Podcasts by 301 Moved Permanently

149 The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America with J.D. Dickey from 2022-03-11T21:00:19

The 1830s were the most violent time in American history outside of war. Men battled each other in the streets in ethnic and religious conflicts, gangs of party henchmen rioted at the ballot box, a...

148 William Hunter, A British Soldier's Son Who Became an Early American with Eugene A. Procknow from 2022-03-04T13:39:17

In June 1798, President John Adams signed the now infamous Alien & Sedition Acts to suppress political dissent. Facing imminent personal risks, a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor ran the first edito...

147 John Leland: A Jeffersonian Baptist in Early America with Eric C. Smith from 2022-02-11T16:53:43

John Leland (1754-1841) was one of the most influential and entertaining religious figures in early America. As an itinerant revivalist, he demonstrated an uncanny ability to connect with a popular...

146 The Evolution of American Equality with Michael A. Bellesiles from 2022-02-04T21:34:51

The evolution of the battle for true equality in America seen through the men, ideas, and politics behind the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed at the end of the Civil War.

On July...

145 Cronyism in Early America with Patrick Newman from 2021-12-17T14:45:48

Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in America 1607-1849 describes the evolution of political favor seeking in early American history, from the colonial era to the Mexican War. Newman argues that cronyi...

144 The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party with Yonatan Eyal from 2021-12-10T18:24:49

The phrase 'Young America' connoted territorial and commercial expansion in the antebellum United States. During the years leading up to the Civil War, it permeated various parts of the Democratic ...

143 The Bible, the Constitution, and Historical Consciousness in Antebellum America with Jordan T. Watkins from 2021-11-19T16:29:50

In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political deba...

142 Free People of Color in the South with Warren E. Milteer Jr. from 2021-11-12T15:53:43

On the eve of the Civil War, most people of color in the United States toiled in bondage. Yet nearly half a million of these individuals, including over 250,000 in the South, were free. In Beyond S...

141 Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery with Ken Ellingwood from 2021-09-24T11:53:36

The history of the fight for free press has never been more vital in our own time, when journalists are targeted as “enemies of the people.” In this brilliant and rigorously researched history, awa...

140 Constitutionalism in the American Revolution with Gordon S. Wood from 2021-09-10T14:02:17

The half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative er...

139 Israelite Indians and Religious Nationalism in Early America with Matthew W. Dougherty from 2021-08-27T12:35:25

The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled “lost tribes of Israel”—Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE—took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in th...

138 Sarah Josepha Hale and the Making of the Modern American Woman with Melanie Kirkpatrick from 2021-08-23T12:38:44

For half a century Sarah Josepha Hale was the most influential woman in America. As editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, Hale was the leading cultural arbiter for the growing nation. Women (and many men)...

137 Identities of Sexual Restraint in Early America with Kara M. French from 2021-08-13T12:40:21

How much sex should a person have? With whom? What do we make of people who choose not to have sex at all? As present as these questions are today, they were subjects of intense debate in the early...

136 C-SPAN's Presidential Historians Survey with Thomas Balcerski from 2021-08-07T00:29:37

When C-SPAN conducted our first Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership in 2000, we worked with a team of nationally recognized historians to establish the survey's framework: Douglas Brinkley...

135 The Science of Abolition with Eric Herschthal from 2021-06-18T13:28:42

In the context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders’ scientific justifications of racism. But abolitionists were equally adept at using scientific ideas to discredit slavehol...

134 Nativists, Catholics, and Citizen-Soldiers in the Philadelphia 1844 Riots with Zachary M. Schrag from 2021-06-11T13:16:56

America is in a state of deep unrest, grappling with xenophobia, racial, and ethnic tension a national scale that feels singular to our time. But it also echoes the earliest anti-immigrant sentime...

133 Joseph Smith for President in the Election of 1844 with Spencer W. McBride from 2021-05-28T20:14:51

By the election year of 1844, Joseph Smith, the controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had amassed a national following of some 25,000 believers. Nearly half of t...

132 American Republics, A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 with Alan Taylor from 2021-05-21T12:32:18

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent.

In this beautifully written history of America’s formative per...

131 The War of 1812 in the West with David Kirkpatrick from 2021-05-14T12:18:11

The spring of 1812 found the young American republic on edge. The British Navy was impressing American seamen with impunity at an alarming rate while vicious attacks on frontier settlements by Amer...

130 Earthquakes, Prophecy, and the Remaking of Early America with Jonathan Todd Hancock from 2021-05-07T12:36:32

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–12 were the strongest temblors in the North American interior in at least the past five centuries. From the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast and from the Great ...

129 How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America with Joshua D. Rothman from 2021-04-30T13:22:17

Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men—who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South—were ess...

128 America's First Civil Rights Movement with Kate Masur from 2021-04-23T18:47:53

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settlin...

127 John C. Fremont and the Violent Election Of 1856 with John Bicknell from 2021-04-16T12:39:16

The 1856 presidential race was the most violent peacetime election in American history. War between proslavery and antislavery settlers raged in Kansas; a congressman shot an Irish immigrant at a W...

126 The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion with Jack N. Rakove from 2021-04-09T14:41:04

Today, Americans believe that the early colonists came to the New World in search of religious liberty. What we often forget is that they wanted religious liberty for themselves, not for those who ...

125 The Reverse Underground Railroad Toward Slavery with Richard Bell from 2021-03-26T13:01:37

Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and...

124 Abraham Lincoln and the Anti-Slavery Constitution with James Oakes from 2021-03-19T12:25:33

The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’...

123 The Disillusionment of America's Founders with Dennis C. Rasmussen from 2021-03-12T14:10:02

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 thems...

123 Broken Hearts, Lost Souls, and Sexual Tumult in Nineteenth-Century America with Christine Leigh Heyrman from 2021-03-05T13:45:47

From the winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize in History, a lost episode rediscovered after almost two hundred years; a thwarted love triangle of heartbreak–two men and a woma...

122 John C. Calhoun, American Heretic with Robert Elder from 2021-02-26T13:56:42

John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. ...

121 Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Brothers who Defied a Nation with Peter Cozzens from 2021-02-19T14:03:13

The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pa...

120 Politics and Memory in the American Revolution with Michael D. Hattem from 2021-02-12T14:59:19

In Past and Prologue, Michael Hattem shows how colonists’ changing understandings of their British and colonial histories shaped the politics of the American Revolution and the origins of American ...

119 The Unmanifest Future of the Jacksonian United States with Thomas Richards Jr. from 2021-02-05T15:23:46

Most Americans know that the state of Texas was once the Republic of Texas―an independent sovereign state that existed from 1836 until its annexation by the United States in 1846. But few are aware...

118 The True-Crime Story of Amelia Norman in Old New York with Julie Miller from 2021-01-29T15:41:32

In Cry of Murder on Broadway, Julie Miller shows how a woman's desperate attempt at murder came to momentarily embody the anger and anxiety felt by many people at a time of economic and social uphe...

117 Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse with Christopher James Blythe from 2021-01-22T20:28:08

The relationship between early Mormons and the United States was marked by anxiety and hostility, heightened over the course of the nineteenth century by the assassination of Mormon leaders, the Sa...

116 George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution with Lindsay M. Chervinsky from 2021-01-08T13:48:56

The US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet―the delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected the idea. So how did George Washington create one of the most powerfu...

115 Political Dissent and the Making of the American Presidency with Nathaniel C. Green from 2020-11-20T15:17:24

Donald Trump’s election has forced the United States to reckon with not only the political power of the presidency, but also how he and his supporters have used the office to advance their shared v...

114 The Jefferson Bible with Peter Manseau from 2020-11-06T12:33:22

In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, J...

113 The Whigs' America with Joseph W. Pearson from 2020-10-30T13:15:11

[Warning: There was some corruption of the audio file and some parts of the interview are missing].
Passionate political disagreement is as old as the American Republic, and the antebellum era...

112 Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy with Michael E. Woods from 2020-10-23T13:38:15

As the sectional crisis gripped the United States, the rancor increasingly spread to the halls of Congress. Preston Brooks's frenzied assault on Charles Sumner was perhaps the most notorious eviden...

111 America’s First Abolition Movement with Paul J. Polgar from 2020-10-16T12:56:33

Paul Polgar recovers the racially inclusive vision of America's first abolition movement. In showcasing the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the New York Manumission Society, and t...

110 Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 with Kyle B. Roberts from 2020-08-28T14:50:16

At first glance, evangelical and Gotham seem like an odd pair. What does a movement of pious converts and reformers have to do with a city notoriously full of temptation and sin? More than you migh...

109 The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation with Richard J. Ellis from 2020-08-21T15:01

Usually remembered for its slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” the election of 1840 is also the first presidential election of which it might be truly said, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Tackling a ...

108 The Life of John Tyler, the President Without a Party with Christopher J. Leahy from 2020-08-14T14:39:15

Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation’s least effective heads of state. In President without a Party―the first full­-scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty year...

107 The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic with Joshua R. Greenberg from 2020-08-07T14:38:31

Before Civil War greenbacks and a national bank network established a uniform federal currency in the United States, the proliferation of loosely regulated banks saturated the early American republ...

106 Merrill D. Peterson's The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (1988) with James Bradley (History of History 20) from 2020-07-31T14:42:17

Enormously powerful, intensely ambitious, the very personifications of their respective regions--Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun represented the foremost statemen of their age. In t...

105 Tariff Wars and the Politics of Jacksonian America with William K. Bolt from 2020-07-24T15:57:43

Before the Civil War, the American people did not have to worry about a federal tax collector coming to their door. The reason why was the tariff, taxing foreign goods and imports on arrival in the...

104 Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic with James S. Kabala from 2020-07-17T16:33:05

Americans of the Early Republic devoted close attention to the question of what should be the proper relationship between church and state. This issue engaged participants from all religions, denom...

103 White Women as Slave Owners in the American South with Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers from 2020-07-10T14:18:32

Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rog...

102 European Nationalist Movements and the Creation of the Confederacy with Ann L. Tucker from 2020-06-26T14:16:42

From the earliest stirrings of southern nationalism to the defeat of the Confederacy, analysis of European nationalist movements played a critical role in how southerners thought about their new so...

101 Christine Stansell's City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (1986) with Anne Twitty (History of History 19) from 2020-05-29T14:48:26

Before the Civil War, a new idea of womanhood took shape in America in general and in the Northeast in particular. Women of the propertied classes assumed the mantle of moral guardians of their fam...

100 Andrew Jackson and His Papers with Daniel Feller from 2020-05-22T15:03:39

Andrew Jackson was of one of the most critical and controversial figures in American history. The dominant actor on the American scene in the half-century between Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Linc...

099 The Battle of New Orleans and the Rebirth of America with William C. Davis from 2020-05-15T14:19:16

From master historian William C. Davis, the definitive story of the Battle of New Orleans, the fight that decided the ultimate fate not only of the War of 1812 but the future course of the fledglin...

098 Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era with Jonathan Gienapp from 2020-05-08T14:02:20

A stunning revision of our founding document’s evolving history that forces us to confront anew the question that animated the founders so long ago: What is our Constitution?
Americans widel...

COVID-19, Book Recommendations, Fashion Advice, and Ask Us Anything with Craig Bruce Smith from 2020-03-20T18:38:29

097 The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King with Thomas J. Balcerski from 2020-03-13T18:23:34

The friendship of the bachelor politicians James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania and William Rufus King (1786-1853) of Alabama has excited much speculation through the years. Why did neither m...

096 The Mormon Kingdom of Nauvoo with Benjamin E. Park from 2020-02-28T15:43:37

Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, treated as fringe cultists at best or marginalized as polygamists unworthy of serious examination at worst. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, the...

095 Jackson, Harrison, and Taylor using Indian-Killing for Political Gain with Barbara Alice Mann from 2020-02-21T18:44:17

President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain pulls back the curtain of "expansionism," revealing how Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor massacred Indians to "ope...

094 The Influence of European Separatists on Southern Secession with Niels Eichhorn from 2020-02-14T14:00:34

In Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War, Niels Eichhorn examines the language of slavery, a component he considers central to revolutionary stru...

093 Thomas Jefferson's Education and the Founding of the University of Virginia with Alan Taylor from 2020-02-07T12:48:54

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a brilliant, absorbing study of Thomas Jefferson’s campaign to save Virginia through education.

By turns entertaining and tragic, this beaut...

092 Polygamy in Early American History with Sarah M. S. Pearsall from 2020-01-31T15:33:45

Today we tend to think of polygamy as an unnatural marital arrangement characteristic of fringe sects or uncivilized peoples. Historian Sarah Pearsall shows us that polygamy’s surprising history en...

091 Jefferson Davis and the Pro-Bonaparte Democrats with Jeffrey Zvengrowski from 2020-01-24T13:12:51

In this highly original study of Confederate ideology and politics, Jeffrey Zvengrowski suggests that Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his supporters saw Bonapartist France as a model for ...

090 Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974) with Phillip W. Magness from 2020-01-17T15:30:44

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974) is a book by the economists Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Asserting that slavery was an economically viable institution tha...

089 America's Revolutionary Mind with C. Bradley Thompson from 2019-12-20T11:55:54

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of ...

088 George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution with David Head from 2019-12-13T17:08:07

In the war’s waning days, the American Revolution neared collapse when Washington’s senior officers were rumored to approach the edge of mutiny.

After the British surrender at Yorktown, ...

087 The Influence of Christianity at the Founding and in the Early Republic with Mark David Hall from 2019-12-06T16:22:34

Many Americans have been taught a distorted, inaccurate account of our nation’s founding, one that claims that the founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and tha...

086 The Panic of 1819, The First Great Depression with Andrew H. Browning from 2019-11-29T16:49:54

The Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic...

085 Antebellum American Messiahs with Adam Morris from 2019-11-01T15:48:11

Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooke...

084 A Religious History of the Mexican-American War with John C. Pinheiro from 2019-10-18T16:01:55

The term "Manifest Destiny" has traditionally been linked to U.S. westward expansion in the nineteenth century, the desire to spread republican government, and racialist theories like Anglo-Saxonis...

083 The Battle of Negro Fort with Matthew J. Clavin from 2019-10-11T09:21:57

In the aftermath of the War of 1812, Major General Andrew Jackson ordered a joint United States army-navy expedition into Spanish Florida to destroy a free and independent community of fugitive sla...

082 'Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (2000)' Reloaded with Michael A. Bellesiles from 2019-08-22T13:56:06

In 1996 Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, published an article in the Journal of American History: “The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865.” His provocative argument was...

081 Michael A. Bellesiles' Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (2000) with Joyce Lee Malcolm (History of History 17) from 2019-08-16T20:23:17

In 1996 Emory University's Michael A. Bellesiles, published an article in the Journal of American History: "The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865." His provocative argument was...

080 Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas with Jeffrey Ostler from 2019-08-02T12:08:02

The first part of a sweeping two-volume history of the devastation brought to bear on Indian nations by U.S. expansion.

In this book, the first part of a sweeping two-volume history, Jef...

079 The Bank War and the Partisan Press with Stephen W. Campbell from 2019-06-28T15:18:11

President Andrew Jackson’s conflict with the Second Bank of the United States was one of the most consequential political struggles in the early nineteenth century. A fight over the bank’s reauthor...

078 The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality with Nancy Isenberg&Andrew Burstein from 2019-06-21T13:07:19

John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not se...

077 The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the Early Republic with Steven Waldman from 2019-06-07T11:54:53

Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom offers a dramatic, sweeping survey of how America built a unique model of religious freedom, perhaps the nation’s ...

076 Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism with Joshua A. Lynn from 2019-05-31T16:14:22

In Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism, Joshua Lynn reveals how the national Democratic Party rebranded majoritarian dem...

075 The Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America with Cassandra L. Yacovazzi from 2019-05-24T14:47:40

Just five weeks after its publication in January 1836, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, billed as an escaped nun's shocking exposé of convent life, had already sold more than 20,000 cop...

074 The Age of Jackson within American History with Thomas S. Kidd from 2019-05-17T14:38:01

American History, Volume 1: 1492-1877 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 ...

073 Nathan O. Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity with Michael J. Altman (History of History 16) from 2019-05-03T14:35:55

In this prize-winning book Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, arguing that during this period American Christianit...

072 The Religious Lives of the Adams Family with Sara Georgini from 2019-04-26T14:18:04

Reflecting on his past, President John Adams mused that it was religion that had shaped his family's fortunes and young America's future. For the nineteenth century's first family, the Adamses of M...

071 Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic with Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan from 2019-04-19T18:17:18

Vagrants. Vagabonds. Hoboes. Identified by myriad names, the homeless and geographically mobile have been with us since the earliest periods of recorded history. In the early days of the United Sta...

070 Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania with Erica Rhodes Hayden from 2019-04-05T13:23:04

Troublesome Women: Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of ...

069 Paul E. Johnson's A Shopkeeper's Millennium with Chris Babits (History of History 15) from 2019-03-29T15:23:39

A quarter-century after its first publication, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 remains a landmark work--brilliant both as a new interpretation of t...

068 The World of First Lady Sarah Polk with Amy S. Greenberg from 2019-03-22T14:16:40

While the Woman's Rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman in Washington, D.C. Yet, while history...

067 Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy with Daniel Peart from 2019-03-15T13:40:39

Since the 2008 global economic crisis, historians have embraced the challenge of making visible the invisible hand of the market. This renewed interest in the politics of political economy makes it...

066 Francis J. Grund's Aristocracy in America with Armin Mattes from 2019-03-08T13:44:32

In Jacksonian America, as Grund exposes, the wealthy inhabitants of northern cities and the plantation South may have been willing to accept their poorer neighbors as political and legal peers, but...

065 Drew R. McCoy's The Last of the Fathers with Aaron N. Coleman (History of History 14) from 2019-03-01T15:09:28

James Madison survived longer than any other member of the most remarkable generation of political leaders in American history. Born in the middle of the eighteenth century as a subject of King Geo...

064 James Monroe, A Republican Champion with Brook Poston from 2019-02-25T16:39:41

Despite serving his country for 50 years and being among the most qualified men to hold the office of president, James Monroe is an oft-forgotten Founding Father. In this book, Brook Poston reveals...

063 Mesmerism in the Early United States with Emily Ogden from 2019-02-15T14:48:16

From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. S...

062 Heirs of the Founders: Henry Clay, John Calhoun, a​​nd Daniel Webster with H.W. Brands from 2019-02-08T17:47:54

In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusett...

061 Founding First Ladies and Slaves with Marie Jenkins Schwartz from 2019-02-01T13:54:11

Behind every great man stands a great woman. And behind that great woman stands a slave. Or so it was in the households of the Founding Fathers from Virginia, where slaves worked and suffered throu...

060 Murray N. Rothbard's The Panic of 1819 [1962] with Patrick Newman (History of History 13) from 2019-01-25T15:49:39

The panic of 1819 was America's first great economic crisis. And this is Murray Rothbard's masterful account, the first full scholarly book on the topic and still the most definitive. It was his di...

059 Henry Clay, The Man Who Would Be President with James C. Klotter from 2019-01-18T14:23:39

Charismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay seemed to have it all. He offered a comprehensive plan of change for America, and he directed national affairs as Speaker o...

058 Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson with Mark R. Cheathem from 2019-01-11T15:17:37

After the "corrupt bargain" that awarded John Quincy Adams the presidency in 1825, American politics underwent a fundamental shift from deference to participation. This changing tide eventually pro...

057 The Rise of Andrew Jackson with David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler from 2018-12-21T14:03:29

The story of Andrew Jackson’s improbable ascent to the White House, centered on the handlers and propagandists who made it possible

Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and...

056 Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding with Sean Wilentz from 2018-12-14T15:42:12

Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation’...

055 Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy [2005] with Michelle Orihel (History of History 12) from 2018-12-10T19:26:42

Acclaimed as the definitive study of the period by one of the greatest American historians, The Rise of American Democracy traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the open...

054 Jews on the Frontier in Antebellum America with Shari Rabin from 2018-12-07T13:27:15

Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America offers a religious history that begins in an unexpected place: on the road. Shari Rabin recounts the journey of Jewish peop...

053 United States Slavery in the Age of Jackson with Calvin Schermerhorn from 2018-11-30T17:03:35

Written as a narrative history of slavery within the United States, Unrequited Toil details how an institution that seemed to be disappearing at the end of the American Revolution rose to become th...

052 One Family, Two States, and the Coming of the Civil War with Jason Lantzer from 2018-11-16T16:22:57

Rebel Bulldog tells the story of Preston Davidson, a Northerner who fought for the Confederacy, and his family who lived in Indiana and Virginia. It is a story that examines antebellum religion, ed...

051 David R. Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness [1991] with Joshua A. Lynn (History of History 11) from 2018-11-12T17:25:05

Combining classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the new labor history pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, David Roediger’s widely acclaimed book provides an original study of the forma...

050 Andrew Jackson's Hermitage with Howard J. Kittell from 2018-11-08T12:49:43

Andrew Jackson's Hermitage is a historical plantation and museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States, 10 miles (16 km) east of downtown Nashville. The plantation was owned by Andre...

049 The Marquis de Lafayette Reconsidered with Laura Auricchio from 2018-11-02T12:44:02

The Marquis de Lafayette at age nineteen volunteered to fight under George Washington and became the French hero of the American Revolution. In this major biography, Laura Auricchio looks past the ...

048 Lincoya Jackson, Indian Adoption, and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion with Dawn Peterson from 2018-10-26T11:31:38

During his invasion of Creek Indian territory in 1813, future U.S. president Andrew Jackson discovered a Creek infant orphaned by his troops. Moved by an “unusual sympathy,” Jackson sent the child ...

047 Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation with Jonathan J. Den Hartog from 2018-10-19T13:20:24

In Patriotism and Piety, Jonathan Den Hartog argues that the question of how religion would function in American society was decided in the decades after the Constitution and First Amendment establ...

046 Race and Rights in Antebellum America with Martha S. Jones from 2018-10-12T12:31:18

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists rema...

045 Alexander Saxton's The Rise and Fall of the White Republic [1990] with David R. Roediger (History of History 10) from 2018-10-08T17:11:33

Is racism a blot on the American democratic tradition? Or, as Alexander Saxton argues, has racial discrimination always been integral to it? In the nineteenth century, the United States was transfo...

044 In Defense of Andrew Jackson? with Bradley J. Birzer from 2018-10-05T17:15:39

Andrew Jackson was controversial in his time—and even more controversial in our own. Indian fighter, ardent patriot, hero of the War of 1812, the very embodiment of America’s democratic and frontie...

043 Converting the World in the Early American Republic with Emily Conroy-Krutz from 2018-09-28T16:47:09

In 1812, eight American missionaries, under the direction of the recently formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailed from the United States to South Asia. The plans that mo...

042 Ralph E. W. Earl and the Selling of Andrew Jackson with Rachel Stephens from 2018-09-21T13:39:53

Selling Andrew Jackson is the first book-length study of the American portrait painter Ralph E. W. Earl, who worked as Andrew Jackson's personal artist from 1817 until Earl's death in 1838. During ...

041 Jefferson, Paine, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe with John Ferling from 2018-09-14T15:22:18

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Monroe were in the vanguard of revolutionary ideas in the 18th century. As founding fathers, they risked their lives for American independence, but they al...

040 Albert J. Raboteau's Slave Religion [1978] with Yvonne P. Chireau (History of History 9) from 2018-09-10T15:03:41

Twenty-five years after its original publication, Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South remains a classic in the study of African American history and religion. In a n...

039 Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America with John Loughery from 2018-09-07T14:42:12

Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John’s College (now Fordham University), builder of Sa...

038 Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy with Jay Cost from 2018-08-31T11:11:19

In the history of American politics, there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison’s bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution ...

037 David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic with Victoria Johnson from 2018-08-24T14:33:45

On a clear morning in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat at the edge of the Hudson River. He was bound for a New Jersey dueling ground to settle his bitter dispute with Aaron Burr. H...

036 Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War with Richard D. Brown from 2018-08-17T13:38:43

How did Americans in the generations following the Declaration of Independence translate its lofty ideals into practice? In this broadly synthetic work, distinguished historian Richard Brown shows ...

035 American Honor and the Creation of the Nation's Ideals with Craig Bruce Smith from 2018-08-10T20:16:12

The American Revolution was not only a revolution for liberty and freedom, it was also a revolution of ethics, reshaping what colonial Americans understood as "honor" and "virtue." As Craig Bruce S...

034 Bertram Wyatt-Brown's Southern Honor [1982] with Craig Bruce Smith (History of History 8) from 2018-08-07T00:02:47

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, hailed in The Washington Post as "a work of enormous imagination and enterprise" and in The New York Times as "an important, original ...

033 Kiowa Indians, Religion, and the Struggle for the American West with Jennifer Graber from 2018-08-02T14:42:02

During the nineteenth century, white Americans sought the cultural transformation and physical displacement of Native people. Though this process was certainly a clash of rival economic systems and...

032 The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave with Daina Ramey Berry from 2018-07-27T14:11:47

In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book ...

031 Pirates and Privateers in the Age of Jackson with David Head from 2018-07-20T15:32:54

Privateers of the Americas examines raids on Spanish shipping conducted from the United States during the early 1800s. These activities were sanctioned by and conducted on behalf of, republics in S...

030 How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic with Sharon Ann Murphy from 2018-07-06T11:15:03

Pieces of paper that claimed to be good for two dollars upon redemption at a distant bank. Foreign coins that fluctuated in value from town to town. Stock certificates issued by turnpike or canal c...

029 Gordon S. Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution [1991] with Michael D. Hattem (History of History 7) from 2018-07-04T10:11:14

In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wo...

028 The Cherokee Diaspora with Gregory D. Smithers from 2018-06-29T14:55:01

The Cherokee are one of the largest Native American tribes in the United States, with more than three hundred thousand people across the country claiming tribal membership and nearly one million pe...

027 Fugitive Slaves and the Politics of Slavery with Richard J. M. Blackett from 2018-06-22T13:32:16

This magisterial study, ten years in the making by one of the field's most distinguished historians, will be the first to explore the impact fugitive slaves had on the politics of the critical deca...

026 The Bank War of Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle with Paul Kahan from 2018-06-15T09:50:16

In The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance, historian Paul Kahan explores one of the most important and dramatic events in American political and economic ...

025 R. R. Palmer’s The Age of the Democratic Revolution [1959] with Steven Pincus (History of History 6) from 2018-06-11T15:20:07

For the Western world, the period from 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. R.R. Palmer argues that the American, Frenc...

024 The First Ladies of the American Republic with Jeanne E. Abrams from 2018-06-08T11:48:28

America’s first First Ladies—Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison—had the challenging task of playing a pivotal role in defining the nature of the American presidency to a fledgling...

023 Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times with Joel Richard Paul from 2018-06-01T14:10:47

No member of America's Founding Generation had a greater impact on the Constitution and the Supreme Court than John Marshall, and no one did more to preserve the delicate unity of the fledgling Uni...

022 Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South with Keri Leigh Merritt from 2018-05-25T14:11:03

Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for c...

021 Indians, Settlers, and Slaves at Great Crossings with Christina Snyder from 2018-05-18T13:57:39

In "Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson," prize-winning historian Christina Snyder reinterprets the history of Jacksonian America. Most often, this drama focuses on...

020 Charles Sellers' The Market Revolution [1991] with Michael Zakim (History of History 5) from 2018-05-14T13:02:04

In The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, one of America's most distinguished historians offers a major reinterpretation of a pivotal moment in United States history. Based on impecc...

019 Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism with Richard Lyman Bushman from 2018-05-12T16:27:25

Joseph Smith, America’s preeminent visionary and prophet, rose from a modest background to found the largest indigenous Christian church in American history. Without the benefit of wealth, educatio...

018 The Northern Experience of the Indian Removal Act with John P. Bowes from 2018-05-04T05:13:48

The history of Indian removal has often followed a single narrative arc, one that begins with President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 and follows the Cherokee Trail of Tears. In that ...

017 John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics with William J. Cooper from 2018-04-27T12:13:56

Long relegated to the sidelines of history as the hyperintellectual son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), has never basked in the historical spotlight. Remembered, if at all...

016 Bourgeois Equality and the Birth of the Modern World with Deirdre N. McCloskey from 2018-04-21T20:15:50

There’s little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre N. McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celeb...

015 Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought [2007] with Miles Smith IV (History of History 4) from 2018-04-16T15:38:06

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. In this Pulitzer prize-winning, critically acclaimed addition to the series, historian Danie...

014 The Female Poisoner in Jacksonian America with Sara L. Crosby from 2018-04-13T12:21:48

The nineteenth century was, we have been told, the “century of the poisoner,” when Britain and the United States trembled under an onslaught of unruly women who poisoned husbands with gleeful aband...

013 The Aaron Burr Conspiracy with James E. Lewis Jr from 2018-04-06T11:28:14

In 1805 and 1806, Aaron Burr, former vice president of the newly formed American republic, traveled through the Trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he wa...

012 Robert V. Remini's Andrew Jackson and the Bank War [1967] with Stephen W. Campbell (History of History 3) from 2018-03-30T13:09:29

One of the most controversial issues during the presidency of Andrew Jackson centered around the future of the Second Bank of the United States. During the changing economic and social conditions o...

011 American Nationalisms with Benjamin E. Park from 2018-03-23T14:10:27

America was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. This episode's guests, Benjamin E. Park, traces how...

010 Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation with J.M. Opal from 2018-03-15T22:05:11

Most Americans know Andrew Jackson as a frontier rebel against political and diplomatic norms, a "populist" champion of ordinary people against the elitist legacy of the Founding Fathers. Many date...

009 Jefferson's Three Daughters: Two Free, One Enslaved with Catherine Kerrison from 2018-03-09T08:43:24

Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end t...

008 How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution with Willard Sterne Randall from 2018-03-02T12:59:43

Typically, historians have treated the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 as two separate wars of independence. No Founding Father could divine that the Revolutionary Period of 1763 to ...

007 Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy with Matthew Karp from 2018-02-23T13:00:52

When the United States emerged as a world power in the years before the Civil War, the men who presided over the nation’s triumphant territorial and economic expansion were largely southern slaveho...

006 Eugene Genovese's Roll, Jordan, Roll [1974] with Joshua D. Rothman (History of History 2) from 2018-02-16T15:19:59

When Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made was published in 1974, the study of American slavery would change forever. Written by Eugene D. Genovese, an often controversial figure, the book ...

005 John Adams&Thomas Jefferson, Friends Divided with Gordon S. Wood from 2018-02-09T16:43:32

According to Proverbs 13:20, "You are the company you keep," but if you looked at the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, you could not find men so different. Jefferson was a political r...

004 The Battle of New Orleans in History&Memory with Joseph F. Stoltz III from 2018-02-06T11:42:32

The last major American battle in the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans (December 14, 1814 - January 18, 1815) has been considered by some historians to be the birth of the Age of Jackson. The...

003 Slavery&Abolition in Antebellum America with Manisha Sinha from 2018-02-02T14:00:05

It has been claimed that the Age of Jackson, the age in which democracy supposedly expanded to greater heights, is really the age of slavery and white supremacy. White racism in the early 19th cent...

002 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Age of Jackson [1945] with Richard Aldous (History of History 1) from 2018-01-26T14:30:06

This podcast takes its name from the term popularized by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Jackson (1945). While early Mormonism and the Second Great Awakening may have ...

001 What is the Age of Jackson? with Mark R. Cheathem from 2018-01-19T06:08:27

Hello everyone! Thank you for joining me on the maiden voyage of the Age of Jackson Podcast. I am really excited to be sharing with you my passion and love for this period of American History. Not ...