Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library

In 1812, Pennsylvania state legislators contemplated something that most Americans would now find completely unimaginable: demolishing Independence Hall in Philadelphia, converting the site to a series of building lots, and using the proceeds to fund construction of a new statehouse in Harrisburg. Fortunately, Philly’s city leaders pushed back against state officials and preserved this historic landmark for future generations, allowing visitors to commune with the ghosts of the Founding Generation who had taken a “leap in the dark” toward independence and later designed the new Constitution. But saving Independence Hall, and indeed any historic structure, wasn’t just about defending the past; it was also about defining the future. On today’s episode, Whitney Martinko joins Jim Ambuske to discuss why Americans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries battled over the preservation of historic sites and how capitalism shaped the choices and opportunities available to them. Martinko is an Associate Professor of history at Villanova University, and the author of the new book, Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States. What gets saved and what gets destroyed is a lot more complicated than you might think. About Our Guest: Whitney Martinko is an associate professor of History at Villanova University. She is a historian of the early United States with expertise in urban and environmental history, material and visual culture, and histories of capitalism. Her research examines how people have defined the value of historic places and objects—in the past and today. Martinko was raised in Chillicothe, Ohio, and earned degrees in History from Harvard College (BA) and the University of Virginia (MA, PhD). She currently lives in West Philadelphia. 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.

In November 1800, President John Adams composed a letter to his wife, Abigail, just after he moved into the new White House. He concluded his letter to his “dearest friend” this way: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.” As the quote suggests, God was an ever present force in the life of John Adams and his family, and while they hoped that providence would smile on the United States, they lived in a republic committed to religious freedom and increasingly the separation of church and state. How did religion help the Adams Family to make sense of their American world? And how did that American world change their religious beliefs? On today's episode, we're pleased to bring you the audio version of Jim Ambuske's recent live stream conversation with Dr. Sara Georgini, Series Editor of the Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and author of the new book Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family. About Our Guest: Sara Georgini, Ph.D., is the Series Editor for The Papers of John Adams, part of The Adams Papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and author of Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her research focuses on early American thought, culture, and religion. She is co-founder and contributor to The Junto and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History blogs. Georgini writes about American history, thought, and culture for Smithsonian and CNN. 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 the evening of March 5, 1770, Captain Thomas Preston and a small contingent of British Redcoats under his command fired into a crowd of civilians massing on King Street in Boston, killing several people. Many of us are familiar with Paul Revere’s famous engraving of what he called “the Bloody Massacre,” what we now know as “the Boston Massacre.” But Revere’s depiction of the incident obscures much more than it reveals about the thousands of connections between Bostonians and the British Army in the years before the American Revolution. On today's episode, we're pleased to bring you the audio version of Jim Ambuske's recent live stream conversation with Dr. Serena Zabin, professor of history at Carleton College. Zabin is the author of the new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History. About Our Guest: Serena Zabin is a professor of early America and director of the program in American Studies at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. She received degrees from Bowdoin College, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Professor Zabin’s newest work, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in February 2020. 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.

In December 1799, George Washington died after a short illness. His body and his legacy quickly became fodder for nineteenth century Americans – free and enslaved – who were struggling to make sense of what it meant to be an American as well as the nation’s identity. Americans across the divide used Washington and his memory to advance various political and economic interests. Some, like Federalists, yoked their political fortunes and their belief in a strong central government to Washington’s legacy, much to the abhorrence of Jeffersonian Republicans, who championed the yeoman farmer and a smaller federal state. Enslaved people at Mount Vernon who never knew Washington in life used their fictive attachment to him to sell goods and services to the hundreds of Americans who made a civic pilgrimage to the Virginia plantation each year. And all the while, Washington’s heirs dealt with a constant stream of visitors, trying to balance their private property interests against the idea that Washington was the “property of the nation.” On today’s episode, Matthew Costello joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his aptly titled book, Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President. About Our Guest:  Matthew Costello is Vice President of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History at the White House Historical Association. He received his Ph.D. in history from Marquette University. Costello has published articles in The Journal of History and Cultures, Essays in History, The Dome, and White House History. His book, The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President was published by University Press of Kansas in fall 2019. 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.

In 1757, Martha Dandridge Custis paid the artist John Wollaston the handsome sum of 56 pistoles for portraits of her, her husband Daniel Parke Custis, and their children, John and Martha. A pistole was a Spanish gold coin commonly used in the colony at the time. The future Mrs. Martha Washington was among the hundreds of Virginians who had their portraits painted over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They used portraiture to depict their wealth and status among the Virginia aristocracy, communicate ideas about gender, and cement their identities as cultured members of the British Empire. Many of these portraits survive in museums, historical societies, archives, and even private homes. Many of them have been lost to the ravages of time, and mentioned only in passing in letters, diaries, or other pieces of evidence. Fortunately, you can now see many of these portraits in one place. On today’s episode, Dr. Janine Yorimoto Boldt joins me to discuss her new digital project, Colonial Virginia Portraits. Inspired by her dissertation on early American visual culture, and built in collaboration with the Omohundro Institute, Colonial Virginia Portraits is a fascinating way to see our early American past. About Our Guest: Janine Yorimoto Boldt is the 2018-2020 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the American Philosophical Society. She is lead curator for the 2020 exhibition, Dr. Franklin, Citizen Scientist, and was co-curator of Mapping a Nation: Shaping the Early American Republic. Janine received her PhD in American Studies from William & Mary in 2018. Her current book project investigates the political function and development of portraiture in colonial Virginia. 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.

In 1793, the dreaded Yellow Fever swept through Philadelphia. The deadly virus raced through the nation’s capital between August and November, killing at least 5,000 of the city’s inhabitants. Among the multi-racial group of Americans on the front lines of the battle against the disease was Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a key figure in the nation’s early medical establishment. Rush, who was the architect of the reunion between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams after years of bitter silence between the two men, was a Founding Father in his own right, but one often overshadowed by his contemporaries. On today’s episode, historian and journalist Stephen Fried joins Jim Ambuske for a wide-ranging conversation about Rush, founding legacies, and of course public health and medicine in the eighteenth century. Fried is the author of the recent book, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father. About Our Guest: Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author who teaches at Columbia University and at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of seven acclaimed nonfiction books, including Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time (a New York Times bestseller that was the subject of a PBS documentary); Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (which inspired the Emmy-winning HBO film Gia starring Angelina Jolie); Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs (which triggered an FDA inquiry into CNS adverse reactions to antibiotics); The New Rabbi (a behind-the-scenes look at one of the nation’s most powerful houses of worship struggling to choose a new spiritual leader) and a collection of his magazine columns on being a spouse, Husbandry. He is also co-author, with Patrick Kennedy, of the 2015 New York Times bestseller A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. 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.

In May 1865, Union forces captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Irwinville, Georgia as the Civil War neared its end. Davis had led the Confederate States of America since 1861. He was taken to Fortress Monroe in Virginia, clapped in irons, and given a Bible to read as he awaited his fate. He had waged war against the United States as the commander in chief of a rebel force, and the Constitution was clear: This was treason. And treason was punishable by death. On the surface, you might think that the federal prosecution of Davis for treason would have been a slam dunk. In fact, Davis’s conviction was far from certain. On today’s episode, Dr. Cynthia Nicoletti joins Jim Ambuske to discuss her recent book, Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis. Nicoletti is a Professor of History and the Class of 1966 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. As you’ll hear, Nicoletti’s book isn’t about whether or not secession was legal or illegal - that question was decided on the battlefield and in a later Supreme Court decision - rather, it’s about the fundamental questions that Davis’s prosecution raised about the rule of law and democracy as the United States began rebuilding itself in the years after the war. Ensuring that Davis received a fair trial, even if the prosecution lost, would have been a hallmark of the rule of law. But if the prosecution lost, would that validate secession and deny the Union’s permanence? As it turns out, both the prosecution and the defense maneuvered to avoid putting these larger questions before a jury. The trial never happened. Nicoletti helps us understand why. About Our Guest: Cynthia Nicoletti is a legal historian and professor of law at Virginia Law. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the William Nelson Cromwell Prize for the best dissertation in legal history, awarded by the American Society for Legal History in 2011. Her book, Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis, won the 2018 Cromwell Book Prize, given by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation each year for excellence in scholarship to an early career scholar working in the field of American legal history. 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.

There are many things that we take for granted in the modern United States. The president’s cabinet is one of them. Although the cabinet is a prominent fixture of the federal government, and a powerful and essential one at that, it has no foundation in the Constitution. The Framer’s discussed the idea of a cabinet at the Constitutional Convention, but they ultimately rejected it and left it on the cutting room floor. Yet, despite the fact that the cabinet has no Constitutional origin, it does have a historical one. On today’s episode, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky joins Jim Ambuske to explore the cabinet’s emergence during George Washington’s presidency. She also answers listener questions about this formative moment in American history. Chervinsky is a historian at the White House Historical Association and the author of the new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Be sure to check out Mount Vernon’s Facebook Page and YouTube Channel for live stream programming every weekday at noon, with occasional evening events featuring your favorite authors.  You can find more information at https://www.mountvernon.org/digital. About Our Guest: Lindsay M. Chervinksy joined the Association in February 2019 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. She received her B.A. in history and political science at the George Washington University and her Ph.D. and Masters in Early American history from the University of California, Davis. She has received fellowships from the International Center for Jefferson Studies, the Society of Cincinnati, the Organization of American Historians, and the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. She has published articles in the Law and History Review, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and several edited volumes on the presidency and Early America. Her book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution will be published by Harvard University Press in Spring 2020. Lindsay has also shared her work with the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, the Society for Military History, the American Historical Association, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, and more. 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.

Three hundred years ago, timber and turtles were key commodities for English settlers on Barbados and Jamaica. Barbadians sailed northwest to the island of St. Lucia where they harvested timber while Jamaicans headed to the Cayman Islands to take turtles in astounding numbers. Why did they seek these resources hundreds of miles away from their home islands? And what does it have to tell us about how settlers adapted to the environment in the early modern Caribbean? On today’s episode, Dr. Mary Draper joins Jim Ambuske to flesh out how timber and turtles became central to Barbadian and Jamaican society in the colonial era. Draper is an Assistant Professor of History at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas and an expert on the environmental history of the colonial Caribbean. About Our Guest: Mary Draper is Assistant Professor of History at Midwestern State University. She is a scholar of colonial and revolutionary North America and the greater Atlantic world.  Particularly interested in the history of the seventeenth-and eighteenth century British Caribbean, she is working on a book that recovers how the region's urban residents--from colonial officials and merchants to turtlers and enslaved pilots--amassed environmental knowledge to develop, defend, and sustain their volatile coastlines.  An article based on the project was published in the Fall 2017 edition of Early American Studies.  In both her research and teaching, Draper highlights the interconnections that crisscrossed the empires, culture, and ecologies of early North America and the Atlantic world.  After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Rice University, she earned both her Master of Arts degree and  doctorate from the University of Virginia. 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.

It's mid-March 2020 and chances are you're listening to this episode from the comfort of your home as you practice social distancing. Over the past few weeks many schools and businesses has suspended public operations and transitioned to an online environment in an effort to help limit the spread of the coronavirus, known as Covid-19.  While the Washington Library and Mount Vernon may temporarily be closed to the public as well, that doesn't mean we're not hard at work doing what we can to help students, teachers, and scholars make the most of this uncertain time. We've created a new website full of some of our best resources, and a few from our friends, to help facilitate online learning.  On today's episode, Sadie Troy of Mount Vernon's Education Department joins Jim Ambuske to discuss our new site, which you can find at www.mountvernon.org/onlinelearning. There you will find a number of resources to keep your brain engaged and help you expand your knowledge about George Washington and his early American world as we all make adjustments to our routines in the days ahead.  About Our Guest: Sadie Troy is the Student Learning Specialist in Mount Vernon's Education Department. Sadie's primary responsibilities include coordinating, supporting, and creating student programming. She serves as the Mount Vernon lead on The Situation Room Experience: Washington's Cabinet. 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.