094 Founding Friendships
Who are you friends with? Why are you friends with your friends? In the early American republic, men and women formed and maintained friendships for many of the same reasons we make friends today: c...
9 Aug 201644min
093 Harvard University & Colonial North America
What can the collections of the Harvard University Libraries teach us about our early American past? It turns out, quite a lot. Taylor Stoermer, a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of A...
2 Aug 201645min
092 How to Research History Online (Doing History)
How do historians conduct research online? This is your second-most asked question after how did everyday people live their day-to-day lives in early America. As the “Doing History” series explores h...
26 Jul 201655min
091 Rumors, Legends, & Hoaxes in Early America
Did you know that George Washington’s favorite drink was whiskey? Actually, it wasn’t. Washington preferred Madeira, a fortified Portuguese wine from the island of Madeira. Why the false start to to...
19 Jul 201643min
090 Age of American Revolutions
The American Revolution inspired revolutions in France, the Caribbean, and in Latin and South America between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. Naturally, Spanish and Portuguese American revoluti...
12 Jul 201646min
089 Slavery & Freedom in Early Maryland
How do you uncover the life of a slave who left no paper trail? What can her everyday life tell us about slavery, how it was practiced, and how some slaves made the transition from slavery to freedom...
5 Jul 201650min
088 The History of History Writing (Doing History)
Historians rely on secondary historical sources almost as much as they rely on primary historical sources. But what are secondary historical sources and how do they help historians know what they kno...
28 Jun 201650min
087 Shays' Rebellion
After achieving independence from Great Britain, the new United States and its member states had to pay war debts. As the national government lacked the power to tax its citizens, the problem of payin...
21 Jun 201645min
