Equal Rights May Be Self-Evident, But Have They Been Realized?

Despite our country’s founding statement that “all men are created equal,” the early Republic struggled with social inequality. Although Americans paid homage to the ideal of equal rights, this ideal came up against entrenched social and political practices. In this talk based upon his latest book, Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War, Brown will discuss how the ideal was tested in struggles over race and ethnicity, religious freedom, gender and social class, voting rights and citizenship.

Slave Resistance and the Making of Abolition

Based on the book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press, 2016), this talk argues that slave resistance rather than bourgeois liberalism lay at the heart of the abolition of slavery. Abolition was defined in large part by the fugitive slaves and slave rebels who inspired abolitionists. Antislavery politicians and lawyers took up the slave's cause and made human rights a defining aspect of American democracy.

The Men Who Lost America

The loss of America was a stunning and unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders must have been to blame, but were they? Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory.

Antiquarian America: Isaiah Thomas and the Ends of History

AAS was intended to play a critical role in promoting the future progress of the new American nation’s epochal experiment in republican government. Founder Isaiah Thomas and his colleagues were convinced that the success of that experiment depended on comprehensively collecting any evidence—from Indian antiquities and other “curiosities,” portraits, maps, manuscripts, and anything in print—that would illuminate the life of present as well as past for their future successors.

The Naval Battle That Won the American Revolution

Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick will return to the Society to discuss his latest book, In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, which will be published this October. This book recounts the final year of the Revolution and how Washington’s leadership masterminded the Battle of the Chesapeake, during which the French fleet intercepted and defeated the British Navy, preventing them from evacuating Lord Cornwallis and his army from the Yorktown peninsula.

Landscapes of Resistance and Resilience after King Philip's War

This lecture will revisit Native American and colonial encounters in the seventeenth-century Northeast and the complex ways that they have reverberated in communities' memories for more than three centuries. Focusing on the pivotal conflict known as King Philip's War (1675–1678), it will trace how the war's violences and resistances have shaped diverse communities' relationships with the past, present, and future. It will offer a major reconsideration of what meanings monuments, objects, stories, and landscapes tell, both here in the Northeast and across a wide Atlantic World.

Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright

Quality journalism is expensive to produce but easy to copy. News is vital to democracy but difficult to control. These problems are not new, as Will Slauter shows in his book, Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (2019). A former AAS-NEH fellow, Slauter will return to Antiquarian Hall to present a lecture based on his new book. The lecture will focus on the nineteenth-century United States, when changes in the technology, business, and culture of news led publishers and press associations to begin to claim property rights in news.

Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776

In this talk based on his new book, Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the West, 1765–1776 (2018), Patrick Spero will recast the familiar narrative of the American Revolution, moving the action from the Eastern Seaboard to the treacherous western frontier and recounting the untold story of the 1765 rebellion of the “Black Boys.” In doing so, he will reveal an often-overlooked truth: the West played a crucial role in igniting the flame of American independence.

A Conversation with Jill Lepore on History and the Public

AAS Member Jill Lepore will engage Jim Moran, the Society’s vice president for programs and outreach, in a wide-ranging conversation about the role of history in our civic life, educational systems, and public discourses. This conversation will also address the canon of Lepore’s work, including her most recent book, These Truths: A History of the United States, which was a New York Times Bestseller when published last fall.

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