Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library

This is Part Two of Jim Ambuske's July 2019 chat with Washington Library Research Historian Mary V. Thompson. We’re recasting it in celebration of her 40th anniversary at Mount Vernon. If you missed Part One, please do give it a listen. Happy New Year to you all. About Our Guest: Mary V. Thompson is a long-time (38 year) member of the staff at Mount Vernon, where she is now the Research Historian. She is the author of In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington, A Short Biography of Martha Washington, and "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. 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.

Forty years ago, Mary V. Thompson began her career at Mount Vernon as a museum attendant and history interpreter. She was quickly promoted to Curatorial Assistant, and within a few short years was named Curatorial Registrar, where she began researching numerous Washington and Mount Vernon related topics such as 18th-century foodways, animals, religion, Native Americans, genealogy, domestic life, & slavery. Today, she is the Washington Library’s indispensable Research Historian, and as many of our listeners no doubt know, she is the go to person for all things Mount Vernon and Washington. In celebration of Mary’s 40th anniversary at Mount Vernon, we’re pleased to bring you Jim Ambuske's July 2019 chat with her about her prize-winning book, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon,” which recently won the James Bradford Best Biography Prize from the Society of Historians for the Early Republic. Thompson and Ambuske talked over the course of two episodes about her experiences at Mount Vernon, her interest in the enslaved community at Mount Vernon, and of course, her book. So after you’ve finished with Part One here, be sure to check out Part Two as well. And if you’d like to purchase a copy of Mary’s book, head over to shops.mountvernon.org to grab yours. Congratulations Mary on 40 amazing years at Mount Vernon. Here’s to many more. About Our Guest: Mary V. Thompson is a long-time (38 year) member of the staff at Mount Vernon, where she is now the Research Historian. She is the author of In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington, A Short Biography of Martha Washington, and "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. 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 this season of religious renewal, we bring you a story of religious dissent. In 1638, many of King Charles I’s Presbyterian subjects gathered at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh to sign the National Covenant. By renewing their own covenant with the Almighty, they also pledged to resist encroachments on church government by the king, and the innovations in doctrine he sought to make for the Church of Scotland. As we’ve discovered in previous episodes, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a time of religious upheaval and political discord. Reformation and Civil War remade European society, especially in the British Isles, and profoundly shaped colonial American history. Civil War and religious strife eroded the idea of the divine right of kings, leaving Charles I headless in the end.  These revolutions helped to create the eighteenth-century British world that George Washington rebelled against, as well as the kind of monarch George III would become. Today’s episode builds on recent conversations with Dr. Michelle D. Brock, Dr. Márcia Balisciano, and more as we explore the Covenanters movement in seventeenth-century Scotland with Dr. Karie Schultz.  For many of the thousands of Scots Presbyterians who settled in the American colonies in the decades before the American Revolution, including a man like the Reverend John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence, the National Covenant was a seminal moment in their religious history. Dr. Schultz takes us back to the seventeenth century to help us understand the origins of this crucial contest between king and kirk. Jim Ambuske caught up with Schultz over Zoom earlier this summer as she was finishing up her graduate studies at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the British School in Rome and the host of the podcast, Research in Scottish History, where Schultz and her guests break down exciting new work on a range of topics, from Scots in the Caribbean to the material culture of the hit series Outlander. Do check it out. About Our Guest: Dr. Karie Schultz completed a PhD on 'Political Thought and Protestant Intellectual Culture in the Scottish Revolution, 1637-51' at Queen's University Belfast. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the British School at Rome where she is studying the intellectual networks between Italian Jesuits and the Scottish and English priests training at their respective colleges in Rome, 1600-1745. She hosts the podcast, Research in Scottish 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.

In 1757, Benjamin Franklin returned to London after an over thirty-year absence. He first ventured to the imperial capital in 1724 to continue his education as a printer; he went back in the late 1750s as a politician, after being named the London agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly. Franklin took up residence at 36 Craven Street in London, today just down the way from Charing Cross Station, and right near Trafalgar Square. For nearly two decades, with a short return to Philadelphia in between, Franklin lived on Craven Street as he tried to advance colonial interests in the mother country.  On today’s episode, Dr. Márcia Balisciano joins Jim Ambuske from London to explore the Craven Street House that Franklin made a home. Dr. Balisciano is the Founding Director of the Benjamin Franklin House in London, the world’s only remaining Franklin home.  And as you’ll hear, the historic site not only connects us to Franklin and his life, but to the era of the English Civil War in the 1640s, and to eighteenth-century secrets buried in the basement.  Be sure to stay tuned after the chat to hear our first listener voice message. We’ll feature your comments and questions on the show from time to time. Find out how you can submit one later in the program.  About Our Guest: Dr. Márcia Balisciano is Founding Director of the Benjamin Franklin House in London. She holds a Ph.D. in Economic History from The London School of Economics and Political Science. In addition to her duties at Franklin House, she is also Global Head of Corporate Responsibility at RELX, a multi-national information, analytics, and events company, and serves as Chair of the United Nations Global Compact Network in the UK.   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.

Consuls are essential to American foreign relations. Although they may not be as flashy or as powerful as an Ambassador like Thomas Jefferson or John Quincy Adams, they’re often the goto people when an American gets in trouble abroad or when a trade deal needs to get done. Consuls operate in cities and towns throughout the world, helping to advance American interests and maintain good relations with their host countries, all while helping you replace your lost passport. Much has changed about the consular service since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when a consul could earn fees for his services, such as getting you out of a scrape with the local authorities But as today’s guests demonstrates, consuls were and are the backbone of American diplomacy. Dr. Abby Mullen joins Jim Ambuske to discuss her work on American consuls in the early Republic and her podcast, Consolation Prize, a show dedicated to telling the stories of these consuls, and the wider world in which they lived. Mullen is Term Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University where she is also one of the key members of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. About Our Guest: Abby Mullen holds a PhD in history from Northeastern University (2017). Her dissertation, "Good Neighbourhood with All: Conflict and Cooperation in the First Barbary War, 1801-1805," investigates how the U.S. Navy forged international connections in the Mediterranean during the First Barbary War.Mullen is the PI on Tropy, a Mellon Foundation-funded software development project. She is also technical lead on All the Appalachian Trails, a project to create an interactive map of the history of the Appalachian Trail over the last 100 years. Mullen teaches digital history courses at George Mason University 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 the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin and other early Americans likened themselves to a rising people who were creating something new under the sun. It’s fair to say that historians have a similar mindset: we’re constantly striving to uncover new evidence, make new arguments, and offer new interpretations that help us better explain the past. So on today’s show, we’re going to introduce you to just a few among a rising generation of historians who are doing cutting edge work in early American history. Recently, the Washington Library partnered with the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello for a live stream featuring four young historians working on projects ranging from land speculation, capitalism, gender, and law in the late eighteenth century to morale in the Continental Army and soldiering in the American Revolution, to the creation of the archives that shaped how American citizens interrogated the Revolutionary Era. We bring you the audio version of the livestream today, featuring historians Alexi Garrett, Michael Blaakman, Derek O’Leary, and Krysten Blackstone in conversation with Jim Ambuske, Kevin Butterfield, and Andrew O'Shaughnessy. About Our Guests:  Alexi Garrett, Ph.D., examines how elite, unmarried white women (legally classified as feme soles) commercially related to the people they enslaved, and how they managed slave-manned enterprises in Virginia. Dr. Garrett completed her dissertation in 2020 under Dr. Alan Taylor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. She was a 2020 Research Fellow at the ICJS and a 2019-2020 Research Fellow at the Washington Library. She is currently the Institute of Thomas Paine Studies and University of Virginia Press Post-Doctoral Fellow at Iona College. She is from Iowa City and received her B.A. from St. Olaf College. Michael A. Blaakman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University, where he teaches courses on the American Revolution as well as the history of early American frontiers and borderlands. Educated at the College of William & Mary and Yale University, Blaakman was the Amanda and Greg Gregory Fellow at Mount Vernon in 2015 and is currently the Fritz and Claudine Kundrun Open-Rank Fellow at Monticello. Dr. Blaakman’s project, Speculation Nation, unearths the motives and methods of founding-era elites who sought to profit off the future expansion of their young republic and reveals how and why the revolutionary ideal of an “empire of liberty” became rooted in speculative capitalism. Derek O'Leary, Ph.D., finished his degree in the summer of 2020 at the University of California Berkeley, where he wrote an Atlantic history of the emergence of U.S. historical societies and archives in the nineteenth century. He was a 2019-2020 Research Fellow at the Washington Library. He was drawn to George Washington and Mount Vernon by Jared Sparks (1789-1866), the indefatigable collector and editor of Washington's archive in the antebellum U.S. His work examines Sparks' contribution to the broader culture of commemorating Washington in this period. Krysten Blackstone, a native of Northern Maine, is a final-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She was a 2017-2018 Research Fellow at the Washington Library. Her work examines the morale of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, 1775-1783. Her research utilizes soldiers' narratives of the conflict and is primarily concerned with enlisted soldiers. About Our Hosts: Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. (Washington Library) Andrew O'Shaughnessy, Ph.D. (ICJS - Monticello) Kevin Butterfield, Ph.D. (Washington Library)

The Great Dismal Swamp is a remarkable feature of the southern coastal plain. Spanning from Norfolk, Virginia to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, the Swamp is now a National Wildlife Refuge home to Bald cypress, black bears, otters, and over 200 species of birds, among many other critters. But in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was the home to the ambitions of planters and businessmen who sought to transform the swamp into a plantation enterprise of rice, timber, and other commodities. It was also home to the enslaved individuals who labored to make those dreams a reality. Yet the natural landscape, combined with the circumstances of the white-owned companies who controlled the Swamp, created opportunities for the enslaved to resist their bondage, and even self-emancipate into the Swamp’s rugged interior. And like the Jamaican Maroons who sought security in the island’s central mountains, some enslaved Virginians found a city of refugee in the Great Dismal Swamp. These acts of resistance were, as today’s guest explains, a form of petit marronage in a region that experienced more continently than change from the colonial era to the eve of the American Civil War. On today’s show, Dr. Marcus P. Nevius joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new book, City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1765-1856, published by the University of George Press in 2020. Nevius is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island and a 2020 Washington Library Research Fellow. Ambuske caught up with him over Zoom as he was completing some research on the Great Dismal Swamp in the revolutionary era. About Our Guest:  Marcus P. Nevius is an assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island. His scholarship has received the support of a Mellon Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture and the support of a research fellowship awarded by the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. He has also published several book reviews in the Journal of African American 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.

In 1783, the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, which confirmed American independence. As part of the treaty negotiations, American and British diplomats had to determine the new nation’s borders. They used maps like John Mitchell’s 1755 work A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America to figure out what separated the United States from what remained of British America in Canada. You can see a digital copy of the Mitchell Map here. In our own time, the U.S. border with Mexico gets all the attention, but in the eighteenth century it was the northern border with Canada that mattered the most. But even though diplomats drew a line dividing a republican nation from a monarchical one, lines on paper mattered little to people on the ground in places like Detroit and Montreal where Americans, Canadians, and native peoples had an incentive to move goods and people freely across the new border.  They were, as today’s guest calls them, Citizens of Convenience, people who frequently shifted their identity from American citizen to British subject and back depending on local circumstances and their own self-interest.  Dr. Lawrence B. A. Hatter joins Jim Ambuske to discuss the politics of the northern border, taking us on a journey from the diplomatic halls of Paris and London to the trading grounds of Detroit, Ontario, and Quebec in the aftermath of the American Revolution.  Hatter is the author of Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border, published by the University of Virginia Press in 2017. He is an Associate Professor of History at Washington State University and a former Research Fellow at the Washington Library.  About Our Guest:   Lawrence B. A. Hatter, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of History at Washington State University. He is the author of Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border. Dr. Hatter is currently beginning research on two new book projects about the global context of American Empire: Selling Independence: American Overseas Merchant Communities in the Age of Revolution and Entangling Alliances: America and the World from George Washington’s Farewell Address to the War on Terror.  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.

With another American presidential election behind us, talk will inevitably turn to the economy and how the president will handle it. That begs a series of questions as we turn our thoughts back to the eighteenth century: How did early Americans think about the marketplace and the economy? How did they believe that were supposed to function? How were the butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker, and their aristocratic overlords supposed to relate to one another in the marketplace? And how did early settlers map older European ideas about the economy and the public good onto the North American landscape. On today’s episode, Dr. Emma Hart joins Jim Ambuske to chat about how we might ask and answer these questions. Hart is the author of the new book, Trading Spaces: The Colonial Marketplace and the Foundations of American Capitalism, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2019. She is currently Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, but she will soon begin her tenure as Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Hart helps us to understand how early Americans participated in the marketplace and the origins of our own capitalistic society. And we’ll get to hear a preview of what she has in mind for the McNeil Center. About Our Guest:  Emma Hart, Ph.D. is a historian of early America and the Atlantic world from 1500-1800.  She is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St. Andrews and is the incoming Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in cities, economic life, and the everyday experiences of the people who lived in Britain's North American colonies and their independent successors. She is the author of two books, Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World (2009) and Trading Spaces: The Colonial Marketplace and the Foundations of American Capitalism (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.

What is a legacy? As the artist Lin-Manual Miranda tells us, it’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. American presidents, regardless of party, spend a great deal of time during their presidencies and after they leave office thinking about their own legacies, and how people will study and remember their administrations. Whether the 2020 presidential election results in a second term for President Trump or an inaugural one for a President Biden, both men and the people in their administrations are or will be thinking about what to plant in those gardens. Today’s show builds on this week’s virtual George Washington Symposium at the Washington Library, which is dedicated to consequential elections in American presidential history. On the podcast, we explore one aspect of how modern presidents and their administrations preserve records and memories of the past through oral history. Dr. Evan D. McCormick joins Jim Ambuske today to talk about the Obama Presidency Oral History Project at Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics or (INCITE). McCormick is an Associate Research Scholar with the project, and Columbia was chosen by the Obama Foundation in 2019 to oversee the oral history initiative. McCormick is also a historian of the United States and the World, and he is completing a book on Ronald Reagan’s policies toward Latin America. Ambuske and McCormick dive into the significance of conducting oral histories for preserving and interpreting the legacy of modern presidents, the shape of the Obama Project, and the contrasts between the kinds of sources that historians of early and modern America use to reconstruct the past. About Our Guest:  Evan D McCormick an associate research scholar at Columbia University's Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) where he works on the Obama Presidency Oral History project. Evan is an historian of the United States and the world, and is completing a book on Ronald Reagan's policies toward Latin America. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia (2015) and an M.A. in International Relations from Yale University (2007). He has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. From 2007-2009, he was a policy fellow at the Department of Homeland Security, spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations. 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.