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The Setauket Gang: The American Revolutionary Spy Ring You've Never Heard About, Fran Leskovar

Summer Research

Why would some people choose to overlook their apparent differences, ethnicity, religion, gender, and race, and risked being hung to participate in something (spying) where the outcome was not certain? Could they have sensed a moment in history was larger than they were and felt premonition of the new country before it was born?

Due to the complex and vibrant environment, a single answer is not possible. The Anglo-American conflict was not as French nor Russian Revolution; instead, it was a gradual transformation of individual social and political views, as Bernard Bailyn argues. The British aggressive imperial policies had a …

Monuments Ought To Be Considered Case By Case, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

In a press conference last week President Donald Trump made this contribution to the escalating debate about monuments and memorials to American heroes who, by today’s reckoning, failed a moral test.

The statue debate is inherently emotional and when it comes to keeping certain statues up or pulling them down, it riles people up —including Donald Trump. However, it is important to separate President Trump’s intemperate and often factually inaccurate remarks at Tuesday’s press conference from the statue controversy as it is currently playing out. (excerpt)

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2016

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Interview Of Stuart Leibiger, Ph.D., Stuart E. Leibiger Ph.D., Gina L. Bixler

All Oral Histories

Stuart Eric Leibiger, Ph.D. was born in 1965 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the youngest of four children. He spent all of his life along the northeastern seaboard of the United States. He was raised in Connecticut and graduated from the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before settling in the Delaware Valley. He joined the La Salle University history department in 1997 after working at Princeton University for a time. Shortly after being hired as assistant professor or history at La Salle, Dr. Leibiger adapted his dissertation into his first book Founding Friendship: …

Addressing America: George Washington's Farewell And The Making Of National Culture, Politics, And Diplomacy, 1796-1852, Jeffrey Malanson

Jeffrey J. Malanson

No abstract provided.

"'George Washington, The Founder Of American Independence, And Abraham Lincoln, The Liberator Of The Slave': The Founding Fathers And The Election Of 1864", Jeffrey Malanson

Jeffrey J. Malanson

No abstract provided.

"'If I Had It In His Hand-Writing I Would Burn It': Federalists And The Authorship Controversy Over George Washington's Farewell Address, 1808-1859", Jeffrey J. Malanson

Jeffrey J. Malanson

No abstract provided.

Tench Coxe And The Right To Keep And Bear Arms, 1787-1823, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

Tench Coxe, a member of the second rank of this nation's Founders and a leading proponent of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote prolifically about the right to keep and bear arms. In this Article, the authors trace Coxe's story, from his early writings in support of the Constitution, through his years of public service, to his political writings in opposition to the presidential campaigns of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The authors note that Coxe described the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right, and believed that an individual right to bear arms was necessary for …

6. Nationalism Develops In The United States, 1789-1871, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold L. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section XIII: Political Liberalism and Nationalism, 1815-1871

Nationalism as a political creed found roots also in the Western Hemisphere. The United States took a large step toward greater national unity in 1789 when George Washington became the first American President (1789-1797) under the new federal constitution. But just as citizens of the new republic debated the relative merits of aristocratic or democratic government, so they argued without essential agreement on the nature of their union -- whether the locus of authority should reside in the central government or be reserved to the individual states. The followers of Alexander Hamilton, the Federalists, interpreted the Constitution as permitting stronger …

1. The American Revolution, 1776-1789, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold L. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section XI: The Revolutionary Wars, 1776-1815

The long-range causes for the American Revolution may be found in the different social environment developing in England and America during previous decades. John Adams once wrote: "The Revolution was effected before the war commenced, in the minds and hearts of the people." For over a century and a half English colonists in North America had been transforming their Old World culture into something greatly different. The wilderness conditions of the new land generally promoted wider economic opportunity. England's colonial administration allowed extensive experience in self-government in her American possessions. Together these two developments introduced a high degree of social …

Letter From Francis Mairs Huntington-Wilson To Wesley Winans Stout, October 4, 1939, Francis Mairs Huntington-Wilson

World War II Era Documents, 1939-1945

A typed copy of a letter from Francis Mairs Huntington-Wilson addressed to Wesley Winans Stout, dated October 4, 1939. Within, Wilson writes in protest of a recent Saturday Evening Post editorial promoting isolationism.