What happens when the most important document in American history leaves the room where it was written, with no plan for how to tell the world? The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, and produced one of the most...
What if the key to understanding American politics in the Founding Era wasn’t just in the halls of Congress, but in the human body? Discover the life and work of Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, pioneering physician, and...
Think the Boston Tea Party made America a coffee-drinking nation? Historian Michelle McDonald reveals the truth: colonists were already choosing coffee over tea because it was cheaper. Michelle Craig McDonald, the Librarian/Director of the Library &...
When we talk about slavery in Early America, we often focus on plantations: their large, fertile fields, their cash crops, and the people who labored on those fields to produce those cash crops under conditions of enslavement. But what about the...
We often learn about slavery in early America through broad economic or political terms—cotton, sugar, markets, revolutions. But what happens when we turn our focus to the lived experiences of enslaved people themselves? What did slavery feel and...
“Monday, September 5, 1774. A number of the Delegates chosen and appointed by the Several Colonies and Provinces in North America to meet and hold a Congress at Philadelphia assembled at the Carpenters’ Hall.” That statement begins the Journals of...
If you had only six years to enjoy retirement what would you do? Would you improve your plantation? Build canals? Or work behind-the-scenes to unite your country by framing a new central government? These were some of the activities George...