Upcoming Programs

When the Declaration of Independence asserted that “these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,” it took an obvious-seeming but still significant

step: it assumed that individual states, when united, would form one nation. The problem, though, was that the states didn’t always want to be united. This talk takes an alternative approach: what if the Founders had simply scrapped the existing state boundaries and identities and made one truly national body, the United State of America? That didn’t happen, of course, but it gives us a way to explore the implications of what did happen, from the time of the American Revolution to the Civil War—or, as some would call it, the War Between the States.