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In this volume consisting of twenty-two original essays, leading historians reveal the radical impulses at the founding of the American Republic. This is a new reading of the American Revolution that gives voice and recognition to a generation of radical thinkers and doers whose revolutionary ideals outstripped those of the founding fahters. It explores the founding fathers' more radical contemporaries, who advocated for true liberty for all at the United States' inception, including the abolition of slavery and equality despite race, class, or gender. While the founding fathers advocated a break from Britain and espoused ideals of republican government , none proposed significant changes to the fabric of colonial society. Yet during this revolutionary period some people did believe that \"liberty\" meant llibery for all and that equality should be applied to political, economic, and religious spheres. These essays are the stories of individuals and groups who exemplified the radical ideals of the American Revolution more in keeping with values of today. This volume helps us to understand the social conflicts unleashed by the struggle for independence, the Revolution's achievements, and the unfinished agenda it left to future generations to confront.

Each year, more than two million visitors line up near Philadelphia's Independence Hall and wait to gaze upon a flawed mass of metal forged more than two and a half centuries ago. Since its original casting in England in 1751, the Liberty Bell has survived a precarious journey on the road to becoming a symbol of the American identity, and in this masterful work, Gary B. Nash reveals how and why this voiceless bell continues to speak such volumes about our nation. A serious cultural history rooted in detailed research, Nash's book explores the impetus behind the bell's creation, as well as its evolutions in meaning through successive generations. With attention to Pennsylvania's Quaker roots, he analyzes the biblical passage from Leviticus that provided the bell's inscription and the valiant efforts of Philadelphia's unheralded brass founders who attempted to recast the bell after it cracked upon delivery from London's venerable Whitechapel Foundry. Nash fills in much-needed context surrounding the bell's role in announcing the Declaration of Independence and recounts the lesser-known histories of its seven later trips around the nation, when it served as a reminder of America's indomitable spirit in times of conflict. Drawing upon fascinating primary source documents, Nash's book continues a remarkable dialogue about a symbol of American patriotism second only in importance to the Stars and Stripes.

In 2018 the American Philosophical Society celebrated its 275th anniversary, though in truth, 1743 is a shadowy date. Some think the APS began in 1727, when Benjamin Franklin, at age 21--having resided in Philadelphia for less than two years since he first arrived in late 1723--convened his famous Junto of leather apron men. Among the founding group, four were from Samuel Keimer's print shop (Franklin, Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb) while the others were shoemakers (John Jones and William Parsons); a surveyor (Nicholas Scull); a scrivener (Joseph Breitnall); a carpenter (William Coleman); an ironmaker (Robert Grace); a glass maker (Thomas Godfrey); and a cabinet maker (William Mangrudge). A more defensible starting point for the American Philosophical Society is 1743, although using this date sidesteps the organization's collapse after a very abbreviated life. Four years earlier, John Bartram, Quaker farmer and self-taught botanist, first proposed a society to promote natural history.

With its rich foundation stories, Philadelphia may be the most important city in America's collective memory. By the middle of the eighteenth century William Penn's \"greene countrie town\" was, after London, the largest city in the British Empire. The two most important documents in the history of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were drafted and signed in Philadelphia. The city served off and on as the official capital of the young country until 1800, and was also the site of the first American university, hospital, medical college, bank, paper mill, zoo, sugar refinery, public school, and government mint. InFirst City, acclaimed historian Gary B. Nash examines the complex process of memory making in this most historic of American cities. Though history is necessarily written from the evidence we have of the past, as Nash shows, rarely is that evidence preserved without intent, nor is it equally representative. Full of surprising anecdotes,First Cityreveals how Philadelphians-from members of elite cultural institutions, such as historical societies and museums, to relatively anonymous groups, such as women, racial and religious minorities, and laboring people-have participated in the very partisan activity of transmitting historical memory from one generation to the next.

First published by UNC Press in 1972, Sugar and Slaves presents a vivid portrait of English life in the Caribbean more than three centuries ago. Using a host of contemporary primary sources, Richard Dunn traces the development of plantation slave society in the region. He examines sugar production techniques, the vicious character of the slave trade, the problems of adapting English ways to the tropics, and the appalling mortality rates for both blacks and whites that made these colonies the richest, but in human terms the least successful, in English America. \"A masterly analysis of the Caribbean plantation slave society, its lifestyles, ethnic relations, afflictions, and peculiarities.-- Journal of Modern History \"A remarkable account of the rise of the planter class in the West Indies. . . . Dunn's [work] is rich social history, based on factual data brought to life by his use of contemporary narrative accounts.-- New York Review of Books \"A study of major importance. . . . Dunn not only provides the most solid and precise account ever written of the social development of the British West Indies down to 1713, he also challenges some traditional historical cliches.-- American Historical Review

First published by UNC Press in 1972, Sugar and Slaves presents a vivid portrait of English life in the Caribbean more than three centuries ago.Using a host of contemporary primary sources, Richard Dunn traces the development of plantation slave society in the region.

In this article, the author looks back at the time Charlotte Crabtree, longtime Professor of Education at UCLA with a special interest in elementary history-social studies curriculum, asked him to join her in applying for a million dollar grant to be awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), chaired by Lynne Cheney. Crabtree had written the proposal and only needed a member of the history department to sign on since the idea behind the grant was to build a bridge between two species of history educators--those who taught in the schools and those who inhabited the ivory tower with guild certificates commonly called Ph.D.s. The center at UCLA, the application promised, would launch a number of projects, each bringing history professors and history teachers in the schools together for interaction and collaboration. Among the projects were studies of exactly what history teachers taught in the schools and how much training they had; the creation of an institute of California K-12 teachers who would work with academic historians to create primary source-based teaching units; and the formation of an advisory council that would work to produce a book making the case for history and providing a scaffolding for teaching both history thinking skills and essential understandings of world and U.S. history. All of this was in the name of restoring history to the school curriculum and in the process to conquer historical illiteracy said to be rampant among young Americans. Some months later, NEH awarded the grant to UCLA, and he was now the Associate Director of the National Center for History in the Schools. It changed his life; it changed his understanding of what historical literacy means; it changed his professional priorities. The National Center for History in the Schools (which the ultraconservative lampooners of the history standards hoped to send into oblivion) still functions with new projects abounding. It co-directs or participates in many Teaching American History institutes; has mounted an online, free access curricular framework in World History called \"World History for Us All;\" works with the National Park Service on history programs; produces primary source-based curricular units in U.S. and world history with teacher-academic historian author partnerships; directs an American History Academy at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, California where the largely Latino student population has made giant steps forward in their studies; and many other projects.

Discusses many possible forerunners & false starts of a mix-raced, or mestizo, republic in the US. Beginning with the first interracial marriage between John Rolfe & Pocahontas, other famous historical figures with interracial relationships are discussed, eg, Sam Houston & Jim Bridger. Geographic areas & ethnicities that evidence high levels of mixing are also analyzed. Some progressive thought on the issue is evident in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Herman Melville, & Randolph Bourne. The racial ideology of Euro-Americans imposed a caste system over this incipient mestizo US. A criticism of current tendencies to build political identity around race & ethnicity is then developed. Acknowledging that racial & ethnic group identity emerged long ago in response to white supremacist life in the US, it is urged that these identities not become too rigid or too exclusive to the point of undermining a long-term project to build a cross-ethnic, cross-racial community. 5 Figures. J. Cowie

THE STORY OF QUAKER LEADERSHIP in the abolition movement has been known and proudly recounted by Friends and friends of Friends for two centuries. Though only a miniscule fraction of religionists in America, Quakers were indisputably in the forefront of the crusade to end slavery, just as they were on the front lines of other reform movements for penal reform, public education, women’s suffrage, Native American rights, civil rights, and the end of war. Yet the Quakers’ role in ending the Atlantic slave trade and chattel bondage has been obscured for generations, and it is nearly as obscured today as