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Commentary. Reflection. Judgment.

American Revolution

Robert Middlekauff, RIP

John Fea   |  April 7, 2021

Middlekauff is best known as the author of The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. It was the first book to appear in the Oxford History of the United States series, which also includes James McPherson’s Battle Cry for Freedom: […]

The Author’s Corner with Steven Elliott

Annie Thorn   |  April 1, 2021

Steven Elliott is Part-time Lecturer of History at Rutgers University-Newark. This interview is based on his new book, Surviving the Winters: Housing Washington’s Army during the American Revolution (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write Surviving […]

Did the Army Corps of Engineers just find a cannon from the HMS Rose?

John Fea   |  March 14, 2021

In The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America I wrote about Philip Vickers Fithian’s response to cannon fire from the British warship HMS Rose: On July 11 [1776] Philip passed through […]

World Socialist Web Site publishes its critique of the 1619 Project

John Fea   |  March 10, 2021

Learn more about David North and Thomas Mackaman’s edited collection, The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History. The book includes essays or interviews with Victoria Bynum, James McPherson, James Oakes, Gordon Wood, Adolph Reed Jr., […]

CPAC 2021 is over. Let’s check-in with the MAGA evangelicals

John Fea   |  March 3, 2021

On Saturday night I published a post on the Trump evangelical response to the former president’s speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. You can read it here. Let’s check-in on them today: The Liberty University Falkirk Center crowd […]

The CPAC vocabulary. Defining terms.

John Fea   |  February 27, 2021

I am teaching the American Revolution this semester. The other day, as we were reading and interpreting some primary documents, I asked the students to notice how the writers of these documents all seemed to use a similar political language. […]

Liberty University’s Falkirk Center is promoting an embarrassingly bad Eric Metaxas speech on the American Revolution

John Fea   |  February 21, 2021

I was going to include this in my MAGA evangelicals post this morning, but I decided to save it for a separate post. The Falkirk Center at Liberty University just tweeted a video of an Eric Metaxas speech: Almost everything […]

Was there ever a “black-robed regiment”?

John Fea   |  February 6, 2021

Recently evangelical writer and radio host Eric Metaxas interviewed Rev. Bill Cook, the “CEO” of the Virginia branch of the “black-robe regiment.” Watch: Some comments: There was no such thing as the “black robe regiment” in revolutionary America. Historian and […]

What should we make of Trump’s 1776 Commission Report? Part 2

John Fea   |  January 20, 2021

Read the entire series here. As I type, I am learning that Joe Biden will rescind the 1776 commission today. But I will go ahead with my analysis since I imagine that states with conservative governors or legislators may try […]

“The Culture of the Confederation Era”

John Fea   |  December 10, 2020

The Panorama, the online site of The Journal of the Early Republic, is running an informative roundtable on the United States under the Articles of Confederation. Here is a taste of Rosemarie Zagarri‘s introduction to the roundtable: In March 2020, […]

Episode 74: An Independent Woman in Revolutionary America

John Fea   |  November 8, 2020

In this episode we talk with historian Lorri Glover about Eliza Lucas Pinckney, a woman who lived through the American Revolution in South Carolina. Pinckney’s story sheds light on gender, agriculture, politics, and slavery in this era and unsettles many […]

The Author’s Corner with Donald Johnson

Annie Thorn   |  November 5, 2020

Donald Johnson is Assistant Professor of History at North Dakota State University. This interview is based on his new book, Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). JF: What led you to […]

Image of the Day

John Fea   |  October 31, 2020

Context

A short history of the 1619 Project

John Fea   |  October 13, 2020

Over at The Washington Post, Sarah Ellison chronicles the ways The New York Times‘s 1619 Project has influenced American politics in 2020. Here is a taste: Sean Wilentz remembers the Sunday morning in August when he walked down his driveway to […]

The American founders practiced revisionist history

John Fea   |  September 28, 2020

I have argued endlessly at this blog and in other writings that revisionism is the lifeblood of the historical profession. Over at The Washington Post, historian Michael Hattem reminds us that the founding fathers were also revisionists. Here is a […]

Is the 1619 Project backing-off some of its more problematic claims about the American founding?

John Fea   |  September 23, 2020

It sure seems that way. Here is Tom Mackaman and David North at World Socialist Web Site: The New York Times, without announcement or explanation, has abandoned the central claim of the 1619 Project: that 1619, the year the first slaves […]

“Sit-in” on class today

John Fea   |  September 14, 2020

Today I am lecturing on the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution in my Pennsylvania History class at Messiah University. When I gave this lecture in 2017, C-SPAN was there to film for its “Lectures in History” series. Watch: Listen to entire lecture […]

The Greenwich Tea Burning in History and Memory

John Fea   |  September 2, 2020

I gave this lecture at the Cumberland County Historical Society in Greenwich on February 3, 2019:

GOP Convention: Night 3

John Fea   |  August 27, 2020

Yesterday was my first day of face-to-face teaching since March. I am not yet in “classroom shape,” so I was exhausted by the end of the day. Mentally, I was still reeling from multiple technology failures (mostly due to my […]

Barack Obama’s 2020 DNC convention address, democratic virtues, and the failure of Trumpism

John Fea   |  August 20, 2020

Watch Barack Obama speak to the nation on Wednesday night from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bps3m4eFTuE&w=560&h=315] Obama’s choice of venues speaks volumes. At a time when many on the Left are disparaging the American Revolution […]

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