What inspired the American Revolution? Was it a fight to secure
freedom for all or bondage for some? Did the Patriots struggle for
liberty or property? How should contemporary Americans regard the
causes, character and legacy of the war that led to the nation’s
founding? In recent months, some questions about the role of slavery in
the American Revolution have been at the center of a raging debate
triggered by The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project. To dig more
deeply into the history of this period, The Times has convened an
evening of informed discussion with leading scholars of the era,
historians with a range of views who have done primary research on the
Revolutionary Era and slavery in early America and will speak to the
evidence and source material underlying the debate.
Arguments
about the nation’s founding are nothing new. Almost since the moment the
first bullets flew, 250 years ago in March 1770, debates about the
causes of the Revolution have proliferated. Every decade since,
Americans’ understanding of the war has been deepened by new sources and
new historical scholarship. Today in an age of disinformation and
propaganda, it is critical to understand not only our history, but our
historiography, the complex and contentious ways that American
historians have built on the work of their predecessors, revising and
clarifying the story of our nation’s past.
Join us on March 6,
2020, for a spirited conversation with historians whose original
research has helped us understand the complicated moment that gave birth
to our republic.
The panelists are:
Annette Gordon-Reed
Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and Professor of History, Harvard University
Eliga Gould
Professor of History, University of New Hampshire
Gerald Horne
Moores Professor of History and African American Studies, University of Houston
Alan Taylor
Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair, Department of History, University of Virginia
Karin Wulf, Moderator
Executive
Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History &
Culture and Professor of History, College of William & Mary
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