Remind you, a lot goes into this kind of an event and many people have worked very, very hard, harder than ive worked, to put all of this together. One of the people who could not be here was frank cogliano, because he got stuck in newark. Hell be here later this evening. His cochair is here and shes going to say a few words. Thank you. [applause] welcome. Im sorry that frank isnt here to join me for this further welcome. Just to say how wonderful it is to see everyone here and to work with such an Amazing Group of people. I especially want to thank annette and frank, my cochair, robin, without whom we would sees to function, and also to the Wonderful Program committee, one of whose members is sitting there many are in the audience tonight and they generously of time an talent to put this program together to go through the many proposals that we had. Weir looking forward to what is an exciting, interesting, varied diverse sheer with a lot of different panels and topics. Its a pleasure to see you, so ill let this plenary start. [applause] the title is selfexplanatory, living in the wake of the revolution. I thought we would start at the very, very beginning, and we have a set of speakers here who are perfectly positioned to talk about the various groups who, after being part of an empire, found themselves part of a new country that styled itself as a republic. Ill introduce the panelists all at once, and they will go in order of the program. First, Rebekah Brannan is an associate professor of history at James Madison university. Shell talk to us about the loyalists, which is her specialty. Her most recent book is from revolution to reunion. The reintegration of the South Carolina loyalists, university South Carolina press 2016. Kathleen duval is a professor of history at the university of north carolina, chapel hill. Shell talk about her specialty, native americans. Her latest book was independence lost, lives on the edge of the American Revolution, published in 2015 her next project is masters of the continent. How americans ruled north america into the 19th century. Then we have robert parkinson, an associate professor of history in the state of new york at binghampton. First book, common cause, creating nation and race in the American Revolution, and that was published in 2016. Hes currently working with the institute on sort of a shorter undergrad friendly version of this particular book. Although i thought it was undergraduate friendly anyway as it was. It depends on the undergraduate. His other book project is the heart of american darkness, which is a microhistory. David distinguished professor of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of new york. Hes written numerous books including slaverys constitution, from revolution to ratification, in the midst of perpetual the making of american nationalism, 1776 to 1820. His current book project is the odyssey of Phyllis Wheatley. Kay lewis is an assistant professor of history at howard university. Her first book, a curse upon the nation, race, freedom and extermination in america and the Atlantic World, was published in 2017. Shell talk about violence and notions of race, race war, during this particular period. I would remind you, when we get to the q a period, this is why im sort of running a mile a minute here, trying to give us time, when you ask questions, please come to the mic. This is being filmed. If you shout it out cspan will not be able to hear you and that would be unfortunate so remember to come to the microphone for the q a session. First well start with rebekah. [applause] thank you. So i would like to take seriously tonight the idea that they are not only living in the wake of revolution, they are living in the wake of war. And not just war, a civil war, and living through war has consequences. The revolutionary claimed the mantle of the people all the time. Yet they were always very well aware that many of the people were not actually with them. During the war for independence, the Continental Congress and the patriots at large come up with all kind of ways to persuade those who dont seem to be in agreement to basically sit down and be quiet. Stop causing trouble. Their if words often dont work with loyalists, they use the patriotcontrolled militias, a particularly terrifying police force. The military might, whatever the latest patriot political imperatives might be at that moment, the militia gets in peoples faces. They burn down crops. They plunder their way through Household Goods and enjoy finishing off the Liquors Stores in front of the people they are robbing and threatening family members to. Be fair, when the british have the upper hand, loyal i haves return the favor. Both sides confiscate property. Including land and slaves. Arrest people. Neither property nor personhood was secure. One thing i might suggest is that we, as a scholarly group, continue to think about what i see not just as me but other people thinking about, and thats this issue of the legacy of civil war. And the legacy of trauma from war. So i think of recent books like scars of independence, not only have loyalists and historians known of this issue of trauma for a long time but so have historians of slavery, and our copanelists, he recently had a blog on black perspectives, a blog about intergenerational trauma and its effects. We should think about how to integrate it into our understanding of police his tri. We should think about how to integrate it into whats motivating the people who have lived through the revolution. I think we dont think enough about what this means for peoples psyche. How do survivors of the civil war deal with the pain, uncertainty and the realization that society can seem very stable and yet they have lived through the moment when you rip the top a tough pandoras box and you realize you depend on societys stability and maybe it cant be taken for granted. The contributors were marked by the experience of civil war and the losers are even more marked by such experiences. And they were indeed scarred. Henry lawrence, one of the main negotiators of the treaty that actually ends the war observed in 1782 that, the minds of the people are sore. Linking this idea of trauma and mental displacement. In fact, he himself goes wildly from grief of his sons death to speculation about just how much money he had lost during the war. The state of his property. Other prominent people from South Carolina that ive studied also talk about the mental despair. One termed it a general doom, that sense of psychosis, but clear ptsd population wide. Another says all was devastation. Perhaps more colorfully one continental officer put it thusly. Wherever you turn, the weeping widow and fatherless child pour out their melancholy tales. And here, of course, im quoting the contributors, patriots, the loyalists are at least as scarred. Everywhere they go, when they become refugees in the diaspora, their trauma, their loss, becomes clear. Everyone had someone to blame for something, and they all wanted to find an outlet for their pain and were talking lots of people. And yet the actual realization is that while there are lots of loyalist refugees and they suffered tremendously, white loyal. S and black loyalists, and they become a thorn in the side of colonial governors absolutely everywhere else in the empire that they go, because apparently they became too american, and they want to make things different, everywhere they go, if we sort of do the best pack of envelope numbers were talking about half a Million People who are identified as loyalists in some way, they did something besides hide under their bed. Lets face it, there are a lot of disrespected people, too, and they try that strategy. The high numbers suggest about 60,000 of them become refugees and have to leave. And the low numbers suggest were talking more between 20 and 30,000. No matter how you spin this were talking about almost 450,000 who stay, having lost a civil war. So here are all these people. Here is an entire population suffering from trauma of war. Some of the refugees keep trickling back in long after the war is over. Now, the victorious patriots have to create a functional Political Union with the majority of people who had not wanted the new independent Political Union or who did not want or trust them as leaders and had made it clear during the war. Yet, the spoils of war go to the victors. Its in that context i find it especially remarkable that the United States managed to create a lasting Political Union and hold it together for decades. All with their former enemies in the mix and all while still being angry about absolutely everything they had suffered during the war for independent. And yet, they already believed that the highest value isnt revenge and the most useful value isnt revenge. For them, and even more importantly for the general races that come have them. One long islander put it especially well after the war when a questioner asked him if he was a wig or a tory. His response . I was for peace. And another gentlemen, ive written about at length, Christopher Gadsden puts it another way, he who forgives and forgets the most is the best citizen. There is trauma and yet there is the shared social understanding, the shared political imperative to move past trauma in order to create a functional union. And to my mind, remarkably, americans chose to embrace reintegration instead of endless punishments of loyalists, or even worse, divisive, unending relitigation of exactly what he had done what or who had been mysteriously unhelpful or absence at crucial moments. In fact, americans used this power to move forward. Ive looked a lot at the process of how loyalists convinced skeptical patriots to reintegrate them and ive looked a lot at some of the methods they used, and i think they are kind of telling in this issue of how do you live and rebuild in the context of trauma. There is an entire genre of literature coming out, its profoundly historical, the main proponents of transitional justice, historical, that, like the nuremberg trials, they have no relevance, i disagree. For instance, when you look not just at South Carolina that ive written about but state by side there is remarkable similarity in the kinds of ways that patriots and loyalists Work Together to punish loyalists while reintegrating them and moving forward so they practice civil incapacitations. Limited citizenship. You must prove yourself over time that even though you chose the losing side in the war, you are now a dependable and useful citizen. Obviously, its easier for white men to achieve the status than anyone else. But what they are doing is allowing people to rebuild reputations over time thereby convincing skeptical, angry, wounded traumatized patriots, that this is a doable project and these people are reclaimable. So they do these. When i say civil incapacitations, i mean things like restrictions on Voting Rights and the adoption of the constitution so the articles of confederation that finally sweeps away the last of the restrictions on voting for loyalists, and by 1790 loyalists are able to vote again. There are things like, one state says you cant be a teacher because you might give people the wrong ideas, i think. Others have restrictions on property. There are occupational restrictions that are eased over the 1780s. There is also perhaps more interestingly and controversially, reparations. Essentially they are playing reparations and in schemes around the world you find that reparations often play a role. One patriot legislator made it very clear in South Carolina, when he said, why should these people complain about paying 25 of their estate to us complain . I think any patriot would feel grateful to have gotten off having only lost 25 of their property. Okay. So he might have been exaggerating. Its very much the logic of reparations. We paid to make this world come into being, you can pay, too. And by paying, by sacrificing for this new nation by showing us that you, too, are joining a shared sacrifice albeit after the fact, we can begin to trust you. We can also begin to feel like you, too, have paid a little. And so this is one of the many kinds of reparations. By that i might mean we think about confiscation, which sounds awful. Ill confiscate all your property. And then give most of it back in most states or it mysteriously will not be sold and your family will be living on it seven years later when the next census comes, or ill make you pay a tax, and in South Carolina, its 12 to 25 depending on what the legislature thought of you, and in other states it ranges in essentially the same range from about 10 to about 25 to 30 of the tax on the total value of the estate. Of course, what that value is, is totally in the eyes of the permanent determining it. Whether they wish to be generous or harsh so its a very flexible system, shall we say, and the state mandates these payments, and, in many places, then conveniently forgets to collect the last half. So i might term all of these as functioning as reparations and having the same logic as reparations, but they never spell that out. Of course, i might add, here, too, as in other facets of the revolutionary world, the color line seems to be the hardest, fastest line in American Life because im talking about white loyalists. Black loyalists have much less pleasant choices. They overwhelming leave because, of course, what the white loyalists and white patriots want to do to reenslave them and use their bodies to either pay off revolutionary war soldiers, and they are literally capturing slaves in South Carolina and using them as bounties for the militia, or reenslave them to produce for the nation. In no case does this look good for black loyalists. They are forced into refugee status. They dont have this choice to stay. I would like to end here with one little speculation. Something i cant prove yet. And that is, the generation that lived through the civil war of the war for independence carried with them the enduring memories of these horrors of the civil war. They remembered the unpredictability and the destruction. Even those who had posed loyalists clemency in the 1780s including george washington, were motivated by concern for stability more than desire for revenge, what they wanted most and what they keep saying they want is a stable, even keeled, economically Successful Society in which white people could thrive and they want that for themselves and they want that for their children and they want that for their childrens children. Their arguments over how to ensure a stable democratic government that honored the wishes of the majority while still protecting property and minority rights were still part of this overall desire to have a Stable Society that was worth everything, all the trauma, they had gone through to get there. Yet consider that description again for a moment. Stable, even keeled and perhaps even harmonious. Does that sound like the recent scholarship on the early republic . It doesnt to me. Instead we talk about the early republics political culture as one of anger, constant dispute, and ever increasing levels of partisanship. Federalists and democratic republicans would savage each other in letters, then beat each other in and out of congress, thank you, jan freeman, and then shoot each other on the dueling field. Even keeled isnt the word i would have picked the rhetoric from the 1780s seems incredibly personal and divisive there. Seems to be nothing sacred that americans wouldnt say to each other and there seemed to be absolutely nobody that you couldnt end up not speaking to. And yet, when you read their letters in the public discourse, they dont celebrate. They justify many things with the constant invocation of failure, the fear of failure. They caution asked each other that we cant just keep attacking each other because the european monarchs are just waiting to scoop us up. They saw revolution expanding around the world and discovered they didnt always like that idea, right . The french revolution terrifies them for their lives and property and the haitian revolution terrifies them even more. You can almost read this trauma reemerged, i think, in the letters about whats happening in these french and haitian revolution. They say it could not happen here. It would not happen here. They sound smug on the one hand. Read more critically they are stretching for reassurance that it cant happen to them. Cant happen. Wont happen. A talisman against disaster, yet despite this partisan rhetoric, those who lived through the revolution managed to keep a lid on the conflict and keep it from spilling over into arms and i think perhaps part of the puzzle to why they can sound so angry, so incandescent at all times, and yet manage to avoid the final step of civil war for more than a generation, is partly they did have the lived memory of trauma. There is something chastening them, stopping them from the final step. Their trauma and lived memory of what it was like to live through a civil war helped them to hold a fragile memory together. Union together. [applause] i want to thank annette so much for being part of this panel. Eternally to robin and amy. When europeans and africans first came to the americas there were already hundreds here that fit that eras european definition of nation. A people and their land. The word nation comes from the latin word to be born. A people and their place of birth. In the era of the early American Republic a few centuries later native north americans were developing new forms of governance based on their own history and also in conversation with global trends. Indians were not the static opposition many in the United States wanted to believe. Today im going to talk about a couple of examples of native nations moving into the 19th century and also some efforts to bring together some of those native nations into larger confederacies to balance out the United States. Those larger confederating efforts tended to fail whereas nations lasted, and most of those native nations that existed in the 1780s are still here today despite the odds, and in part because of some of the centralizing trends that went on in this era, that native people did in this era. Ill start in an obvious place for native nation making. Cherokee country. Until the late 18th century, the towns were mostly autonomous each with its council of elders and clan leaders but in reaction to outside mounting pressures, cherokees had gradually formed a National Government with electoral districts that sent representatives to an annual meeting of the new National Council. Between legislative sessions and elective committee, it ran the cherokee government and the court and supreme courts ruled on dispute. Political centralization was controversial. The creation of a National Council pulled power away from towns and clans. Now only male cherokees could vote whereas women had had a great deal of say in the Old Town Councils and clans. At the same time, some of the cherokee elite established plantations and enslaved men and women to grow cotton for export. Cherokees, like many native americans, had a longer history of Holding Human beings in bondage as many others have shown but cherokees now developed a new kind of slavery alongside their 19th century white and native peers. And its ramifications are still here. Plantation slavery, governmental institutions that represented men and women directly at all, Cherokee Nation was right in line with 19th century trends. Historians used to call these kinds of changes assimilation but its clear that they made them for their own reasons. They were a recognizable nation. In 1827, cherokees adopted a constitution whose preamble was designed to sound familiar. We, the representatives of the people of the Cherokee Nation, in convention assemble in order to establish justice, ensure tranquility, promote our common welfare and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with humility and gratitude the sovereign ruler of the universe, do ordain and establish this constitution for the government of the Cherokee Nation. Yet the first article of the cherokee constitution quickly reminds us of the main reasons why they were codifying Cherokee Nation in words that cherokee americans could understand. Their fear of losing land and sovereignty. Of ceasing to be the Cherokee Nation. The very first article clearly lays out the boundaries of their nation and declares in no Uncertain Terms the sovereignty of jurisdiction of this government shall extend over the country within the boundaries just described and the lands therein are and shall remain the Common Property of the nation. Individual cherokee citizens and cherokee families could own houses, stores, farms, plantations, livestocks and human beings but the land underneath was the Cherokee Nation and they could no more sell it than american citizens could sell virginia or vermont. The governor of georgia demanded that John Quincy Adams denounced it as illegal under u. S. Law but adams responded that the Cherokee Nation had every right to a written constitution. European empires and the u. S. Federal government regarded indians as sovereign nations. Now, you know the cherokee story. Every american knows at least a little bit of it but the cherokee constitution and court system are often presented as an anomaly and cherokee leaders themselves push that interpretation of themselves ahead of every other native nation. But, in fact, many other native nations were developing selfconsciously modern versions of themselves in the era of the early republic. Alexander was a creek leader who in the late 18th century sought to centralize them into a nation. His rationalizing impulses came both from internal creek politics and from external pressures. When word arrived at the 1783 treaty of paris having carved up north america without having any indians at the table of negotiations, they convened a council of indians and they wrote a joint letter explaining why the treaty could not possibly be valid because they wrote, britain had ceded land that it never possessed, either cessation or right of conquest. They did not do any acts to forfeit our independence and natural rights to the king of great britain. They were an independent nation, and to them britains surrender didnt change anything about their territory or sovereignty. It strengthened the creek National Council, which mostly had been an occasional meeting of up creeks. Of upper creeks. He made it into a regularly meeting body representing all creek and seminole towns. He kept having to explain creek nationhood to late 18th century europeans and americans. He wrote to officials in the spanish colonies of louisiana and west florida. The creeks are a free nation and consider ourselves brothers and allies of spain only, not spains subjects. Nationalizing was fairly successful and probably inspired later cherokee efforts but when he aimed bigger, when he tried to build a southern confederacy of multiple nations he failed. At the post treaty of paris, at the meeting i mentioned earlier, with the creeks, chickasaws and cherokees, they agreed to a joint statement defending their national sovereignties. But they did not agree to the greater ambitions. In a letter to one of its spanish contacts he described it as a reality. He referred to nation and confederacy against the americans with northern and southern branches. The Northern Branch was the ohio valley indians fighting against the United States. The southern confederacy allied with it including creeks, cherokee, and others. The creeks, he claimed, were the southern confederacys head or principle. In other words, creeks are in charge of this confederacy and by 1788 he was describing himself as head of a numerous brave nation, and of a confederacy of other nations. Now, they had been leaders in bringing peace to the south starting in the 1750s. They had devoted tremendous diplomatic effort to ending decades long wars first between themselves, between the chickasaws and others, throughout the region with creeks and others. And they had made overtures to shawnees and others in the ohio valley. So multitribal peace movements were not controversial, and neither were alliances to promote war and trade and security. But miguel raised southern confederacy by aiming to make them one people under sort of one ruler. Threatened National Sovereignty and threaten the peace they had worked hard to build. Things came to a head in 1787 when the chickasaw leader made a couple of decisions. They agreed to u. S. Trading post on chickasaw land. In fact, they solicited a u. S. Trading post on chickasaw land so they would have more access to trade and they granted to the United States some land on their border, basically to try to get rid of a squatter settlement that had been set up quite recently near a chickasaw to push them off. In response to these decisions, a war party of creeks rode into chickasaw country. They didnt bother to speak to any chickasaws. They killed seven of the americans and sent the rest flying, and on their way home they rode through chickasaw towns displaying the scouts of these americans that they had killed. The chickasaws were shocked at the violation of their sovereignty. Their justification was the chickasaw had ceded land which belonged to my nation. This is an audacious claim, that they had somehow joined a confederacy that now had jurisdiction over their land and that could punish the chickasaw leaders for making decisions about it. Chickasaw land was not confederacy land, at least visavis the americans. They rejected what they saw as an aggressive creek move and they would make their own paths holding on to their own national identities. Similarly, while some indians joined the early 19th century call of the prophet, for indians to come together as one people and fight the United States, many more rejected what they saw as an assault on their National Sovereignty. It was declared, indians were once different people. They are now but one. But it wasnt true. And because indians rejected it, it would never be true. Indians did not become one people. Shawnee leader black hoof rejected his message in favor of his own vision of shawnee neighborhood and his own leadership of it. Like many other leaders of the time black hoof worked to centralize political leadership, both of which he believed would help the shawnees to keep peace. They started selling cattle, they built mills. They leased out tribal land trying to get the sort of land title that would be recognizable in sort of the paperwork of u. S. Courts. And they invited a missionary to help them break into new markets. Sometimes these kind of efforts like those of the cherokees and creeks are portrayed as knuckling under to the u. S. Civilization program, right . But exact leaders like black hoof were trying to lead their nations into a new future. Is a shawnee future, and in no way were they simply doing what u. S. Politicians and agents told them to do. I should note would absolutely disagree with what i just said. They accused black hoof of being a sell out and maybe a witch. Full honesty. When they went west to recruit indians who had already moved west the answer there tended to be positive. That sounds great. We would love to join your movement but then almost the next sentence would be, as soon as we finish fighting our native neighbor that were in the middle of a war with. In places where u. S. Settlers had not yet reached national and local concerns dominated even more than in the east. But these wars obviously completely undercut the message of being one people. Things were even a little muddy in his own base. Some in 1810 told a frenchman they knew the prophet was planning to lead them to war but they werent quite sure if it would be against the United States or against it was the United States. Different nations had their own wars and history and languages and ways of living in the world. To wrap up, 19th century white americans convinced themselves that indians were primitive people. Perhaps if the europeans had never come to america, white americans thought perhaps these people could have continued living in the wild and wasting land. But instead, god and european ingenuity had brought them more developed people and primitive ways and people were doomed. But, in fact, during the early American Republic native nations were alive and well. I focus mostly on eastern nations here but that was even more true perhaps in the west. To take just one quick example. Some people in whats now arizona, were at the very same time figuring out how to go from neighboring allies, with different cultures, different language families, to living together in the same space while retaining their separate languages, their separate economic and artistic specializations and their separate identities. And figuring out how to articulate what that kind of sovereignty meant, to articulate it to native and european outsiders, and today, the Indian Community is one federally recognized tribe but its individual members know whether they are peepash, and signs are written in both languages. Native nations were developing 19th century versions of themselves, debating and sometimes fighting over who had the right to governor ever and what shape government would take. Much of their european and European American peers were doing. All across europe and the americas. And despite the horrors of the 19th and 20th century, when the United States devoted itself to trying to destroy them as nations, indians have retained their separate nations and some measure of sovereignty through at this time all. As the Standing Rock tribal chair put it during the protests of the pipeline in 2016, were a nation and we expect to be treated like a nation. [applause] hi, everybody. Thank you, sarah, frank, wherever you are, for inviting me to be on this panel. Its an honor to speak in front of all of you. All right. On the 19th of april, 1783, thomas payne brought out what would be the final issue of his american crisis. He said the times that try mens souls are over. The greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew is glorious and happily accomplished. Sorry, rebekah. Payne what he thought the revolution was all about and what it was these new americans had before them. Payne said, to see it in our power to make a world happy, to teach mankind the art of being so. For payne, the revolution had made anything and Everything Possible including the redemption of all mankind. But if we go back nine years before paynes last american crisis pamphlet, other political leaders also waxed about what the revolution might bring about when it was before them. They soared with expectation and promise, too. In 1774, Thomas Jefferson said, jefferson, right, the abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in the american colonies. The great object of desire. Judgment rush seconded that notion. When the first Continental Congress included enslaving people and the association boycott he said, i feel a new attachment to my country. And he boasted, i venture to predict there will not be a negro shave in north america in 40 years. Well, we know, of course, that all three of these men would be wrong about abolition and therefore about happiness. The revolution was far more complicated than payne or rush told us it was going to be. The revolution have helped us to understand the complications of the revolution. Especially when it came to how native and enslaved people experienced it and try to find their own place in the new American Republic. After all of our historiographic battles over the past few generations, i would put forward janus, the roman god of two faces, of beginnings and of endings, as the best patron for the American Revolution and its legacy. Its complicated. But why did that have to be the case . What made it so complicated . So double facing . What made jefferson, rush and payne just so wrong . Everyone in this room knows what jefferson wanted the declaration of independence to say about icalery, calling it pirate tical warfare and assemblage of horrors. Why didnt it appear in the declaration, the union. Duh . The priority of union undermines the great object of desire. The south would never agree to such an attack on slavery so those words had to go. Payne thought about the union rather differently. In the last american crisis he said, it was the way the revolution had been won. The union of the states, which he said in all capital letters, on which our Great National character depend and depends and this had delivered the revolution from those trying times and made humanitys imminent redemption possible. Payne assumed that the Union Secured american freedom, but we know its really the source of those dashed hopes. American union was really at odds with american freedom. Union betrayed the great promises revolutionaries set about for themselves in 1775, for many people, especially for native peoples and the enslaved. But how exactly . Now, we can say again, almost reflectively, racism, duh . Right . There is a color line. Well, i think its worth exploring how that actually comes to be. Patriot leaders tossed aside their commitment rather casually. It was an unthinking decision because they were racists. Sure they were. But i think how they did that merits our attention. It might have been an unthinking decision, but even if it was it certainly took lots and lots of labor. In my work ive emphasized the mechanics of how patriot leaders payneefferson, rush and mobilized the American Public to fight the long revolutionary war. That people in america found common cause was not an organic process that weld up naturally among the socalled embattled farmers, what as emerson referred to them, were armed only with a spirit that made those heroes dare to die or leave their children free. Rather, it was a managed and manipulated affair. Patriot leaders made choices. They picked certain stories and images to broadcast. They picked certain stories and images not to broadcast. They spent great deal of time, money, and attention on telling the colonial public why they had to support they had to support the rather desperate war effort against the british. The stories they told and refused to tell would play a role in shaping the notion of who was and was not an american in the years after thomas payne declared the trying times over. Lets take one example from each. Stories told and stories not told, to see how they mattered in compromising and undermining the revolutions universalist promises. Stories told. Pennsylvanias gradual emancipation bill of 1780, its one of the highlights of the revolutionaries extending their pledges to everyone. You can see it in one way as a culmination of the great object of desire that jefferson talked about. Yet, opponents of the bill even though they were defeated, invoked that common cause argument that patriot leaders had featured for the past five years. And that argument is that the king and his men, especially people like lord dunmore an general henry clinton, had tried their best to emancipate slaves and fight against the American Revolution. That there was a connection between britain and blacks and both worked together to subvert the revolution. Criticism of the pennsylvania abolition bill made these arguments. And they resonated. But they only did so because men like adams and washington and franklin and payne and jefferson had broadcast as widely as they could about how the enslaved were working with the king against them. Congress had featured that argument in nearly all of their official proclamation since the war began, and luckily for pennsylvanians in the coming decade those stories did not stop the law. But the enslaved in new jersey were not as lucky. In the spring of 1780, quakers pressured the new Jersey Assembly to take up their own emancipation bill. And when they did, a campaign emerged in new jersey newspapers for and against the abolition bill. Quaker writers tried to remind the people of new jersey to stay true to the universalist claims of the declaration or else our words might rise up in judgment against us. But other writers invoked another part of the declaration, that of domestic insurrectionists. They had a different form of rising up in mind. I really cant say that without thinking of Linmanuel Miranda now. One inspired by the tyrant king. Slaves would join forces and then sleep the land, then will the shrieks of murdered children force conviction upon us of the evils weve brought upon ourselves, our friends, and our country. Trauma. New jerseys emancipation bill failed, as it would in new york. They could invoke the argument that patriot leaders had been amplifying for the past five years. After the shootings started, the common cause appeal featured stories about enslaved and native people helping the king. Patriot leaders kept talking about this as the ultimate deal breaker. This was union talk. Broadcasting stories that everyone in every part of america could agree with and sympathize with. Sympathize. The original formulation of the union, very purposefully and not accidentally, excluded lots of people in america. When the topic of appellation came up abolition came up, writers now had these nationalist stories to build their arguments on, to counter antislavery. They blocked abolition because they said emancipated slaves would become the republics enemies. Blocking apple abolition made them good americans. At least thats what the Continental Congress had said. Stories not told. When the declaration said that known ruleles were of warfare was the destruction of all ages, there wasnt an asterisk that said except the ones helping us. The notion that all native peoples helped the british is not a myth created at the revolution. It happened at the moment. Those two were stories the patriots told over and over and over again. But they didnt talk very much or very loudly about delaware leaders like John Killbuck or captain pike or about shawnee leaders like corn stalk, who were the americans best friends in the ohio country. They didnt talk very much or loudly about the sacrifices to stockbridge, or others made while serving in the Continental Army. Unless he were in that army or you watched it march by your house, you you have precious little idea how many native peoples actually fought for the United States. Of course, they were there. But American News media very rarely mentioned them. Notice of scouts helping the army scour iroquois found space in newspapers. When a party of 50 in stockbridge attached to the Continental Army ran into a british ambush in kingsburg new york and 37 of the 50 were killed, notice of the tragedy appeared only in a few loyalists newspapers. None of the others. When compared to the oceans of ink that did feature indians helping the british, these were tiny drips. Perhaps they didnt want to publish details about proamerican native leaders because those leaders kept getting murdered. Both corn stalk and white eyes were killed in suspicious circumstances in 1778, and this, i think, one of the legacies of not telling those stories. Because they didnt talk much at all about natives allied to the United States. Natives in the backcountry felt not only allowed but encouraged to kill them. That construction armed americans with a lethal new weapon. American patriotism. Killing indians equalled hurting the king and therefore helping the common cause. Before 1776, men like daniel boone were illegal squatters, were troublemakers, not someone you wanted to have over to your house for dinner, but now they were pioneers of the myth of american destiny. As the british continued to maintain a military presence in the backcountry into the 1790s this idea that all natives were britains allies and enemies of the United States was a staple of american policy through the war of 1812. Andrew jackson and William Henry harrison, among others, still believed they were fighting the same battle that began in 1776. To conclude, when the socalled founders broadcast the stories they did, crying foul about british attempts to free the enslaved or arm natives, i dont think they expected those narratives to have the legs that they did. Those stories didnt match up with many of their professed convictions. Mentioned jefferson, rush, and payne. All of those men consider themselves antislavery. Many of their fellow patriot leaders considered themselves opponents to slavery. So why didnt they do a better job . Why is the revolution so complicated, so disappointing, so janusfaced . The revolutionaries could teach mankind about how to be happy but it certainly wasnt a glorious or completest revolution for all. We know that the union is partly to blame here. That union talk got in the way of freedom talk. Congress deletion of jeffersons stirring words about the slave trade in the declaration is a prime example of this. We share jeffersons pain as those words are struck out on the third of july. It boggles the mind to think what Frederick Douglass might have done with those words. But going deeper into how that happened is an important exercise for historians. Doing so reveals political leaders on a daytoday basis, making choices and trying to set priorities. To see the roots of why the revolution didnt actually live up to its soaring promises for many people, we have to focus on process. It means getting into the details. What did leaders choose to spend their time and money on . What were the boundaries of discourse for everyday people and how were they created . Those boundaries werent automatic or natural, i think. Why, it was totally okay for a lot of white loyalists to be reintegrated but not for anyone who wasnt a white guy . I think because those lines were managed. They took work. And we should do our best to see how that process worked. How ideas, whether about race or politics, were fastened to the ground. And how narrative scripts that made up those tethers created unintended consequences because they helped to make the post revolutionary era glorious and happy for some, and tragic and vicious for many others. Thank you. [applause] for those of you who are not graying as i am, i have to remark how shocking it is to have a panel like this where the majority of the people in the panel about the American Revolution are talking about africanamericans. So much so that i almost feel like i should do something else. But im not. I said im going to talk about that, and what that means in as broad a way as i can in a short period of time, for how we think and are talking about the revolution. In recent years, the fate of slavery and the status of africanamericans has become the proving ground for the question of how revolutionary and how admirable the American Revolution was. And this is as true in High School Classrooms and in the popular media as it is for professional historians. Some historians have played defense, insisting that its Anna Karenina stick to put slavery at the center. Estate anac hronistic to put slavery at the center. For two reasons. One, the real revolutionaries, increasingly shorthanded as the found i would say, didnt talk or think about it. This claim has been demolished over the past 20 years by exceptional scholarship from woody houlton and Robert Orwell to robert parkson on just how concerned the revolutionaries were with slaves as an internal enemy or as soldiers on their side. The second pushback has been that, after all, the revolution led to a contagion of liberty that made it possible for americans to think critically about slavery, to at least want to end it. And maybe even imagine racial equality. This second argument has been , byced, if not obviated historians who have impure realized the debate about slavery and pushed it back in time. The radicalism of the revolution is no longer the main explanation for the rise of antislavery. Over empire and the controversy over slavery were bound up over both sides of the atlantic from the beginning , as others have argued. And that realization is part of what is leading to creative attempts to reperiodize what we mean by the American Revolution. Two examples, gary nash, in his unknown American Revolution, ends the story in 1784 and 1785, because he feels like the real radicalism was over by then, i dont have to deal with the constitution. Which is fine, it left me with things to do. Taylor saying we have a broader view of who is included continental view. , a maybe the story goes all the way to 1804, and maybe its the Louisiana Purchase or the haitian revolution and haitian independence. I think its quite important that both of these arguments are not only compatible with, but even buttressed by or dependent on the realization that africanamericans are actors in the period. Not just that they had their own revolution, but that what they were doing and how they were doing it forced the issue of their presence onto the agenda of the revolutionaries africans had politics too. Thats the fundamental changing and that will change all of our scholarship. But annettes charge to us wisely required that we ask about the results. And for whom. Results that cant always be measured by ideas or intentions. So im going to try to grapple thenthat a little bit and meditate on what i think it means about how we need to think about the relationship between the revolution and africanAmerican History and its centrality. Emancipation in the north was an outcome of the evolution and it was only conceivable with transfer of sovereignty to the states that could and in some cases did legally permit voluntary emancipation. 130,000 to with the 150,000, depending on how you count it, created free black communities that ultimately formed the mainstay of an Abolitionist Movement that destabilized u. S. Politics and inspired a civil war. This is more than the proverbial butterflys wings. A lot more. It may not persuade us that the arc of history bends toward justice, but it should make it clear that the revolution and civil war are fundamentally linked events. Both were civil wars and nationalist revolts. Like most civil wars, and especially those in the americas, they precipitated the liberation of slaves in a complicated dance of self emancipation and contingent policy. Or, someone insist, contingent policy and self emancipation. Which came first . Im not going to get into a chicken and egg debate. The important thing is that both are there and in relation to each other. And in fact, both these civil wars and emancipation sled to reconstructions that reshaped constitutions. Much of the problem of how much or how to center slavery in the revolution with the founding or National History can be resolved by reconceptualizing the entire era from late colonial to late 19th century, a not only as a first and second American Revolution, but as two civil , two two emancipations reconstructions, and a lot of not so great compromises. But if results matter, numbers matter. The unavoidable fact is that despite the impressive amount of self liberation during the revolutionary war and the beginnings of emancipation in the north, which created a nation half slave and half free and thus made fugitive slaves controversial as never before, slaveholders nevertheless won freedom to determine the future of slavery and most of the country for most of the slaves, under a constitution that protected their interests in multiple, complicated, and especially political ways. The 3 5 clause was only the tip of an iceberg. I think. Of how the nation came to be governed through slavery. Beenest metaphor i have able to come up with for this process and im hoping to do better is that the constitution hardwired slavery into the political order, without even needing to mention it. Not unlike, perhaps, the wiring that is so important in the walls of every building we live in. Enabling the liberals of 1787 to walk away not having admitted property in man, but having done much more, or much worse. Quickly, systematically, the number of free people of african descent rose, but the number of enslaved increased far more. The domestic slave trade, encouraged and facilitated by the new national market, moved a Million People and undomesticated slavery, making it, if anything, worse than it already was. It is debatable whether any of that would have happened in the same way that it happened without the sovereignty and power that the revolution accorded the master class, the way it freed them from the imperial oversight of britain or National Oversight of the federal government. In short, the case of africanamericans confirms both the radical and the conservative, even reactionary nature and results of the American Revolution. And arguably, more the latter. This is true, both because any revolution ought to be measured by its effect on working people, and because the freedomloving revolution was supposed to be about liberty and humanity, not just sovereignty in the formed not just sovereignty as National Independence or state formation or local control. Even if one insists the paradox is nothing of the sort because, endr all, liberty in the liberty was about property, the mixed results were inherent, even predictable, not accidental or fortuitous. We should be talking about both radical and reactionary results, and how the case of africanamericans is not so much the exception in the revolution, as the revealing rule. At this point in the scholarship we should view with a wary eye any accounts, popular or academic, that insist that only the inspiration for emancipation, or only the hypocrisy or only the backlash matters. So we dont have to say, well, it is half and half or it is one or the other, in order to insist that it is both. In this, i think, we can follow two of the organic intellectuals of the United States revolutions, Phyllis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass. In the case of wheatley, it has taken a long time for scholars to fully appreciate just how engaged she was in the revolutionary controversies, in the linked politics of empire and slavery. But one of her first circulated poems celebrated the repeal of the stamp act. In october 1772, in a poem she directly linked the critique of slavery to colonial protest and in a poem she wrote to be hand delivered to dartmouth. This gesture helped set in motion her trip to london and the publication of her book, which boston patriots had been afraid to touch, precisely because they worried it would affect already common critiques of patriot hypocrisy. While in london, it was suggested publicly that wheatley ought to be freed. And in her 1773 poems, she downplayed her linkage of herself, of criticisms of slavery and race thinking, to the colonial protest movement. In 1773 and for years afterwards, both patriots and tories who read her book could ally the antislavery itos e she conveyedthos to their political outlook. That was intentional and effective. Phyllis wheatley hedged her bets and was all the more effective for doing so. Mark peterson, and his new book on boston, and in a paper i and probably others of you had read earlier, has argued the revolution cut off wheatleys atlantic ties. And indeed, she did lose patrons in wartime, despite publishing poems celebrating the war effort, general washington, and the prospect of the new nation, she was unable to get her proposed second volume into print and she died penniless in 1784. Was Phyllis Wheatley a victim of the American Revolution . Well, yes and no. For only if one shrinks the revolution to the war, she knew that her pain and freedom were made in part by the controversies we summarize as the American Revolution. She was hardly the only person to starve our work to death in bostons warravaged economy or the only poet to die young for lack of work or patronage in the late 18th century. To depict her as a victim of a lost, potentially more egalitarian Atlantic World is to understate what she accomplished. She helped force the issue of the relationship between the American Revolution and the politics of slavery into public consciousness. She could hardly have done more. No one did. We can respect her contingent , but consequential choice of the Patriot Movement without presuming she was uncritical of the results or even the process while she was doing it. Similarly, Frederick Douglass has been cited as a severe critic of the republic, of the founders hypocrisy. This year i mean, in 2019 his fifth of july address in 1852 received more attention than ever, with its poetic distancing, the fourth of july is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, i must mourn. But this is the same douglass who recently decided to cast his lot with the antislavery interpretation of the constitution. Some have criticized his seeming inconsistency, but there was a deep logic, as well as Political Savvy here. It is the same understanding wheatley had, that to celebrate what was good and criticize what was lacking in the American Revolution were two sides of the same civic coin. Both were necessary for political reasons, but largely because both were true. So it is all the more important that historians push back critically against voices who insist the constitution was not proslavery, but also against those who would say it had no antislavery implications or uses whatsoever. It remains more important, i think, to address the myth that the Founding Fathers never thought about slavery politically, that black people werent central actors of the period, and the problematic notion that no white person with power ever really meant that all men are created equal. To keep, dare i say, our faith with wheatley and douglass as founders of the republic in which i hope we will live, as some of the real heroes of the early republic, means exploring and teaching how the revolution was a triumph and tragedy, precisely because it was an emancipation and a betrayal of its most revolutionary, egalitarian potential. We must embrace the africanamerican experience in the revolution and early republic as paradigmatic, not exceptional. Exploitable more than paradoxical. And, of course, tragic as well as ironic. There is much work to be done here. As annette implied in her charge to us, revolutions must be measured for what they do for everyone, and that is precisely because revolutions do implicate those at the bottom, they inspire backlashes or thermodors. The fact that revolutionaries still have a reasonable claim on the American Revolution, i think explains what we are going through politically right now. What can we expect in a republic built on slavery, yet also on the denial of slaverys nature . A republic built on the denial of slaverys significance as politics, and on the antislavery denial of that denial . [applause] well, who . Number five. I know your pain. My charge is to wake you up, or to inspire you. I want to thank dr. Gordon reed for inviting me to participate in this very esteemed panel of scholars. I and my book, a curse upon the nation, the curse being slavery and the way it fostered racial animosity and violence that we still contend with today, i end my book with a call for some kind of truth and reconciliation commission. Solution to dealing with our history of racial violence with White Supremacy and the reconciliation of that history. I know that it is a big idea, with very little wind behind it. But i would like to start here today by confessing that when i was a little girl, i had trouble when i heard or read the phrase , our Founding Fathers, of whom i learned about in my elementary years. I also knew that some of the Founding Fathers had been slaveholders, and i knew some of my ancestors had been enslaved. And so in my young mind, something was wrong. As best as i can explain, i was uncomfortable and i did not know why. Fastforward a few decades. Ok, maybe a couple of few decades. As a historian i have come to appreciate the power of intuition. As i learned many of those enslaved did not view the men we call Founding Fathers as Founding Fathers. Indeed, they saw them as enemies. For example, black loyalist boston king from South Carolina disclosed, in my former life, i had suffered greatly from the cruelty and injustice of the whites, which has me look upon them in general as our enemies. And even after king was able to escape to freedom with the british army, he still felt at times an uneasy distrust toward them. Now, Thomas Jefferson, george madisonon, and james did own slaves. But they also clearly inherited the anxiety that came with engaging in an institution that went against what they understood was natural law. Indeed, the english philosopher john locke wrote in his two treatises of government that it was reasonable and just that i should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction. Slavery, locke argued, because of the natural desire for freedom, was nothing else but the state of war continued , between lawful conqueror and captive. In notes from virginia, Thomas Jefferson in 1789 canonized the idea that a state of war always existed between master and slave. Jeffersons belief in the possible extermination of the one race or the other reflected the views that large numbers of enslaved people were a dangerous threat to those who were their masters, and whites generally. Echoing these fears, william iii, of the largest one slaveowners in virginia, wrote about the public danger so many slaves represented, and future president , James Madison, agreed that blacks who were free would soon be at war with whites, if too near. Jefferson and other slaveholders believed there was always a possibility of war between the races because they understood that slaves, just like white men, would always try to free themselves. But these ideas of being at war with one another were not new, but were rather the same ideas that were generated by the very first settlers throughout the british colonies about their enslaved populations. Reifiednsions were only reified during and after the haitian revolution. The colonists were afraid, according to Lieutenant Governor william boll of South Carolina, that need grows may become their enemies, if not their masters. And this is the real issue, they would be unable to withstand or prevent slaves from taking over the region after successful insurrection. Thatlexander coming told blacks in South Carolina were constantly in danger of blacks rising up against them. Ironically, merchants in bristol, england, who were deeply invested in buyers and sellers in the slave trade, acknowledged south carolinian views that those enslaved needed redress, and because South Carolina is overstocked with blacks in proportion to the number of whites, and it must be allowed that three independent companies terrify the slaves. The increased demand for african labor over the years only amplified the conditions that heightened white fears, and unlike with native americans, the colonists believed they could not completely rid themselves of their african slaves because they needed them. In a debate over the importation of africans in 1785, charles pickney, a general in the American Revolution and a member of the Continental Congress, asked, was it not well understood that no planter could cultivate his land without slaves . Moreover, pinckney argued this country was not capable of being cultivated by white men, as appeared on the attempt made by georgia. Ralph izzard, however, a planter and senator from South Carolina, was not convinced slaves would always remain invaluable. Izzard imagined in a 1784 letter to Matthias Hutchinson that what would happen if, the same horrid tragedies among our need grows, which have been so fatally exhibited in the French Islands in the haitian revolution, were to occur in america . He predicted proprietors of need grows themselves be the instruments of destroying that species of property. Rather than see their property population freed in South Carolina, or any other american colony. Thus, slaveowners, including those Founding Fathers like washington, jefferson, and madison, made a calculated choice to perpetuate the institution of african bondage, and they used violence and the threat of death to sustain it. To be clear, africans in the diaspora only attempted to kill whites in order to free themselves and their families from enslavement. And if slaves from africa were successful in killing any of their white oppressors, they were viewed as criminals who were sentenced to death for their crimes. Liberal republican ideas of freedom, therefore, never applied to people of african descent. So for example, when gabriel, a 24yearold blacksmith living in richmond on a plantation, belonging to thomas browser, organized a strategy that was so detailed and multidimensional that whites could scarcely believe they caught it in time, the Virginia House of delegates immediately met in secret to discuss the attempted insurrection on december 12, 1800. A virginia newspaper assumed that to solve the revolution in the french colony was the model of leadership used by slaves like gabriel. The Virginia Legislature drafted a proposal that the governor of virginia, james monroe, submitted to the president of the United States. In this proposal they requested that president Thomas Jefferson begin negotiations with other european powers who had established african colonies, to allow americans to send free or emancipated blacks to reside there. Their solution was to remove black people from america, or at least virginia. So he began talks with the sierra leone company, the British Company in charge of black settlement in sierra leone, but nothing ever came of it. And then he reached out to the government of portugal, with no result. And then he subsequently gave up. But the enslaved did not. The nat turner insurrection had been for gabriel and earlier insurrections across the west indies, was motivated by what he believed was the solution to ending an ungodly institution, and against those who believed in the rightness of his oppression. A baptist preacher, reportedly confessed, he knew by the signs in the heavens i should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons. In response to turners attempted revolution, militia member robert ness parker negros areat the taken in and executed every day. Day there, day. On september 24, senator evans wrote that he met a man on a stagecoach who witnessed blacks being taken prisoner, tortured and treated in a barbarous manner, nose and ears cut off, cheeks cut out, jaws broken and set up as a mark to shoot at. If a black was found outdoors after dark without a pass, he would be immediately shot down. The constitutional wig reported they had evidence of a slaughter of many blacks without misconduct, and under circumstances of great barbarity. Although the whigs offered apology to the people of southhampton, mildly deplored that human nature urged them to such extremities, let the fact not be doubted by those most concerned that another such insurrection would be the signal for the extermination of the whole black population in the quarter of the state where it occurs. These words were no idle threat, as white former resident mr. Robinson confirmed. That there was not a virginian whose mind would revolt at any cruelty, however atrocious, of which blacks might be the object. According to robinson, he assumed that the blacks were not men and that they ought all to be exterminated. They had declared war first, he said. Let them be hunted like wild beast. Moreover, the idea that all slaveowners valued the lives of their slaves is perhaps troubled by one woman, a pious methodist who said she would willingly cast her own slaves into the street, there to be shot, provided others who had slaves would agree to do the same. Northerners in their newspapers also expressed their concerns over the plight of black people after turners efforts to destroy the institution. The liberator printed countless articles that affirmed the violence experienced by blacks in the aftermath of the turners rebellion was of a savage and more bloodthirsty character than any that occurred in the country since its early conflict with the savages, with the single exception of general jacksons barbarous massacre of indians after he had gotten them into his power at horseshoe bend. Northern ideas about black people being at serious risk fostered the belief that southerners were poised to give over a whole race of 2 million human beings to butchery and destruction. Of truction destruction. Black americans in the revolutionary era and beyond from experience that arming and organizing large numbers of slaves would be perceived by the south and north as an act of insurrection, requiring state and federal military action, but yet they did it anyway. Not as fanatics nor as extremists, but as human beings who were forced to fight for their rights, much the same way as the Founding Fathers of this nation. So why didnt these Founding Fathers err on the right side of history . Why didnt they take the opportunity to eliminate the fear . The constant state of war continued that john locke predicted between master and slave in america . I think benjamin banneker, a and, selftaught astronomer farmer from baltimore maryland, had it right to his letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1791, where he recommends to jefferson and all others, to wean yourselves from those narrow prejudices which you have imbibed the. Bibed as an introduction to illgotten power and money, because he argued it is the indispensable duty of those who maintain within themselves the right of human nature and profess the obligations of christianity, to extend their power and influence to the release of every part of the human race from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under. Indeed, as absalom jones, founder of the African Episcopal Church of st. Thomas, the First Black Church in philadelphia, theit, quote in constitution and fugitive bill, no mention is made of black people or slaves. Therefore, if the bill of rights or declaration of congress are of any validity, we beseech that as we are men, we may be admitted to partake of the liberties and inalienable rights therein held for us, firmly believing that the extending of justice and equality to all classes would be a means of drawing down the blessings of heaven upon this land, and thus the real happiness of every member of the community. But this was not done, so the curse of slavery continued to plague the political, social, and economic policies of america, only to be terminated by a terrible civil war. But the residual effects of the institution may have become embodied in our continuous struggle with racism and the racial violence that supported ideas of White Supremacy, and in the way we tell the story of how america began. Beyond the intellectual brilliance of our founding documents. So i will end with this. When we speak about our Founding Fathers, in light of all that has been discussed here, we must ask ourselves, much like i as a young girl must have done, who is the our that we are speaking about . Thank you. [applause] we have time for some questions. Anybody . No one . [laughter] what now . You dont want to be on cspan . [laughter] who doesnt want to be on cspan . [laughter] here is a question. We are running late. I started late because of the escalator. You, didnt you raise your hand . [inaudible] [laughter] i will put my money where my mouth is. I know you have something to say. Say who you are and where you are from and all of that. Are we on . I just finished my masters degree at Chapman University in orange, california. I guess my question is kind of collective. The progression was really good, but we have these founding beliefs, but it seems like the founding beliefs may be really arent the final beliefs we agree, but are they inherently white beliefs . This is something that i have seen floating around. That enlightenment beliefs might be basically for white privileged. I would love to hear how you guys play with that. Thank you. [laughter] no questions and no answers. I would only add that not all the white people. Go ahead. Not all the white people are on board either. In many ways, the American Revolution is a minority project, pushed by a minority of people. If what you mean is the enlightenment, there are many nonwhite people who are part of enlightenment thinking. Certainly the native leaders i was talking about, they read newspapers, they read a lot of the same things the founders have done. I guess we can say both sides of that have a problem. That is what historians do, right . My name is Clifton Berry and im from st. Louis, missouri. I am a part of the unpaid labor project. I guess my question for you is, what are the implications for of what you are saying, and do you see the typical way that historians speak about slavery, i. E. , agency and victimhood, as being sufficient to answer todays question. Our project is about contributions. I just want to ask you how you see what we deem the contribution perspective of slavery and its implications for today. We dont hear about the collective about 12. 5 Million People working for 250 years and the implications of that for today. Those are the kinds of questions that maybe you can speak to. It always bothered me that this weird, cloudy idea that some people belong in this country and some people dont. And no two people can agree on for wherely that is that came from. But i think we see that this week, and people in gatherings of this size and larger, and sometimes they are at rallies they have this collective idea of, some people belong and some dont. And i am interested in how that came to be and how deep those roots go. For me, that is at the core of why i keep coming back to a lot of these same questions. I dont think they understood how that the people at the time understood how that was created. I think their arguments are put forward in the founding era that then get challenged, or people anchor into some things. Mike, all men are created equal means me. Poor nations means me. And they try to fight against those boundaries, but counter arguments most put forward by white people is, we have the state behind us and that does change things. That is why i think the revolutionary era is different from some of these conflicts that come before it. Anyone else . I was going to weigh in. In terms of what it means to the grand narrative, i think is what you are asking. We just dont have an inclusive history. We dont talk, not only we dont talk about africanamerican contributions and native american contributions, but any other ethnic group that is outside of the purview of what is considered white in that at that time. Whether it is of asian origin or irish people, who were not considered white in an earlier period of time. Or other, lets put it that way. So, i think it is not a matter of agency. It is just a matter of really understanding how this all began. It is complicated and slavery is a messy story. And everybody i mean, jefferson is a complicated person. But i would push back a little about jefferson being antislavery, only in the sense that he does not free his slaves. So, no, you can talk the talk, but if you dont walk the walk, if you dont free me, that idea has very little meaning to me, has very little power. And it shouldnt have a great deal of power, in my mind, to us as historians. We have to look at the actions of these people, not just what they say, and that is true of any person who leaves any kind of record. What my research i was going in the 19th century, but then i got pushed back to the 16th century. This intellectual idea of race war and extermination, which is a tactic of war, which means im going to kill your mother, all of your significant other noncombatants to make you surrender, to make you give up, to make you give in. So even though native american and africanamerican people know that that is what is on the table and that is what is at risk, amazingly, they still continue to contribute, they still continue to sign up to be a part of the military, the militias. They still continue to free themselves, to have families and to love their children. This is part of the american story and part of the American Revolutionary story. But, you know, i was very hesitant to admit that my view of the Founding Fathers is very different until i asked my husband and he was like, i thought the same thing. I thought, maybe i am not unique in this story. But i did have a memory of questioning myself about why i was uncomfortable with this phrase of Founding Fathers. The good news for us as historians is there is a ton more work and research to be done that is new and has not really been touched. That is the good news. The not so good news in my view that we have not worked hard , is enough, we have not moved as far along as i would have hoped in this day and time so that our childrens children have a whole body of literature that tells a more comprehensive story about what the American Revolution meant, and where the pitfalls were, why they were there, and what the corrective might be in terms of our own times, in terms of understanding how we got to where we are in the first place. Anyone else . University of edinburgh. My question is sort of a followup on the term Founding Fathers, which strikes me as a very problematic term, with the certain men, that excludes certain people. Is there a way we can get rid of this term or have an alternative that does not have all these loaded meanings with it, if we want to talk about a particular set of political actors. Are there better terms we should use or should we ditch it entirely . Lets have a vote. Ditch . [laughter] not so easy to ditch, but , you know, the monuments. Look at the confederate monuments. There has been movement on that. Obviously it needs consensus. Just having conversations with people helps a great deal. Just be able to say that this is how i feel about it and here is why is really important, and maybe our work can reflect that more nuanced perspective about some of those terms. I will also say, on saturdays plenary. That bring some stuff up. 4 00 on i think i should let saturday. You all go to the reception. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you all. Announcer this is American History tv. Each weekend, we feature 48 hours of exploring our nations past. Next on cspan3, university of maryland history professor richard bell talks about the declaration of independence, its origins, purpose, and global significance during and after the American Revolution. The Smithsonian Associates hosted this event. Heather dr. Bell has presented many outstanding programs for us on topics related to early American History and on the revolutionary war period over the last couple of years. Dr. Bell received his phd from harvard and his ba from the university of cambridge in england. He is an associate professor of history at the university of maryland in college park, where he specializes in early American History and cultural history, and has been honored with more than half a dozen Teaching Awards at harvard and university of maryland. The American Society of 18th century studies bestowed an