Winning independence was only the beginning. How did George Washington turn a divided country into a nation? On this episode of Revolution 250, Professor Robert Allison welcomes Nathaniel Philbrick to discuss Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy. Retracing Washington’s presidential journeys with his wife, Melissa, and their dog, Dora, Philbrick uncovers stories of local pride, political division, and the enduring contradictions of liberty and slavery. Join us for a lively conversation about the people who preserve our past—and why Washington’s struggle to hold America together still matters.

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What is the American experiment? Johann Neem explores this question in books and essays, beginning with his Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts, which showed how Americans created a civil society which fostered their independence. He explored how newly-independent Americans created a system of public education to sustain the republic, in Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, and he continues to explore these questions of American identity and civic culture. A Professor of History at Western Washington University, Neem has also written of the role of colleges today, and on the state of k-12 education in preparing citizens for the next 250 years.

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Digging in his Jersey City backyard in 2007, Chris Bray uncovered a 12-pound iron sphere. This was a mystery. What was it? How did it get there? Doing more digging in archives, he found that his neighborhood was the site of the Paulus Hook fort the rebels held in the summer of 1776, and the iron ball had been fired from a British cannon as the Royal Navy stormed up the Hudson River. The cannonball now sits in the City Hall in Jersey City, next to Frank Hague's desk, a reminder that the Revolution is still all around us.

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John Lowe of the University of Louisville joins us to talk about his new book, “Benevolence & Bondage”: Jonathan Edwards, Slavery, Race, and the Paradox of Spiritual Equality. Jonathan Edwards is remembered as one of colonial America’s most influential theologians—a preacher who taught that all souls stood equally before God. Yet Edwards was also an enslaver who lived and preached within a society shaped by racial bondage. Lowe examines the profound tension between Edwards’s theology of Christian benevolence and spiritual equality and his participation in slavery, and Edwards' long influence on American religious thought.

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The Declaration of Independence is the United States' most radical idea, and its most enduring paradox. Byron Williams, renowned public intellectual, theologian, columnist, explores this paradox in his new book, Liberty and Equality in America: Examining the Radical and Paradoxical Legacy of the Declaration of Independence. Williams asks: What does it mean for a nation officially committed to liberty and equality, while unofficially hamstrung by paradox to achieve its central tenets? Refusing simplistic celebration or cynical dismissal, Williams explores America's founding through the enduring tension between its highest ideals and its deepest contradictions.

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For a century after Independence, Americans believed that their Revolution was still in progress. Nowhere was this clearer than on the Fourth of July, when Americans gathered for speeches that, as one orator put it in 1834, aimed to “examine the present, and to look forward to the future.” Nathan Perl-Rosenthal joins us to talk about this exploration, which he covers in his new book The Long Revolution: Creating a United States after 1776,, which mines thousands of Independence Day orations. In the words of local notables and national celebrities, men and women, white and Black, Perl-Rosenthal identifies contrasting visions, intense anxieties, and radical power the Revolution evoked deep into the nineteenth century. He has also created a map, July Fourth Orations, which shows where these thousands of events took place. This is a history of the American founding for today’s fragmented and anxious political moment, helping us find a usable past to guide us toward our own uncertain future.

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When in 1774 General Thomas Gage arrived in the rebellious colony of Massachusetts, he brought with him the Massachusetts Government Act which moved the colonial government from Boston to Salem. General Gage set up residence in the neighboring town of Danvers at the home of Robert Hooper, a noted merchant and royalist. Join Professor Robert Allison in conversation with Bill Kossowan as they discuss the attempt to run the colonial government from Essex County in 1774.

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The American Revolution was fought on famous battlefields, but it was sustained in communities like Hingham, Massachusetts, where ordinary people faced extraordinary choices.

In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, Professor Robert Allison welcomes historian and author James Conroy to discuss his book Hingham in the Revolution; Not the Gift of Kings. Together, they explore how one New England town experienced the coming of independence, from political divisions and military service to the sacrifices made by families on the home front.

Through the stories of Hingham’s residents, Conroy reveals the Revolution not simply as a series of battles and declarations, but as a deeply local struggle that transformed neighbors, families, and communities. It is a reminder that America’s Revolution was fought not only at Lexington, Concord, and Yorktown, but in towns across the new nation.

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