United in making an American Revolution, the Founders fought over its meaning as they attempted to implement their ideals during the 1790s. Former friends became bitter enemies, battling over the nature of a government facing familiar challenges: crippling debt; tax revolts; declining influence in world affairs; threats to national security; and poisonously divisive politics.

Reading Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers, supplemented by the work of other historians and many primary sources, we’ll examine competing visions of the American Revolution that collided during the 1790’s as well as the interplay of events and personalities of the decade. We’ll seek to understand the Founders, their culture and times on their own terms.

Participants must be open to new interpretations of the founding generation and willing to wrestle with painful contradictions like their simultaneous embrace of freedom and slavery. In the process we’ll extend our own capacities for historical analysis.

This course completes the arc of the American revolutionary story traced in 2019’s “Making of the American Revolution” and “Habit of Rebellion” courses, though it isn’t necessary to have taken those to enjoy this one. Short lectures to provide background, but we’ll emphasize discussion. Participants should expect 60 – 75 pages of reading per week.