The American Revolution happened in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. In one of the timeliest history books of the publishing season, historian Andrew Wehrman visits the podcast to talk about what the patriots of the American Revolution and the...
Andrew Wehrman
A St. Louis anti-vaxxer was arrested, strapped down by four men, and vaccinated after trying to convince Blacks from the South not to take the vaccine
The article is from the St. Louis Dispatch, August 6, 1923. Thanks to historian Andrew Wehrman for bringing this to my attention. Here is his Twitter commentary:...
What a Charles Willson Peale painting can teach us about vaccinating our children
Central Michigan University historian Andrew Wehrman has been an indispensable guide in this age of COVID-19. Here is a taste of his recent piece at Age of Revolutions blog: For portrait painters like Charles Willson Peale, ignoring smallpox was part...
Sources on the history of religious-based vaccine resistance in America
I included a lot of history in today’s Current feature on vaccine exemptions. The piece draws on a talk I gave earlier this week to the constituents of the Council of Foreign Relations. I am told that the video will...
Tweet of the Day
Andrew Wehrman nails it:...
Vaccination mandates have a long history. Backlash to vaccination mandates have a long history.
Good to see Andrew Wehrman cited in Maggie Astor’s New York Times piece. A taste: Professor Wehrman this week tweeted an example of what, in an interview, he said was a “ubiquitous” phenomenon: The health board in Urbana, Ohio, Jordan’s hometown, enacted...
Vaccine mandates are very American
Ohio representative Jim Jordan recently tweeted this: Not really. Here is The Washington Post: At a time when the delta variant’s summer surge has renewed the nation’s divisions over coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday said mandates enforcing...
Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States
It’s official. The Trump presidency is over. The Biden presidency is here. Here are a few thoughts, with the help of my Twitter feed, on today’s inauguration ceremony: I began the day with a reminder. It’s been a long four...
What early Americans could teach Donald Trump about this pandemic
Check out historian Andrew Wehrman‘s piece at The Washington Post: Thomas Paine, who had helped shift public opinion with “Common Sense” in the spring of 1776, wrote a new book weighing in on the French Revolution from London, titled “The Rights...
Tweet of the Night
It comes from Central Michigan University historian Andrew Wehrman. He comments on Trump’s visit to Jamestown tomorrow: Will Trump mention that on his personal coat of arms John Smith had the three heads of Muslim Turks that he supposedly beheaded?...
The Thanksgiving Paradox
My friend and fellow early American historian Andrew Wehrman  has dubbed Matthew Dennis’s piece at The Conversation “the best of Thanksgiving essays written by an early American historian this year.”  It is hard to argue with Andrew’s assessment of Dennis’s “Why Thanksgiving...