Articles on the Founding Fathers, and the culture and history of the Revolutionary and pre-Revolutionary eras
Articles on the Founding Fathers, and the culture and history of the Revolutionary and pre-Revolutionary eras
The thirteen original colonies of colonial America were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now the eastern United States. The colonies grew both geographically and numerically from the time of their founding to the American Revolution (1775–81). Click here to see more posts in this category.…
Thomas Jefferson gets credit (well deserved) for many things. Of course his brilliance as a President and a statesman spring to the front of one's mind. Additionally, he was a gifted librarian, as his personal library would serve as the foundation of what is now the Library of Congress. He…
Thomas Jefferson took a more than slightly active role in the shaping of American history. There were three salient courses of nation-building that Thomas Jefferson saw to completion during his Presidency. Two of them are rather infamous: they comprise, of course, the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition…
Franklin D Roosevelt gave a tremendous boost to organized labor with the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the Wagner Act of 1935. The standard textbook takes for granted that what is good for unions is good for workers (even though the whole purpose of a modern union is…
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment resulted in the abolition of slavery in America. Abolition of Slavery in America William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent abolitionist in America, actually passed a resolution through his American Anti-Slavery Society insisting that it was…
The Confederate States of America — commonly referred to as the Confederacy — was an unrecognized republic in North America that existed from 1861 to 1865. Many historians have said their secession from the United States was an illegal act of war, but others say the right was clearly stated…
The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 Was there a constitutional remedy—a solution short of secession or violent revolution—to oppose such laws as the Alien and…
The Massachusetts Bay Colony Government (more formally The Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1628–1692) was an English settlement on the east coast of America in the 17th century around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This government laid many of the cornerstones of what would…
Here are some American Colonial Period facts; some of which are well known, others being counterintuitive. First, the colonists were not paragons of “diversity.” The vast bulk of them came from one part of Europe, spoke a common language, and worshiped the same God. Historian of American Colonial period David…
Self-government in the colonies in limited forms started in the early 1600s. Self-Government in the Colonies They wished to live among like-minded folk in order to better live a shared ideal. In the Dedham Covenant drawn up in Massachusetts during the 1630s, it was resolved “that we shall by all…
