Shays' Rebellion

In early America, the soaring ideals behind establishing a new democracy were marked by cycles of progress and backlash.

On the continued revolutionary rhetoric and ideology that persisted in America even after the American Revolution.

What the political crisis in post-revolutionary America has to teach us about our own time.

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.

Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous essay challenged the voting citizens of New York to hold fast to the truth when deciding to ratify (or not) the US Constitution.

On the folly of relying on history to settle the debate over whether the Fourteenth Amendment should bar Trump from office.

Americans have long demanded — and regularly received — debt relief from legislatures.

Woody Holton’s "Liberty is Sweet" charts not only the contest with Great Britain over “home rule” but also the internal struggle over who should rule at home. 

Discover the stories, spaces, and people of the American Revolutionary War era through maps, interpretive essays, and interactives.

The question of how to balance state and national power was perhaps the single most important and most challenging question confronting the early republic.

Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era is remembered for the wrong reasons, and why?

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.

Swedberg's new book shows how prevalent concerns about mental illness were to the people of the early American republic.

Far from a partisan for free markets, the Founding Father insisted on the need for economic planning. We need more of that vision today.

The story of the democratic movements that the framers of the U.S. Constitution feared and sought to suppress.

A lost volume of American history finds the light of day.

Moral thinking about debt has fluctuated throughout U.S. history. Today’s calls for cancellation suggest it may be poised for transformation once again.

Fisher Ames’s philosophy can be summed up as follows: the “power of the people, if uncontroverted, is licentious and mobbish.”

The troubling embrace of the founder of American finance.