Events

The 2024 Society of the Cincinnati Prize honors Eli Merritt, M.D., M.A., for his book Disunion Among Ourselves: A Political History of the American Revolution (University of Missouri Press, 2023), which explores the politics of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution. Far from a harmonious collaboration, the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War was so filled with political strife that the delegates feared the war would end in disunion or civil war. But instead of disbanding, these founders managed…

Jews played a critical role both in winning the American Revolution—fighting for the patriot cause from Bunker Hill to Yorktown—and in defining the republic that was created from it. As the most visible non-Christian religion, Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. Except for Philadelphia, the birthplace to the Declaration of Independence and a core of resistance, every city with a synagogue fell to the British during the war. Jewish patriots throughout…

The Spanish era in the Lower Mississippi Valley, a borderland contested by empires and the region’s diverse inhabitants following the Seven Years’ War, was characterized by tremendous transition as the colony emerged from the neglect of the French period and became slowly but increasingly centered on plantation agriculture. The transformations of this critical period grew out of the struggles between Spain and Louisiana’s colonists, enslaved people and Indians over issues related to space and mobility. Many borderland peoples, networks and…