and America's place inside - and, ultimately, outside - the emerging British Empire.

One of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists, and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of 30 and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker.

Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.

Lorne Greene is best known to TV fans as Ben Cartwright in Bonanza and Commander Adama in the original series of Battlestar Galactica. The Colonial Keystone: Pennsylvania was released as the biccentennial LP in 1976. This is the digital release of this full-cast audio drama with sound effects. This release is endorsed by the Lorne Greene Estate

On a sun-kissed island in the West Indies, a young boy named Alexander Hamilton began a most unlikely journey in the 1750s. His meteoric rise from Caribbean obscurity to American founder has long captivated historians and, more recently, Broadway audiences. Yet one crucial aspect of Hamilton's life has remained submerged for centuries: the weight of the evidence suggests that he was in fact Jewish. Drawing on untapped sources in the West Indies, Professor Porwancher makes the case for Hamilton's Jewish ancestry and explores his ongoing relationships with Jews throughout his lifetime.

This talk puts to rest another of the remarkable myths of the American Revolution: that it was an all-male affair. An 8-year home front war and American women didn't notice it? In fact, the politicization of women in the 1760s and 1770s is one of the most striking consequences of the rebellion against British rule. Women made the boycotts of British imports work. They picketed merchants who dared to sell British cloth and tea. They produced homespun or Liberty cloth as they called it - willingly engaging in the single most boring task known to colonial America.

The American presidency is the most powerful political office in the world. Surprisingly, most contemporary presidents have found themselves severely constrained in their ability to pursue their chosen agendas for domestic and foreign policy change. This lecture will explain why, focusing on the nature of government bureaucracy, the range of American challenges and commitments, and the development of the modern media.

The English settlement at Plymouth has usually been seen in isolation. Indeed, the colonists gain our admiration in part because we envision them arriving on a desolate, frozen shore, far from assistance and forced to endure a deadly first winter alone. Yet Plymouth was, from its first year, a place connected to other places. Going beyond the tales we learned from schoolbooks, Carla Gardina Pestana offers an illuminating account of life in Plymouth Plantation.

During the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling 60 tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some 300 miles south and east over frozen, often treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army.

In this harrowing narrative first published in 1682, the author tells the story of her capture and being held for ransom after an attack by Native Americans during an attack on Lancaster in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

American History, Volume 1 surveys the broad sweep of American history from the first Native American societies to the end of the Reconstruction period, following the Civil War. Drawing on a deep range of research and years of classroom teaching experience, Thomas S. Kidd offers students an engaging overview of the first half of American history. The volume features illuminating stories of people from well known presidents and generals, to lesser-known men and women who struggled under slavery and other forms of oppression to make their place in American life.

Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin—the thrifty inventor-statesman of the Revolutionary era—but not about his love life. Poor Richard’s Women reveals the neglected voices of the women Ben loved and lost during his lifelong struggle between passion and prudence. The most prominent among them was Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for 44 years. Long dismissed by historians, she was an independent, politically savvy woman and devoted wife who raised their children, managed his finances, and fought off angry mobs at gunpoint while he traipsed about England.

Of Plymouth Plantation is a journal written by William Bradford, leader of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, between 1630 and 1651. Bradford’s journal is regarded as the most authoritative account of the Pilgrims and the early years of the colony which they founded. It gives an account of the Pilgrims from 1608 when they settled in the Dutch Republic through the 1620 Mayflower voyage to North America, until the year 1647. Bradford did not write with publication in mind, so his entries are candid and colorful.

An accusation of attempted murder rudely interrupted Mary Arnold’s dalliances with working men and her extensive shopping sprees. When her husband Benedict fell deathly ill and then asserted she had tried to kill him with poison, the result was a dramatic petition for divorce. The case before the Rhode Island General Assembly and its tumultuous aftermath, during which Benedict died, made Mary a cause célèbre in Newport through the winter of 1738 and 1739. Elaine Forman Crane invites listeners into this salacious domestic life and reveals the seamy side of colonial Newport.

On Sunday, September 9, 1739, 20 Kongolese slaves armed themselves by breaking into a storehouse near the Stono River south of Charleston, South Carolina. They killed 23 white colonists, joined forces with other slaves, and marched toward Spanish Florida. There they expected to find freedom. One report claims the rebels were overheard shouting, "Liberty!" Before the day ended, however, the rebellion was crushed, and afterwards many surviving rebels were executed.

The American Indian Wars, a series of conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans which took place in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, were complex, brutal, and many. An official United States Census report published in 1898 noted at least 40 wars which had taken place in the previous 100 years. The total number of individual wars probably numbers well over 100, though many were localized and on a very small scale.

By the time the United States came into existence, wagons were a tried-and-true method of transportation. Driven by oxen, horses, or mules, wagons and stagecoaches allowed people to traverse long distances much faster than walking. Although this form of travel remained relatively slow and perilous, the journey was often considered worth the risk.