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Join historian Bruce A. Ragsdale on December 9, 2021 for a discussion of his On December 9, 2021, historian Bruce A. Ragsdale presented a lecture about his book, Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. For more than forty years, George Washington was dedicated to an innovative and experimental course of farming at Mount Vernon, where he sought to demonstrate the public benefits of recent advances in British agriculture. The methods of British agricultural improvement also shaped Washington's management of enslaved labor, and he was at the forefront to efforts to adapt slavery to new kinds of farming. His ultimate inability to reconcile the ideals of enlightened farming with coerced labor and race-based slavery was critical to his decision to free the enslaved people under his control. Washington at the Plow significantly enriches the more familiar biography of the revolutionary general and first president and offers a new perspective on the founders' response to abolitionist appeals. Bruce A. Ragsdale served for twenty years as director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. He has been a fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon and the International Center for Jefferson Studies. He is the author of A Planters' Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia and Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.
On July 4, 1791, fifteen years after Americans declared independence, two men walked into a Virginia field. Only one walked out alive. John Crane, the son of an elite Virginia family, killed a man named Abraham Vanhorn after the two exchanged some heated words. Crane was arrested in the name of the law, but two decades earlier he would have been detained in the name of the king. Why does this change matter? And what does it have to tell us about how Virginians and other Americans remade their British identity into an American one in the years after independence? Today's episode features Dr. Jessica Lowe of the University of Virginia School of Law. In her new book, Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia, Professor Lowe unpacks the case of Commonwealth v. Crane and what it meant to create a republic of laws and not kings. This episode concludes our four-part mini-series on the history of early American law. Check out previous episodes at www.mountvernon.org/podcast. You can support this podcast as well as new research into George Washington and his world by becoming a Mount Vernon member. About Our Guest: Jessica Lowe, Ph.D. specializes in 18th- and 19th-century American legal history. She received her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, and clerked in the District of Connecticut and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Lowe also practiced litigation and appellate law at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., where she worked on a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She is admitted to practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Princeton University. About Our Host: Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. leads the Center for Digital History at the Washington Library. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, Ambuske graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA Law, Ambuske co-directed the 1828 Catalogue Project and the Scottish Court of Session Project. He is currently at work on a book about emigration from Scotland in the era of the American Revolution as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press.
On July 4, 1791, fifteen years after Americans declared independence, two men walked into a Virginia field. Only one walked out alive. John Crane, the son of an elite Virginia family, killed a man named Abraham Vanhorn after the two exchanged some heated words. Crane was arrested in the name of the law, but two decades earlier he would have been detained in the name of the king. Why does this change matter? And what does it have to tell us about how Virginians and other Americans remade their British identity into an American one in the years after independence? Today's episode features Dr. Jessica Lowe of the University of Virginia School of Law. In her new book, Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia, Professor Lowe unpacks the case of Commonwealth v. Crane and what it meant to create a republic of laws and not kings. This episode concludes our four-part mini-series on the history of early American law. Check out previous episodes at www.mountvernon.org/podcast. You can support this podcast as well as new research into George Washington and his world by becoming a Mount Vernon member. About Our Guest: Jessica Lowe, Ph.D. specializes in 18th- and 19th-century American legal history. She received her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, and clerked in the District of Connecticut and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Lowe also practiced litigation and appellate law at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., where she worked on a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She is admitted to practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Princeton University. About Our Host: Jim Ambuske leads the digital history initiatives at the Washington Library. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia in 2016 with a focus on Scotland and America in an Age of War and Revolution. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA, Ambuske co-directed the 1828 Catalogue Project and the Scottish Court of Session Project. Ambuske is currently at work on a book entitled Emigration and Empire: America and Scotland in the Revolutionary Era, as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mountvernon/message
Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe’s book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States. Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe’s book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States. Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe’s book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States. Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe’s book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States. Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe's book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States. Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.
On August 24, 2017, 2017, Jon Kukla delivered a Banner Lecture at the Virginia Historical Society entitled “Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty.” Patrick Henry is remembered today mostly for one line from one speech that he made: “Give me liberty or give me death.” This is a shame because he was one of the leading patriots of the Revolutionary era, Virginia’s first governor after independence, a powerful voice in the early republic, and a great orator and statesman who played such a crucial role in shaping the course of Revolutionary Virginia’s history. In Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty, Jon Kukla, who has been studying Henry for years and has even lived on one of his former plantations, restores Patrick Henry to the front rank of American Revolutionary patriots. Jon Kukla has served as director of historical research and publishing at the Library of Virginia, curator and then director of the Historic New Orleans Collection, and as director of Red Hill, The Patrick Henry National Memorial in Charlotte County. He is the author of A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, and Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty.
On October 9 at noon, Lorri Glover delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Founders as Fathers: Going Home with Virginia's Revolutionary." Set against the backdrop of Revolutionary Virginia, Lorri Glover’s new book, Founders as Fathers: Family Values and Revolutionary Politics, offers an intimate portrait of the lives of the country’s most celebrated political leaders, revealing, for the first time, how they struggled to balance civic duties against domestic responsibilities and contended with a revolution that remade family life every bit as much as political institutions. Glover’s lecture will bring to life the surprising, profound connections between family and politics in the lives of the Virginians who became the principal architects of the American Republic: George Mason, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Lorri Glover, the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in the Department of History at Saint Louis University, has written several books about early American history from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, including Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation (2007) and Founders as Fathers: Family Values and Revolutionary Politics (2014).
On October 9, 2014, Lorri Glover delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Founders as Fathers: Going Home with Virginia's Revolutionary." Set against the backdrop of Revolutionary Virginia, Lorri Glover's new book, Founders as Fathers: Family Values and Revolutionary Politics, offers an intimate portrait of the lives of the country's most celebrated political leaders, revealing, for the first time, how they struggled to balance civic duties against domestic responsibilities and contended with a revolution that remade family life every bit as much as political institutions. Glover's lecture will bring to life the surprising, profound connections between family and politics in the lives of the Virginians who became the principal architects of the American Republic: George Mason, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Lorri Glover, the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in the Department of History at Saint Louis University, has written several books about early American history from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, including Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation (2007) and Founders as Fathers: Family Values and Revolutionary Politics (2014). The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.
On July 24 at noon, Thomas E. Buckley delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Establishing Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Statute in Virginia." The significance of the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom goes far beyond the borders of the Old Dominion. Its influence ultimately extended to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the separation of church and state. In his latest book, Thomas Buckley tells the story of the statute, beginning with its background in the struggles of colonial dissenters against an oppressive Church of England. Displacing an established church by instituting religious freedom, the Virginia statute provided the most substantial guarantees of religious liberty of any state in the new nation. The effort to implement Jefferson’s statute has even broader significance in its anticipation of the conflict that would occupy the whole country after the Supreme Court nationalized the religion clause of the First Amendment in the 1940s. Thomas E. Buckley, professor in residence in the department of history of Loyola Marymount University, is the author of several books on Virginia’s religious history, including Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 and Establishing Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Statute in Virginia.
On July 24, 2014, Thomas E. Buckley delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Establishing Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Statute in Virginia." The significance of the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom goes far beyond the borders of the Old Dominion. Its influence ultimately extended to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the separation of church and state. In his latest book, Thomas Buckley tells the story of the statute, beginning with its background in the struggles of colonial dissenters against an oppressive Church of England. Displacing an established church by instituting religious freedom, the Virginia statute provided the most substantial guarantees of religious liberty of any state in the new nation. The effort to implement Jefferson's statute has even broader significance in its anticipation of the conflict that would occupy the whole country after the Supreme Court nationalized the religion clause of the First Amendment in the 1940s. Thomas E. Buckley, professor in residence in the department of history of Loyola Marymount University, is the author of several books on Virginia's religious history, including Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 and Establishing Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Statute in Virginia. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.