Events

The American founders were men of high intellect, steely integrity, and enormous ambition—but they were not all of one mind. They came from diverse colonies, and they all sought their futures on different horizons. Without reliable maps of even nearby terrain, they contributed in different, and sometimes conflicting, ways to the expansion of a young republic on the seaboard edge of a continent of whose vast expanses they were largely ignorant. Through an examination of six founders, historian Michael Barone…

The American Revolution in the West is often neglected from the overall history of the conflict, though it had a significant impact on how it was conducted. Larry Nelson, assistant professor of history at Bowling Green State University, discusses this important component of the war by examining American ambitions in the Old Northwest, the vast uncharted region north and west of the Ohio River; the political goals of the Continental Congress within that region; and the role of Virginia militia…

In February 2023, the Museum of the American Revolution opened the acclaimed special exhibition Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia. The exhibition introduced visitors to three generations of the family of James Forten (1766-1842), a free Black Revolutionary War veteran and sailmaker, as they battled slavery and defended freedom in the early United States. Matthew Skic, curator of exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution, will tell the story of the research behind Black Founders by highlighting the…