A story from the 19th century told that British soldiers marched off the surrender ground at Yorktown to the tune of "The World Turned Upside Down." Whether true or not is beside the point. The world may indeed have seemed upside down. To help us come to grips with the myriad of ways in which life in the British Atlantic world changed, we talk with historian James Patrick Ambuske, producer and narrator for the "Worlds Turned Upside Down" podcast, a production of R2 Studios at the Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Jim Ambuske is also the co-director of the Scottish Court of Sessions Digital Archives, and other projects to inspire historians.
A story from the 19th century told that British soldiers marched off the surrender ground at Yorktown to the tune of "The World Turned Upside Down." Whether true or not is beside the point. The world may indeed have seemed upside down. To help us come to grips with the myriad of ways in which life in the British Atlantic world changed, we talk with historian James Patrick Ambuske, producer and narrator for the "Worlds Turned Upside Down" podcast, a production of R2 Studios at the Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Jim Ambuske is also the co-director of the Scottish Court of Sessions Digital Archives, and other projects to inspire historians.
WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
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I am Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev 250 advisory group.
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I also teach at Suffolk University.
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Revolution 250 is a
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consortium of 75 plus
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organizations in
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Massachusetts planning
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commemorations of the
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American Revolution.
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And our guest today is Jim Amboski.
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By the way, Jim, I should have asked,
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is that how you pronounce your name?
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You're like one of the few
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people who actually got it
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right on the first try.
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So thank you very much.
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You're welcome.
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You're welcome.
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And Jim is the historian,
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senior producer of Worlds
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Turned Upside Down.
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He also is the,
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he works at the Roy
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Rosenzweig Center for
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History and New Media at
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George Mason University.
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Your doctorate's from UVA,
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and then you did your
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undergraduate work and your
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master's at Miami University in Ohio.
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So welcome, Jim.
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Well, thank you very much, Bob,
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for having me.
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And I'm
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Really excited to have this conversation.
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It's great.
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So Worlds Turned Upside Down
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is a terrific podcast that
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tells the story of the
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revolution with historians, drama,
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you do narration.
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You have a great voice, by the way.
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Thanks.
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Yeah.
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It was a
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An idea I had actually in my
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previous job when I was at
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George Washington's Mount Vernon,
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but it wasn't going to be a
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series that would be really
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kind of fit for Mount Vernon.
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I was much more interested
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in telling an expansive
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story that didn't
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necessarily focus on George Washington.
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And I was also...
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Had the back of my mind, well,
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with the coming 250th of the revolution,
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well, maybe I'll write a book,
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a kind of big synthesis
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that would appeal to public audiences.
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And I have to say, and as you know,
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and as some of your audience members know,
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it's very tough to write a book.
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And I'm having a...
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difficult enough time to
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write that first book.
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But also I had gotten into
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podcasting at Mount Vernon and I thought,
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well,
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maybe this could be a podcast series.
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And when the opportunity
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came up to move to George Mason in 2022,
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I brought this idea with me.
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And we really wanted to leverage
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all of the good and amazing
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scholarship and new
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discoveries in the last 20,
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25 years to create an
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expansive story that really
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challenged what people
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thought they knew about the
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revolution of simply not a
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story about the birth of
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the United States, but really, you know,
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from our perspective,
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an empire that fell apart
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of a transatlantic crisis
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and imperial civil war that
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shaped the lives of
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thousands and millions of people.
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Jim Collison, Right.
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Yeah,
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I was just listening to the first
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episode about Jumanville, Len,
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and the way you tell that story,
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it's really, it's as though you're there.
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Tim Grahl, Oh, good.
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Yeah, and it's, it's a great,
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it's a really
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a terrific example of what
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we're trying to do with the
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series overall.
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I mean,
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most of the times when we start the
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story of the Seven Years' War,
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which creates the
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conditions for the revolution,
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it starts with Washington
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and Jumovie Glenn.
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We wanted to ask the question,
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what if we started that
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story from Jumovie's
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perspective as he's lying there wounded?
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And what possibilities does
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that open up for telling
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our audiences about New France,
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about indigenous cultures,
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and about why those guys
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are there in the first place?
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And, you know,
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use that as a very clear
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signal that this is going
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to be a little different
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than what you've heard before.
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Right.
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Because when you start with Washington,
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it also preordains where
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the story is going.
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Right.
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We know how it turns out.
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Right.
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No one at that no one in
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1754 knew how any of this
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was going to turn out.
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Right, right.
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Washington is an ambitious
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young Virginia aristocrat
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who has aspirations to get
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a red coat and a commission
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in the British Army,
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and he's not at that moment
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the man he will become.
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But as you're absolutely right,
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we are sometimes
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preconditioned that if we start with that
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version of the story, well,
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we know where it's going to go.
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Let's see if we can trouble the narrative,
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as the great historian Bill
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Cronin likes to say,
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and mess with people's
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assumptions and lead them
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to different possibilities.
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Right.
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And so how has your
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understanding of all of
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this changed as you've been
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doing the series,
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trying to look at it from
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different points of view,
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different perspectives,
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and trouble the narrative?
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It's a terrific question.
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And actually,
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the first three episodes are
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emblematic of my kind of
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own journey and developed this series.
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The original idea for the
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series is that episode one
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would essentially be the
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climactic end of the Seven Years' War.
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But during the interview process,
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we talked to Christiane
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Crouch at Bard College,
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a terrific scholar of New
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France in the 18th century,
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particularly thinking about
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masculinity and martial valor.
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That interview was
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revelatory in the sense
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that she talked a lot about
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why New France or why
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French colonists were so
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adept at working with
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native peoples of what
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native peoples had on their
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own agendas vis-a-vis of
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both the British and the French.
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And why the French were able to,
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essentially, up until 1754, they were,
00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:03.980
I guess you could arguably say,
00:05:04.019 --> 00:05:05.139
the most dominant European
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power in North America,
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despite their relatively
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small population.
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So that is a great example
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of following your sources.
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And in any case,
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Christiane was a key source for us.
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It led us to rethink the
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first three episodes and
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really say to ourselves, all right,
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if we're really going to do
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this in a way that we...
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that to meet the promise
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that we've set for ourselves,
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let's actually tell the
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story of the Seven Years
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War and in three episodes.
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Right.
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And leverage all this great
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stuff that Christians has
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given us and and then to
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rethink the series from there.
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And it's been it was the right decision.
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Right.
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At the end of the day.
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Right.
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Yeah,
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I don't want to deprive anyone of the
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surprise you get from
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listening to the world's
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turned upside down,
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but there are other things
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that change as you've gone
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along from the first three episodes.
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Yeah, I think so.
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We have been, I wouldn't say changed,
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but we've been found ways
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to implement more
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concretely than we had
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originally imagined in terms of, you know,
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we're on a video podcast right now.
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And so if we were to pull up a map of,
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We could easily see it.
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But in our case, our show is audio only.
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And so we are thinking very
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creatively about how to
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describe visual resources like maps.
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There's a powder horn that
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comes up in episode three
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that was just a fun
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challenge to figure out.
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And it's how to make all
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this work in a compelling way.
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That's good.
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So we're talking with Jim
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Amboski from the Roy
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Rosenzweig Center for
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History and New Media at
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George Mason University, the historian,
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senior producer for The
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World's Turned Upside Down Project.
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And again,
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you have your hands in a lot of
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things in the 18th century, well,
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even 19th century.
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Another of your projects is
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the 1828 catalog for Jefferson,
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the library Jefferson created for UVA.
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So that's an interesting
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idea.
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Yeah,
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so I'm happy to talk a little bit
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about that.
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So that was during my
00:07:09.367 --> 00:07:10.406
postdoctoral fellowship
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days at the University of
00:07:11.507 --> 00:07:12.687
Virginia Law Library.
00:07:12.708 --> 00:07:15.410
And as many folks might know,
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but they can go on the
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website and learn more
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there at the 1828 Catalog Project,
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is that when Jefferson was
00:07:22.173 --> 00:07:23.473
designing the University of
00:07:23.514 --> 00:07:24.634
Virginia in the 1820s, he had a very
00:07:27.384 --> 00:07:29.225
he had a very clear idea
00:07:29.305 --> 00:07:31.288
about how he wanted the law to be taught.
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And by the 19th century,
00:07:34.571 --> 00:07:36.192
as Jefferson is becoming more
00:07:39.836 --> 00:07:40.817
curious to know if the
00:07:40.858 --> 00:07:42.137
Republican is going to survive.
00:07:42.177 --> 00:07:44.379
He's more afraid of what the
00:07:44.439 --> 00:07:45.740
federal government's going to do.
00:07:46.180 --> 00:07:47.439
He's also increasingly
00:07:47.521 --> 00:07:49.862
concerned that British law
00:07:50.461 --> 00:07:52.742
in the 18th century, such that it exists,
00:07:52.783 --> 00:07:54.103
there really isn't British law,
00:07:54.142 --> 00:07:55.863
but we'll just use that term,
00:07:56.463 --> 00:07:58.785
that English judicial
00:07:58.824 --> 00:08:00.286
decisions from the reign of
00:08:00.326 --> 00:08:01.766
George III onward and other
00:08:02.166 --> 00:08:04.968
have essentially infected American law.
00:08:05.067 --> 00:08:06.309
And that American jurists
00:08:06.369 --> 00:08:07.749
like his nemesis and cousin,
00:08:07.809 --> 00:08:08.509
John Marshall,
00:08:09.230 --> 00:08:11.050
is using this case law to
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make decisions in American courts.
00:08:14.692 --> 00:08:17.713
And what Jefferson says is, no,
00:08:17.733 --> 00:08:18.973
we can't be having that.
00:08:19.153 --> 00:08:20.774
The purest expression of our
00:08:20.834 --> 00:08:22.836
law as it was at the time
00:08:22.896 --> 00:08:24.636
of the colonial founding in
00:08:24.656 --> 00:08:26.737
the 17th century was by Sir Edward Cook.
00:08:27.257 --> 00:08:28.937
And so we want to design a
00:08:28.997 --> 00:08:30.639
curriculum that focuses on Cook.
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Lawyers out there will know
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that Cook is a very,
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very dense individual.
00:08:36.437 --> 00:08:37.437
compared to Blackstone,
00:08:37.898 --> 00:08:38.837
which is very readable.
00:08:39.238 --> 00:08:40.578
Oh, yeah.
00:08:40.759 --> 00:08:41.919
And Jefferson constructed
00:08:42.580 --> 00:08:43.559
and personally chose the
00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:45.921
books for the legal library
00:08:45.941 --> 00:08:47.581
at UVA in the 1820s to
00:08:48.001 --> 00:08:48.982
realize his vision.
00:08:50.082 --> 00:08:51.423
So the project was already
00:08:51.443 --> 00:08:52.604
underway by the time I got there.
00:08:52.624 --> 00:08:54.085
My colleague, Dr. Randy Flaherty,
00:08:54.125 --> 00:08:55.065
who is now head of special
00:08:55.105 --> 00:08:56.505
collections at the Lowell Library,
00:08:57.186 --> 00:08:59.086
had begun this during her
00:08:59.126 --> 00:09:00.607
own postdoctoral fellowship.
00:09:01.067 --> 00:09:01.948
And then my colleague and I,
00:09:01.989 --> 00:09:02.649
Lauren Moulds,
00:09:03.288 --> 00:09:05.432
began to try to realize the
00:09:05.491 --> 00:09:07.514
digital version of it.
00:09:07.553 --> 00:09:09.154
The digital version of it is
00:09:09.475 --> 00:09:10.596
essentially a website that
00:09:10.636 --> 00:09:12.038
allows you to browse the
00:09:12.097 --> 00:09:14.081
books that would have been on the shelf.
00:09:14.600 --> 00:09:15.841
Many of them have been digitized.
00:09:15.881 --> 00:09:17.024
Many of them are in the
00:09:17.104 --> 00:09:19.745
special collections at the Law Library.
00:09:19.947 --> 00:09:21.187
The goal with it was to help
00:09:21.668 --> 00:09:23.428
show how Jefferson was
00:09:23.509 --> 00:09:24.908
responding to these changes
00:09:24.948 --> 00:09:25.749
that he abhorred in the
00:09:25.928 --> 00:09:27.570
19th century by creating a
00:09:27.649 --> 00:09:29.009
legal framework through
00:09:29.049 --> 00:09:31.030
education that would allow the Union,
00:09:31.431 --> 00:09:32.551
or at least Virginia,
00:09:32.971 --> 00:09:34.711
to endure and to resist
00:09:34.871 --> 00:09:36.091
challenges and impositions
00:09:36.231 --> 00:09:38.972
of a more English-style law
00:09:39.013 --> 00:09:40.013
he was uncomfortable with.
00:09:40.352 --> 00:09:40.793
Right, right.
00:09:41.333 --> 00:09:42.193
And it's interesting that he
00:09:42.214 --> 00:09:43.293
and Marshall both studied
00:09:43.333 --> 00:09:44.615
under George Wythe.
00:09:44.695 --> 00:09:44.855
Right.
00:09:46.345 --> 00:09:47.644
You know, Jefferson, Adams,
00:09:47.684 --> 00:09:49.605
others write about slogging through Cook,
00:09:49.625 --> 00:09:50.686
how dense Cook is.
00:09:50.765 --> 00:09:52.126
But then they really cherish Cook.
00:09:52.206 --> 00:09:54.207
His ideas were right.
00:09:54.587 --> 00:09:54.827
Yeah.
00:09:54.888 --> 00:09:55.447
Oh, yeah.
00:09:55.687 --> 00:09:56.368
There's a letter.
00:09:56.788 --> 00:09:58.688
I think he's writing to John Page.
00:09:58.749 --> 00:10:01.289
Jefferson's writing to John Page, like 17,
00:10:01.289 --> 00:10:02.330
early 1760s.
00:10:02.910 --> 00:10:04.510
And he just says that,
00:10:04.770 --> 00:10:06.172
essentially says the devil
00:10:06.231 --> 00:10:08.011
Cook in recognition that
00:10:08.032 --> 00:10:09.312
it's just so dense.
00:10:10.293 --> 00:10:11.774
Like some of the footnotes
00:10:12.053 --> 00:10:13.433
in that book are longer
00:10:13.474 --> 00:10:14.975
than the actual text of the book,
00:10:15.034 --> 00:10:15.815
which is hilarious.
00:10:15.855 --> 00:10:16.014
Yeah.
00:10:16.754 --> 00:10:17.895
You had to get through it.
00:10:18.076 --> 00:10:19.155
That's what you had to do.
00:10:19.317 --> 00:10:20.096
And they revered him.
00:10:20.557 --> 00:10:21.096
Yeah.
00:10:21.277 --> 00:10:21.437
Yeah.
00:10:21.998 --> 00:10:23.018
So you didn't become a
00:10:23.057 --> 00:10:24.798
lawyer as a result of this experience.
00:10:25.339 --> 00:10:25.799
I know,
00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:27.399
but I did take an extreme interest
00:10:27.460 --> 00:10:30.542
in legal history, which was a very,
00:10:30.562 --> 00:10:33.263
you know, formative place to do that.
00:10:33.302 --> 00:10:34.464
One of the great law school.
00:10:34.864 --> 00:10:35.063
Yeah.
00:10:35.323 --> 00:10:35.464
Yeah.
00:10:36.745 --> 00:10:37.865
And another of your projects
00:10:38.085 --> 00:10:39.905
is on the Scottish court of sessions,
00:10:39.966 --> 00:10:40.866
digital archive.
00:10:40.907 --> 00:10:41.206
That's a,
00:10:42.446 --> 00:10:44.106
tremendous resource that you
00:10:44.206 --> 00:10:45.827
have been again speaking of
00:10:45.908 --> 00:10:47.208
legal history you've now
00:10:47.528 --> 00:10:49.429
gotten this archive of the
00:10:49.490 --> 00:10:51.029
scottish court obsessions
00:10:51.130 --> 00:10:53.011
in this way of looking at
00:10:53.052 --> 00:10:54.231
this atlantic world in a
00:10:54.272 --> 00:10:56.273
different way and seeing so
00:10:56.332 --> 00:10:57.913
yeah can you tell us a bit
00:10:57.933 --> 00:11:00.254
about this yeah so my my
00:11:00.315 --> 00:11:01.716
own personal research is on
00:11:01.775 --> 00:11:02.615
scotland and the american
00:11:02.635 --> 00:11:03.756
revolution I'm particularly
00:11:03.797 --> 00:11:05.158
interested in immigrants but
00:11:06.485 --> 00:11:07.785
My postdoctoral fellowship
00:11:08.066 --> 00:11:10.427
at UVA Law was on the basis
00:11:10.767 --> 00:11:13.087
of 58 linear feet,
00:11:13.107 --> 00:11:15.268
so think about 58 banker's boxes,
00:11:15.668 --> 00:11:18.850
of these printed court
00:11:18.889 --> 00:11:20.809
records from Scotland's Court of Session,
00:11:20.850 --> 00:11:22.750
which is Scotland's Supreme Civil Court.
00:11:23.431 --> 00:11:24.991
And the important thing to know is that
00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:27.299
England and Scotland have
00:11:27.379 --> 00:11:28.642
two distinct legal systems.
00:11:29.241 --> 00:11:31.264
So England, like the American colonies,
00:11:31.303 --> 00:11:32.044
was common law.
00:11:32.885 --> 00:11:34.167
Scotland is civil law.
00:11:34.206 --> 00:11:36.349
So it's based on Roman canonical law.
00:11:37.429 --> 00:11:38.812
And they began to make the
00:11:38.851 --> 00:11:41.553
decision in 1710 to print
00:11:42.254 --> 00:11:43.336
all of the documents that
00:11:43.355 --> 00:11:44.417
would come before the court.
00:11:45.077 --> 00:11:46.298
The briefs, the evidence,
00:11:46.499 --> 00:11:47.279
things like that.
00:11:48.120 --> 00:11:49.783
in part because to eliminate
00:11:49.942 --> 00:11:55.068
errors from Clark's copying manuscripts.
00:11:55.470 --> 00:11:57.851
It led to this profusion of
00:11:59.094 --> 00:12:00.034
printed documentary
00:12:00.095 --> 00:12:01.437
material that you would see
00:12:01.456 --> 00:12:02.357
the individual lawyers
00:12:02.398 --> 00:12:03.558
would have their own collections,
00:12:04.039 --> 00:12:05.682
their professional societies would,
00:12:05.741 --> 00:12:06.523
the judges would.
00:12:07.163 --> 00:12:08.984
So UVA ended up with the
00:12:09.024 --> 00:12:10.024
collections of two men
00:12:10.065 --> 00:12:12.025
named William Craig Lord Craig,
00:12:12.067 --> 00:12:12.826
who was a judge on the
00:12:12.907 --> 00:12:15.389
court in the 18th and 19th centuries,
00:12:15.928 --> 00:12:16.710
and Andrew Skeen,
00:12:16.730 --> 00:12:17.549
who was very briefly
00:12:17.610 --> 00:12:18.951
Solicitor General for Scotland.
00:12:20.272 --> 00:12:21.692
The thing to know about
00:12:21.732 --> 00:12:24.254
these wonderful documents is that, yes,
00:12:24.294 --> 00:12:26.416
there can be some dense legalese in there,
00:12:26.956 --> 00:12:28.437
but because they're civil documents,
00:12:28.476 --> 00:12:29.258
they're telling stories
00:12:29.298 --> 00:12:30.298
about people's lives,
00:12:30.379 --> 00:12:31.600
not about their criminality,
00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:33.841
but about who they were and
00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.602
the trials and tribulations they faced.
00:12:37.504 --> 00:12:39.205
So you can imagine in an
00:12:39.664 --> 00:12:41.186
aristocratic world like Scotland,
00:12:41.225 --> 00:12:42.326
there are a lot of cases
00:12:42.366 --> 00:12:43.227
that deal with land
00:12:43.268 --> 00:12:45.729
inheritance and things of this nature.
00:12:45.788 --> 00:12:47.530
But you're also quite
00:12:47.551 --> 00:12:50.072
amazingly given access to
00:12:50.793 --> 00:12:51.634
people's marriages as
00:12:51.673 --> 00:12:52.553
they're falling apart,
00:12:53.715 --> 00:12:55.076
bad deals that have taken
00:12:55.135 --> 00:12:56.756
place between business partners.
00:12:57.278 --> 00:12:58.298
And in my case, more...
00:12:59.178 --> 00:13:00.539
more fascinatingly for me,
00:13:01.081 --> 00:13:02.741
is that we see a lot of
00:13:02.861 --> 00:13:04.783
people trying to resolve
00:13:05.344 --> 00:13:06.884
legal problems that came
00:13:07.085 --> 00:13:08.407
out of the American Revolution.
00:13:08.927 --> 00:13:10.087
So think, for instance,
00:13:10.528 --> 00:13:12.629
Glaswegian merchants who
00:13:13.149 --> 00:13:14.490
are trying to recover debts
00:13:14.831 --> 00:13:16.153
from the state of Virginia
00:13:16.633 --> 00:13:17.913
in the aftermath of the war,
00:13:18.654 --> 00:13:21.336
or American loyalists who
00:13:22.738 --> 00:13:24.278
either don't necessarily
00:13:24.318 --> 00:13:25.600
have a claim that has to do
00:13:25.620 --> 00:13:27.282
with their loyalty, but they're using
00:13:28.022 --> 00:13:30.583
loyalty as a strategy to try
00:13:30.644 --> 00:13:32.105
to win the judge's sympathy.
00:13:33.345 --> 00:13:35.145
We see that in quite a number of cases.
00:13:36.466 --> 00:13:38.048
It all speaks to the idea
00:13:38.107 --> 00:13:40.828
that even as the war ends
00:13:40.908 --> 00:13:42.210
officially in September 1783,
00:13:42.210 --> 00:13:44.110
the war goes on in
00:13:44.191 --> 00:13:46.331
courtrooms for years afterwards.
00:13:46.873 --> 00:13:48.113
Some historians have accounted for that,
00:13:48.153 --> 00:13:49.394
but we need a lot more work
00:13:49.453 --> 00:13:50.934
to really grapple with the
00:13:51.014 --> 00:13:53.677
legal fallout of the revolution.
00:13:55.283 --> 00:13:55.724
Fascinating.
00:13:56.085 --> 00:13:57.086
We're talking with Jim
00:13:57.126 --> 00:13:58.870
Amboski from the Roy
00:13:58.909 --> 00:14:00.533
Rosenzweig Center for
00:14:00.572 --> 00:14:02.235
History and New Media and the
00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:05.461
producer of Worlds Turned Upside Down.
00:14:05.481 --> 00:14:08.043
And is this, by the way,
00:14:08.102 --> 00:14:09.182
you said your real interest
00:14:09.222 --> 00:14:10.903
is in Scotland and the war.
00:14:11.183 --> 00:14:12.964
Is this where your real,
00:14:13.745 --> 00:14:14.565
you've really done a lot
00:14:14.585 --> 00:14:16.125
with loyalists and loyalists.
00:14:17.046 --> 00:14:19.886
Why are the Scots, the Scots in America,
00:14:19.907 --> 00:14:22.687
do they tend to be more loyal than, say,
00:14:22.768 --> 00:14:24.187
other ethnic groups?
00:14:25.229 --> 00:14:26.448
It's a terrific question.
00:14:27.089 --> 00:14:28.610
It kind of depends on when they come.
00:14:29.509 --> 00:14:30.671
There's an earlier migration
00:14:30.730 --> 00:14:33.912
in the 1730s and 1740s,
00:14:34.211 --> 00:14:34.852
particularly from the
00:14:34.932 --> 00:14:36.293
highlands and western islands,
00:14:36.734 --> 00:14:37.953
when really the clan system
00:14:37.994 --> 00:14:40.075
begins to accelerate its decline.
00:14:41.556 --> 00:14:43.275
Those folks who go to New York,
00:14:43.336 --> 00:14:44.116
North Carolina,
00:14:44.616 --> 00:14:46.158
they tend to be what we
00:14:46.177 --> 00:14:47.418
would later call patriots,
00:14:47.639 --> 00:14:50.361
people who fight for the
00:14:50.402 --> 00:14:52.102
American cause and the revolution.
00:14:52.764 --> 00:14:53.344
In part,
00:14:53.403 --> 00:14:55.225
we think that's true because they
00:14:55.265 --> 00:14:56.746
came over in the early 18th century,
00:14:56.787 --> 00:14:58.447
they had become seasoned in
00:14:58.508 --> 00:15:00.450
American politics and ideology,
00:15:01.470 --> 00:15:02.571
and they had more invested,
00:15:02.650 --> 00:15:04.993
more at stake by that point.
00:15:05.734 --> 00:15:07.034
The folks that I'm interested in,
00:15:07.095 --> 00:15:08.716
the folks that come post
00:15:08.735 --> 00:15:09.956
Seven Years War forward,
00:15:10.017 --> 00:15:10.998
but particularly the 1760s
00:15:11.097 --> 00:15:11.477
and early 1770s,
00:15:13.820 --> 00:15:14.400
A lot of them
00:15:15.140 --> 00:15:16.922
disproportionately tend to be loyalists.
00:15:17.602 --> 00:15:18.442
In part,
00:15:18.703 --> 00:15:21.085
as my colleague Matthew Janique
00:15:21.105 --> 00:15:21.686
would argue,
00:15:21.706 --> 00:15:22.706
who's written a terrific book
00:15:22.745 --> 00:15:24.307
on the Highland soldier in
00:15:24.347 --> 00:15:26.969
North America during this period, in part,
00:15:27.029 --> 00:15:28.309
they remain loyal because
00:15:28.370 --> 00:15:32.332
they see themselves as able
00:15:32.373 --> 00:15:33.433
to take advantage of what
00:15:33.474 --> 00:15:34.914
the empire has to offer to
00:15:34.955 --> 00:15:37.197
them when opportunities,
00:15:37.537 --> 00:15:39.038
when society has since
00:15:39.197 --> 00:15:40.198
failed them in Scotland,
00:15:40.239 --> 00:15:41.259
but they can still go
00:15:41.879 --> 00:15:43.321
to the colonies and get land.
00:15:44.381 --> 00:15:46.003
And because they see this as
00:15:46.043 --> 00:15:47.964
being done in an empire
00:15:48.043 --> 00:15:49.225
headed by a king who
00:15:50.385 --> 00:15:51.307
created the conditions to
00:15:51.346 --> 00:15:52.187
make this possible,
00:15:52.488 --> 00:15:53.548
they're willing to fight for it.
00:15:54.469 --> 00:15:55.669
And so if you know Flora MacDonald,
00:15:55.690 --> 00:15:57.610
the famous Jacobite heroine
00:15:58.692 --> 00:16:00.953
that helps Bonnie Prince
00:16:00.994 --> 00:16:04.235
Charlie escape from Culloden in the 1746,
00:16:04.235 --> 00:16:05.716
she and her husband and her
00:16:05.777 --> 00:16:06.977
children are all loyalists.
00:16:07.918 --> 00:16:09.820
And they pay the price for that loyalty.
00:16:10.293 --> 00:16:10.673
Interesting.
00:16:11.073 --> 00:16:13.015
So what happens to them as a result of,
00:16:13.557 --> 00:16:14.197
it seems like they're on
00:16:14.217 --> 00:16:16.100
the wrong side in both of these cases.
00:16:16.179 --> 00:16:17.341
Exactly.
00:16:17.861 --> 00:16:18.562
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:18.602 --> 00:16:19.504
In Flora's case,
00:16:20.105 --> 00:16:20.926
and Flora Frazier has
00:16:20.946 --> 00:16:21.566
written a really great
00:16:21.605 --> 00:16:22.748
biography of her recently,
00:16:22.788 --> 00:16:24.470
but in Flora McDonald's case,
00:16:26.206 --> 00:16:28.067
her husband and the sort of
00:16:28.107 --> 00:16:30.090
militia that he's associated with,
00:16:30.149 --> 00:16:31.009
they are defeated at the
00:16:31.049 --> 00:16:31.931
Battle of Moores Creek
00:16:31.971 --> 00:16:34.773
Bridge in February 1776.
00:16:34.773 --> 00:16:37.414
It basically breaks the back of Loyalism,
00:16:37.434 --> 00:16:39.115
and particularly Scotch
00:16:39.135 --> 00:16:41.258
Highlander Loyalism in North Carolina.
00:16:42.479 --> 00:16:44.100
And for the next few years,
00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:46.701
while her husband is
00:16:46.761 --> 00:16:49.484
imprisoned in Philadelphia and New York,
00:16:50.203 --> 00:16:52.306
Flora is staying with family.
00:16:52.346 --> 00:16:53.807
Her property's been confiscated.
00:16:54.107 --> 00:16:54.889
Eventually,
00:16:55.408 --> 00:16:56.090
she and her husband are
00:16:56.129 --> 00:16:58.893
reunited in Nova Scotia in 1778,
00:16:58.893 --> 00:17:00.494
and she makes her way back
00:17:00.533 --> 00:17:01.534
to Scotland from that.
00:17:01.595 --> 00:17:03.636
But they lose two sons during the war.
00:17:03.658 --> 00:17:04.739
They're both in the service.
00:17:05.819 --> 00:17:06.059
Yeah.
00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:06.901
Amazing.
00:17:07.181 --> 00:17:07.520
Amazing.
00:17:07.842 --> 00:17:08.803
We're talking with Jim
00:17:08.843 --> 00:17:09.864
Amboski from the Roy
00:17:09.903 --> 00:17:10.944
Rosenfleek Center for
00:17:10.984 --> 00:17:12.425
History and New Media.
00:17:13.166 --> 00:17:13.287
And
00:17:14.622 --> 00:17:16.123
producer of The World's
00:17:16.182 --> 00:17:17.002
Turned Upside Down.
00:17:17.042 --> 00:17:20.365
So how many episodes is this going to be?
00:17:21.405 --> 00:17:22.846
Do you see Worlds Turned Upside Down?
00:17:23.767 --> 00:17:25.988
Five seasons of at least 50 episodes.
00:17:26.208 --> 00:17:28.308
And so the original plan was
00:17:28.328 --> 00:17:29.630
to have 10 episode seasons.
00:17:29.730 --> 00:17:30.150
But again,
00:17:30.230 --> 00:17:31.310
going back to our kind of
00:17:31.411 --> 00:17:34.093
earlier part of our
00:17:34.133 --> 00:17:34.952
conversation where we
00:17:34.992 --> 00:17:36.114
talked about where we got
00:17:36.233 --> 00:17:38.434
more great stuff than we anticipated.
00:17:39.035 --> 00:17:40.036
We've essentially decided to
00:17:40.135 --> 00:17:41.756
add episodes because we
00:17:41.875 --> 00:17:43.916
want to take advantage of
00:17:43.957 --> 00:17:45.178
all the great scholarship
00:17:45.357 --> 00:17:47.479
that people were so generous with.
00:17:47.878 --> 00:17:49.819
And we can tell these really
00:17:49.940 --> 00:17:51.861
creative stories grounded
00:17:51.921 --> 00:17:52.820
in the scholarship and the
00:17:52.840 --> 00:17:53.842
primary sources that we
00:17:53.862 --> 00:17:54.862
didn't anticipate when we
00:17:54.882 --> 00:17:55.642
started our plan.
00:17:55.662 --> 00:17:56.762
That's great.
00:17:56.982 --> 00:17:57.363
That's great.
00:17:58.124 --> 00:18:00.183
And I guess if you did try
00:18:00.203 --> 00:18:01.765
to do this as a video series,
00:18:01.805 --> 00:18:02.786
that would really change.
00:18:02.826 --> 00:18:04.125
And having audio has certain
00:18:04.165 --> 00:18:05.826
advantages in what you can do.
00:18:06.666 --> 00:18:08.628
Yeah, I think, well, the cost goes down,
00:18:08.669 --> 00:18:08.969
certainly.
00:18:11.290 --> 00:18:12.030
But it is,
00:18:12.131 --> 00:18:13.653
it's interesting to think about
00:18:13.673 --> 00:18:14.553
the differences between the
00:18:14.653 --> 00:18:16.315
audio form and the video form.
00:18:16.375 --> 00:18:20.298
I think in the audio form,
00:18:20.337 --> 00:18:21.378
we can almost do more
00:18:21.459 --> 00:18:22.538
narration than you might
00:18:22.579 --> 00:18:24.161
expect in a video format.
00:18:24.240 --> 00:18:24.621
I mean,
00:18:25.162 --> 00:18:27.282
we study these things all the time.
00:18:27.323 --> 00:18:28.364
We kind of look for best
00:18:28.403 --> 00:18:29.305
practices and what our
00:18:29.365 --> 00:18:30.226
colleagues are doing and
00:18:30.266 --> 00:18:32.106
what professional folks
00:18:32.146 --> 00:18:33.208
like Ken Burns are doing
00:18:34.008 --> 00:18:34.769
and thinking about how to
00:18:34.808 --> 00:18:35.809
construct our narration.
00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:37.119
And kind of the differences
00:18:37.140 --> 00:18:38.000
we've noticed right in the
00:18:38.040 --> 00:18:39.662
video is that the narration
00:18:39.741 --> 00:18:40.622
tends to be shorter,
00:18:40.682 --> 00:18:44.084
whereas in the podcast format,
00:18:44.104 --> 00:18:45.545
we can go a little bit long for it.
00:18:46.484 --> 00:18:48.486
But also, you know,
00:18:48.846 --> 00:18:50.267
eventually I do kind of
00:18:50.307 --> 00:18:51.647
have the documentary book now,
00:18:51.708 --> 00:18:52.988
so maybe someday I'll do
00:18:53.127 --> 00:18:53.909
something in video.
00:18:54.568 --> 00:18:55.028
That's good.
00:18:56.190 --> 00:18:57.130
And what kind of an audience
00:18:57.471 --> 00:18:58.250
have you developed?
00:18:59.008 --> 00:18:59.208
Yeah,
00:18:59.248 --> 00:19:00.308
we've been very fortunate to have
00:19:00.548 --> 00:19:01.289
essentially a global
00:19:01.309 --> 00:19:02.309
audience with audience
00:19:02.349 --> 00:19:03.490
primarily in the United States,
00:19:03.590 --> 00:19:06.313
but a fairly large audience
00:19:07.513 --> 00:19:09.095
in the United States, Europe,
00:19:09.154 --> 00:19:10.296
North America and whatnot.
00:19:11.797 --> 00:19:12.737
We tend to have folks who
00:19:12.797 --> 00:19:13.938
are very interested in the
00:19:13.998 --> 00:19:15.338
history of the American Revolution,
00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:16.740
very interested in the
00:19:16.759 --> 00:19:18.101
history of early America or
00:19:18.161 --> 00:19:18.942
history in general,
00:19:19.481 --> 00:19:20.502
which has been really nice.
00:19:20.742 --> 00:19:23.224
And we also have a very, I would say,
00:19:23.704 --> 00:19:24.885
very sophisticated audience.
00:19:25.746 --> 00:19:26.386
One of the things that we
00:19:26.426 --> 00:19:27.386
have found is that
00:19:28.428 --> 00:19:30.108
in thinking about ourselves
00:19:30.169 --> 00:19:31.410
in relation to other shows
00:19:32.309 --> 00:19:36.333
and other studios is that the British,
00:19:36.373 --> 00:19:37.993
through the BBC podcasts and whatnot,
00:19:38.874 --> 00:19:41.316
they do something that a lot of us,
00:19:41.355 --> 00:19:42.596
I think, don't in the United States,
00:19:42.655 --> 00:19:44.477
which is to trust the audience,
00:19:44.757 --> 00:19:47.078
to trust that they can handle complexity.
00:19:47.858 --> 00:19:48.660
And so we've taken the
00:19:48.700 --> 00:19:49.900
position that we are going
00:19:49.960 --> 00:19:51.721
to try to meet that challenge.
00:19:52.682 --> 00:19:53.722
When I was at Mount Vernon,
00:19:53.762 --> 00:19:54.982
I hosted conversations at
00:19:55.002 --> 00:19:55.943
the Washington Library
00:19:56.433 --> 00:19:57.114
And Mike Duncan,
00:19:57.153 --> 00:19:57.734
who has written a really
00:19:57.775 --> 00:19:58.994
great book on Lafayette,
00:19:59.535 --> 00:20:00.276
was one of our guests.
00:20:00.316 --> 00:20:00.955
And that's one of the most
00:20:00.996 --> 00:20:02.195
important lessons I took
00:20:02.236 --> 00:20:03.517
away from our conversation there.
00:20:03.557 --> 00:20:06.178
He said, you have to trust the audience.
00:20:06.837 --> 00:20:08.838
They can handle the nuance.
00:20:09.019 --> 00:20:10.819
And there's a certain limit
00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:11.799
you can go overboard,
00:20:11.861 --> 00:20:12.681
and you have to be very
00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:13.820
careful where that is.
00:20:13.921 --> 00:20:17.282
But if you give them more of
00:20:17.323 --> 00:20:18.242
a richer picture,
00:20:18.262 --> 00:20:20.463
then they walk away knowing
00:20:20.624 --> 00:20:22.644
something more than they did before.
00:20:22.664 --> 00:20:24.145
That's true.
00:20:24.586 --> 00:20:24.865
That's true.
00:20:25.511 --> 00:20:26.593
And it's one of the ironies.
00:20:26.633 --> 00:20:26.833
I mean,
00:20:26.853 --> 00:20:29.153
you look at someone like you with a Ph.D.
00:20:29.193 --> 00:20:32.635
in history in a different
00:20:32.655 --> 00:20:34.257
world or world of maybe 50 years ago,
00:20:34.317 --> 00:20:35.538
you would be teaching.
00:20:35.597 --> 00:20:36.618
And we see we've seen the
00:20:36.659 --> 00:20:38.259
history enrollments have been going down,
00:20:38.299 --> 00:20:39.380
but still there is this
00:20:39.941 --> 00:20:41.741
tremendous hunger for history.
00:20:42.061 --> 00:20:43.303
And there are folk people
00:20:43.343 --> 00:20:44.462
like you who are producing
00:20:45.144 --> 00:20:46.884
really interesting work for
00:20:46.944 --> 00:20:49.145
this audience that isn't an academic one.
00:20:50.074 --> 00:20:52.335
right right and it's it's it
00:20:52.394 --> 00:20:54.797
is an interesting imbalance
00:20:54.876 --> 00:20:56.038
right it's it's not great
00:20:56.077 --> 00:20:56.837
that our enrollments are
00:20:56.877 --> 00:20:59.619
falling it's it's it's
00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:01.079
perilous uh you know to our
00:21:01.121 --> 00:21:02.260
society it's perilous to
00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:04.261
democracy uh history is a
00:21:04.301 --> 00:21:05.163
way to have an informed
00:21:05.202 --> 00:21:06.763
citizenry enough yeah every
00:21:06.864 --> 00:21:07.903
time we needed an informed
00:21:07.943 --> 00:21:09.204
citizenry boy it's right
00:21:09.244 --> 00:21:12.067
now uh and so so we have to
00:21:12.126 --> 00:21:13.047
figure out how to
00:21:14.627 --> 00:21:15.528
and I don't have a good
00:21:15.568 --> 00:21:16.628
concrete solution for this,
00:21:16.749 --> 00:21:20.310
but how to get those
00:21:20.351 --> 00:21:22.071
numbers back up to leverage
00:21:22.112 --> 00:21:22.991
the kind of good work that
00:21:23.011 --> 00:21:24.853
we're doing in the public history space.
00:21:25.373 --> 00:21:26.013
But increasingly,
00:21:26.094 --> 00:21:28.114
academics by and large are
00:21:28.153 --> 00:21:29.115
reaching out to the public.
00:21:29.494 --> 00:21:30.556
How do we leverage that
00:21:30.615 --> 00:21:31.875
enthusiasm for the work
00:21:31.895 --> 00:21:33.876
that we're producing to
00:21:34.096 --> 00:21:35.337
inspire people to take more
00:21:35.377 --> 00:21:37.259
history courses, to become history majors,
00:21:38.318 --> 00:21:40.079
to become fully fledged and
00:21:40.119 --> 00:21:42.221
form members of society that we need?
00:21:42.846 --> 00:21:43.047
Yeah.
00:21:43.967 --> 00:21:44.647
Now,
00:21:44.948 --> 00:21:46.587
how has George Mason become one of the
00:21:46.647 --> 00:21:47.387
leaders in this?
00:21:47.488 --> 00:21:48.608
It's really interesting that
00:21:48.669 --> 00:21:50.209
this particular university
00:21:50.249 --> 00:21:51.750
really is focusing on this
00:21:51.769 --> 00:21:53.309
in such a big way,
00:21:53.329 --> 00:21:55.611
but also a very important way.
00:21:55.631 --> 00:21:55.711
Yeah.
00:21:55.851 --> 00:21:56.770
Very fortunate to be here at
00:21:56.790 --> 00:21:59.451
George Mason because it's
00:21:59.711 --> 00:22:00.612
an interesting story.
00:22:00.872 --> 00:22:03.022
Mason was founded about 51,
00:22:03.022 --> 00:22:04.673
52 years ago as a branch
00:22:04.712 --> 00:22:07.273
campus of University of Virginia.
00:22:07.733 --> 00:22:08.794
It's northern branch campus.
00:22:08.814 --> 00:22:10.154
It became its own independent thing.
00:22:10.755 --> 00:22:12.737
But then 30 years ago, actually,
00:22:12.737 --> 00:22:13.978
30 years ago this year,
00:22:13.998 --> 00:22:16.601
our late colleague, Roy Rosenzweig,
00:22:16.701 --> 00:22:18.422
founded the Center for
00:22:18.461 --> 00:22:19.262
History and New Media,
00:22:19.502 --> 00:22:20.523
which at the time
00:22:20.584 --> 00:22:22.165
essentially consisted of him as he,
00:22:22.665 --> 00:22:23.807
I gather he liked to joke,
00:22:23.886 --> 00:22:25.188
hanging a sign on his
00:22:25.248 --> 00:22:26.108
office door and saying,
00:22:26.128 --> 00:22:27.230
this is what we're doing.
00:22:27.851 --> 00:22:28.731
But this was, you know,
00:22:28.771 --> 00:22:30.192
this is the mid-90s when
00:22:31.574 --> 00:22:33.835
the rise of the internet and
00:22:34.076 --> 00:22:35.757
digital technology became
00:22:35.936 --> 00:22:37.758
more accessible and it
00:22:37.798 --> 00:22:38.718
became possible to
00:22:38.758 --> 00:22:40.398
distribute history in different ways.
00:22:40.499 --> 00:22:42.339
So part of their goal was to
00:22:42.380 --> 00:22:44.080
figure out how do we democratize history?
00:22:44.682 --> 00:22:46.843
How do we not only digitize documents,
00:22:46.883 --> 00:22:47.903
but how do we take data
00:22:48.483 --> 00:22:49.884
package it in a presentable way,
00:22:50.525 --> 00:22:52.287
and make it accessible to
00:22:52.307 --> 00:22:53.406
the public free of charge.
00:22:53.827 --> 00:22:54.647
And that's kind of an
00:22:54.688 --> 00:22:56.348
important vocational thing, right?
00:22:57.349 --> 00:22:58.310
The state's paying us to do
00:22:58.351 --> 00:22:58.871
this good work.
00:22:59.070 --> 00:23:01.071
We have a public obligation
00:23:01.113 --> 00:23:01.712
to make sure it's
00:23:01.752 --> 00:23:02.973
accessible to everybody.
00:23:03.913 --> 00:23:04.634
So from there,
00:23:05.134 --> 00:23:06.336
the center grew in
00:23:06.435 --> 00:23:08.617
developing various digital projects,
00:23:09.097 --> 00:23:10.179
various digital tools,
00:23:10.298 --> 00:23:11.960
and in the last four or five years,
00:23:12.019 --> 00:23:12.720
podcasting.
00:23:12.759 --> 00:23:14.201
So it's kind of a natural
00:23:14.240 --> 00:23:15.422
progression of the legacy.
00:23:16.363 --> 00:23:16.742
Interesting.
00:23:17.461 --> 00:23:18.384
And do you have other things
00:23:18.484 --> 00:23:20.290
in store for the 250th or
00:23:20.371 --> 00:23:22.116
for early American history?
00:23:22.576 --> 00:23:23.196
Yeah, right now,
00:23:23.457 --> 00:23:25.198
in terms of the podcast space,
00:23:25.238 --> 00:23:27.239
we're working on the fourth
00:23:27.278 --> 00:23:28.400
season of our show called
00:23:28.420 --> 00:23:29.799
Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant.
00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:31.500
That series is hosted by
00:23:31.540 --> 00:23:32.221
Catherine Garrett.
00:23:32.261 --> 00:23:33.122
It's a women's history
00:23:33.142 --> 00:23:34.682
podcast show in which she
00:23:34.702 --> 00:23:35.823
and her guests break down a
00:23:35.923 --> 00:23:37.763
letter from an 18th and
00:23:37.784 --> 00:23:38.984
early 19th century woman
00:23:39.825 --> 00:23:41.465
and contextualize it for the audience.
00:23:41.665 --> 00:23:42.645
So a lot of the work that
00:23:43.027 --> 00:23:43.987
y'all are doing at Colonial
00:23:44.007 --> 00:23:46.448
Massachusetts and our
00:23:46.488 --> 00:23:47.568
colleagues at Mass
00:23:47.588 --> 00:23:48.689
Historical with the Adams
00:23:48.729 --> 00:23:50.109
Papers do to annotate
00:23:52.372 --> 00:23:53.993
in paper form, I guess.
00:23:54.413 --> 00:23:55.414
They're annotating a letter
00:23:55.434 --> 00:23:57.497
in audio form for the audience's benefit.
00:23:57.896 --> 00:23:58.837
So season four is going to
00:23:58.857 --> 00:24:00.298
be called a season of revolution.
00:24:01.279 --> 00:24:02.101
And the idea is we're going
00:24:02.121 --> 00:24:03.541
to focus on 15 women who
00:24:04.021 --> 00:24:05.442
lived through the revolutionary era,
00:24:06.144 --> 00:24:07.704
pick a letter or a poem or
00:24:07.744 --> 00:24:08.865
some other kind of document
00:24:09.426 --> 00:24:10.587
and unpack that for the
00:24:10.667 --> 00:24:12.669
audience and figure out how
00:24:13.549 --> 00:24:14.211
the revolutionary
00:24:14.671 --> 00:24:16.251
experience changed them in
00:24:16.291 --> 00:24:17.093
some profound way.
00:24:17.693 --> 00:24:18.074
Interesting.
00:24:18.557 --> 00:24:19.239
It's a great project.
00:24:19.278 --> 00:24:20.920
This has become actually the
00:24:20.980 --> 00:24:22.421
idea of doing a history of
00:24:22.501 --> 00:24:23.702
something in a series of
00:24:23.762 --> 00:24:25.044
documents or in a series of
00:24:25.104 --> 00:24:26.525
buildings or artifacts.
00:24:26.545 --> 00:24:28.487
It's been really a great way
00:24:28.527 --> 00:24:29.587
of reaching an audience,
00:24:29.627 --> 00:24:30.929
but also telling this story.
00:24:30.989 --> 00:24:31.829
And you're right,
00:24:32.130 --> 00:24:34.893
the audience can handle complexity,
00:24:35.053 --> 00:24:36.253
nuance, other things.
00:24:36.846 --> 00:24:37.146
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:37.207 --> 00:24:37.788
I mean,
00:24:37.807 --> 00:24:39.250
there was that history in 100 Objects,
00:24:39.349 --> 00:24:40.092
I think was the British
00:24:40.132 --> 00:24:41.554
Museum was so successful.
00:24:41.974 --> 00:24:43.156
You've seen that replicated.
00:24:44.117 --> 00:24:46.241
And Katie started this show
00:24:46.301 --> 00:24:47.683
as a pandemic project in 2020.
00:24:47.683 --> 00:24:47.884
And so-
00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:50.300
Very fortunately,
00:24:50.340 --> 00:24:51.803
when I moved over to George Mason,
00:24:51.883 --> 00:24:52.744
she reached out and said,
00:24:52.765 --> 00:24:53.506
can we work together?
00:24:53.546 --> 00:24:55.407
And we were like, well, probably,
00:24:55.448 --> 00:24:55.989
but let's see.
00:24:56.028 --> 00:24:57.391
And we figured out how to do it.
00:24:57.471 --> 00:25:00.114
And so it's been a really
00:25:00.153 --> 00:25:01.256
wonderful collaboration.
00:25:01.476 --> 00:25:03.739
And there's a couple of
00:25:03.778 --> 00:25:06.041
recent episodes I focused on, for example,
00:25:06.082 --> 00:25:06.863
the deposition of
00:25:07.344 --> 00:25:08.325
of a woman named Phyllis,
00:25:08.424 --> 00:25:09.785
who was formerly enslaved,
00:25:09.825 --> 00:25:11.826
but her husband, who became free,
00:25:11.946 --> 00:25:13.667
fought for the Continental Army.
00:25:13.728 --> 00:25:15.208
And so in 1830s,
00:25:15.749 --> 00:25:17.609
she's trying to get a share
00:25:17.650 --> 00:25:18.390
of his pension.
00:25:19.030 --> 00:25:20.592
And so that that episode
00:25:21.172 --> 00:25:23.153
really looks at her journey to do that.
00:25:24.493 --> 00:25:25.114
Fascinating.
00:25:27.998 --> 00:25:29.959
You also, while you were at Mount Vernon,
00:25:29.979 --> 00:25:31.199
you also were the editor of
00:25:31.219 --> 00:25:32.819
the Digital Encyclopedia of
00:25:32.859 --> 00:25:34.320
George Washington and also
00:25:34.681 --> 00:25:35.980
produced their League of
00:25:36.020 --> 00:25:36.821
Descendants of the Mount
00:25:36.862 --> 00:25:38.662
Vernon Enslaved Oral History Project.
00:25:38.682 --> 00:25:38.801
I mean,
00:25:38.821 --> 00:25:39.623
you've done a tremendous
00:25:39.682 --> 00:25:41.063
collaborations as well as
00:25:41.663 --> 00:25:43.324
work over the course of your career.
00:25:44.025 --> 00:25:44.825
It seems like you'd have to
00:25:44.845 --> 00:25:45.944
be a lot older to have done
00:25:45.984 --> 00:25:47.046
all the things you have done.
00:25:48.731 --> 00:25:50.032
Well, I'll take that compliment.
00:25:50.053 --> 00:25:50.773
Thank you very much.
00:25:53.976 --> 00:25:54.756
When I was hired to be the
00:25:54.796 --> 00:25:56.156
digital historian at Mount Vernon,
00:25:56.616 --> 00:25:57.837
one of the chief tasks was
00:25:57.877 --> 00:25:59.138
the digital encyclopedia.
00:25:59.679 --> 00:26:01.839
It was a pretty great project so far.
00:26:02.180 --> 00:26:02.921
One of the things that we
00:26:02.941 --> 00:26:05.301
did when we took over,
00:26:05.362 --> 00:26:06.262
I guess you might say,
00:26:06.343 --> 00:26:08.284
is we began reaching out
00:26:08.304 --> 00:26:09.744
with colleagues whom I
00:26:09.785 --> 00:26:11.445
worked with through my UVA days.
00:26:12.185 --> 00:26:13.887
And began working with classrooms,
00:26:14.268 --> 00:26:15.469
particularly Denver Brunsman,
00:26:16.289 --> 00:26:17.391
who's a terrific scholar of
00:26:17.411 --> 00:26:18.372
the revolutionary era,
00:26:18.751 --> 00:26:19.593
working with his students
00:26:19.633 --> 00:26:21.795
to develop the encyclopedia
00:26:21.875 --> 00:26:24.917
as an assignment for his
00:26:25.057 --> 00:26:26.479
students so that we could
00:26:26.558 --> 00:26:27.400
work for them over the
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:28.401
course of the semester to
00:26:28.441 --> 00:26:29.701
produce a very polished
00:26:31.182 --> 00:26:32.304
encyclopedia entry.
00:26:32.565 --> 00:26:33.184
But also, you know,
00:26:33.224 --> 00:26:34.125
scholars such as yourself,
00:26:34.145 --> 00:26:35.166
we would reach out to for
00:26:35.207 --> 00:26:35.826
certain entries.
00:26:36.008 --> 00:26:36.327
Right.
00:26:37.298 --> 00:26:38.480
we're very grateful to see
00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:39.721
that it's been cited in
00:26:40.500 --> 00:26:41.622
professional publications.
00:26:41.842 --> 00:26:43.182
And so it's making a real difference.
00:26:44.324 --> 00:26:46.226
Now, with respect to the descendants,
00:26:47.646 --> 00:26:50.368
that was a real, one of the,
00:26:51.169 --> 00:26:51.630
probably the most
00:26:51.690 --> 00:26:52.711
meaningful things that I
00:26:52.830 --> 00:26:53.750
did at Mount Vernon.
00:26:54.251 --> 00:26:55.211
We had started an oral
00:26:55.251 --> 00:26:57.013
history project with the
00:26:57.074 --> 00:26:57.953
League of Descendants of
00:26:57.993 --> 00:26:59.255
the Enslaved at Mount Vernon,
00:26:59.776 --> 00:27:00.977
in which they essentially
00:27:01.737 --> 00:27:02.798
they ran the project.
00:27:02.917 --> 00:27:04.057
I was just helping to
00:27:04.238 --> 00:27:05.057
produce the back end
00:27:05.117 --> 00:27:06.038
actually on StreamYard,
00:27:06.098 --> 00:27:07.398
like we're talking on today.
00:27:08.539 --> 00:27:10.099
But I got to sit through all
00:27:10.119 --> 00:27:12.080
of those conversations, or most of them,
00:27:12.580 --> 00:27:13.961
and really listen to
00:27:14.122 --> 00:27:15.561
people's stories and to
00:27:15.582 --> 00:27:19.203
hear about their ancestors'
00:27:19.263 --> 00:27:20.844
connection to the plantation,
00:27:20.864 --> 00:27:22.625
Mount Vernon's plantation,
00:27:23.125 --> 00:27:26.006
and how that connection has
00:27:26.046 --> 00:27:27.227
shaped their lives since.
00:27:27.527 --> 00:27:28.227
And it's a really
00:27:29.208 --> 00:27:30.369
Uh, uh,
00:27:30.590 --> 00:27:32.374
it's really probably one of the
00:27:32.394 --> 00:27:33.875
best things that I was a part of,
00:27:34.057 --> 00:27:34.538
you know, I was,
00:27:34.657 --> 00:27:35.920
I was just very grateful to
00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:37.542
be associated with it.
00:27:39.145 --> 00:27:39.787
So you've had, um,
00:27:41.363 --> 00:27:42.564
well over a decade now of
00:27:42.624 --> 00:27:43.884
really being immersed in
00:27:43.944 --> 00:27:46.106
this world of the 18th
00:27:46.146 --> 00:27:47.127
century period of the
00:27:47.188 --> 00:27:49.230
revolution and I'm just
00:27:49.630 --> 00:27:52.192
wondering where you this
00:27:52.251 --> 00:27:53.452
long Legacy of it that
00:27:53.532 --> 00:27:54.794
comes to us in surprising
00:27:54.854 --> 00:27:56.476
ways I mean how do you see
00:27:56.516 --> 00:27:58.156
this as a as an historical
00:27:58.396 --> 00:27:59.917
art or as a narrative or as
00:28:00.858 --> 00:28:01.640
stories we can tell
00:28:03.038 --> 00:28:05.818
I think, you know, for my mind, I mean,
00:28:05.919 --> 00:28:06.898
I understand the American
00:28:06.939 --> 00:28:08.679
Revolution or this period,
00:28:09.338 --> 00:28:11.259
the way I come at it is how
00:28:11.299 --> 00:28:12.440
an empire fell apart.
00:28:12.579 --> 00:28:14.000
Like that's what excites me
00:28:14.019 --> 00:28:15.961
about this history.
00:28:16.201 --> 00:28:17.921
And within that framework
00:28:17.961 --> 00:28:20.102
that I see a kind of a big playground,
00:28:20.261 --> 00:28:21.041
all of these different
00:28:21.801 --> 00:28:22.842
stories that we can tell.
00:28:22.942 --> 00:28:23.961
And so that is really kind
00:28:23.981 --> 00:28:25.823
of shaped my approach to my
00:28:25.863 --> 00:28:27.103
different projects, both
00:28:27.663 --> 00:28:28.903
you know, the podcast projects,
00:28:28.943 --> 00:28:30.965
but also my work with the
00:28:31.125 --> 00:28:32.126
Scottish Court of Session
00:28:32.186 --> 00:28:34.308
and my Scottish immigrants in general.
00:28:34.848 --> 00:28:38.211
And that really, figuring out how they,
00:28:38.592 --> 00:28:39.853
these people confronted
00:28:39.913 --> 00:28:40.834
something that they didn't
00:28:40.854 --> 00:28:42.214
really see coming, although, you know,
00:28:42.255 --> 00:28:43.256
some kind of did.
00:28:44.797 --> 00:28:46.818
But then how they try to
00:28:48.398 --> 00:28:49.260
navigate through it and
00:28:49.320 --> 00:28:51.965
reconstruct their lives in the aftermath.
00:28:52.446 --> 00:28:54.009
There's just many marvelous
00:28:54.329 --> 00:28:54.971
stories to tell.
00:28:55.211 --> 00:28:56.272
Really is.
00:28:56.294 --> 00:28:57.816
What got you interested in the Scots?
00:28:59.967 --> 00:29:03.309
I, uh, it was, it was a funny question.
00:29:03.430 --> 00:29:07.232
So, um, my, who was going to be my wife,
00:29:07.653 --> 00:29:08.714
uh, uh,
00:29:08.795 --> 00:29:10.556
we went on a kind of pre-wedding
00:29:10.635 --> 00:29:12.857
trip to the UK in 2008.
00:29:12.857 --> 00:29:13.117
Um,
00:29:13.137 --> 00:29:16.300
and she's a historian of Tudor England.
00:29:17.122 --> 00:29:17.182
Uh,
00:29:17.301 --> 00:29:18.643
and so she was going over for her first
00:29:18.682 --> 00:29:19.663
big research trip.
00:29:19.683 --> 00:29:21.125
And so we decided to go to, um,
00:29:22.205 --> 00:29:23.166
Scotland since we,
00:29:23.386 --> 00:29:24.188
none of us had ever been
00:29:24.208 --> 00:29:27.009
there and in the castle in Edinburgh,
00:29:27.636 --> 00:29:29.238
If you go down into the dungeon,
00:29:29.837 --> 00:29:30.538
you will see that it's
00:29:30.598 --> 00:29:34.020
interpreted as it was when
00:29:34.080 --> 00:29:35.922
American POWs from the
00:29:35.961 --> 00:29:37.202
revolution were kept there.
00:29:38.144 --> 00:29:39.785
And even on the big dungeon door,
00:29:39.825 --> 00:29:40.965
they've drawn a ship or
00:29:41.006 --> 00:29:42.226
they carved a ship with the
00:29:42.287 --> 00:29:43.386
stars and stripes or the
00:29:43.426 --> 00:29:44.627
nascent stars and stripes.
00:29:45.167 --> 00:29:46.229
So I thought, great.
00:29:46.548 --> 00:29:47.849
All right.
00:29:48.089 --> 00:29:48.891
Yeah.
00:29:49.151 --> 00:29:49.810
And I thought, well,
00:29:49.851 --> 00:29:50.451
this is going to be my
00:29:50.511 --> 00:29:51.372
project because I knew I
00:29:51.412 --> 00:29:52.752
was going to go to UVA soon.
00:29:52.772 --> 00:29:53.314
Yeah.
00:29:54.213 --> 00:29:56.315
Well, as many of us know,
00:29:56.394 --> 00:29:57.575
if you can't find the sources,
00:29:57.695 --> 00:29:58.675
you can't tell the story.
00:29:58.895 --> 00:29:59.796
And so I couldn't find
00:29:59.875 --> 00:30:01.277
enough to sustain a dissertation.
00:30:01.317 --> 00:30:02.656
But in that process,
00:30:03.238 --> 00:30:04.698
I came across John Witherspoon,
00:30:05.739 --> 00:30:07.338
who became what is
00:30:07.378 --> 00:30:08.500
eventually would be called
00:30:08.559 --> 00:30:09.519
Princeton University,
00:30:09.720 --> 00:30:10.661
College of New Jersey in
00:30:10.681 --> 00:30:11.441
the 18th century.
00:30:11.961 --> 00:30:13.761
He was a Scots minister from Paisley.
00:30:13.801 --> 00:30:15.123
It studied with Thomas Hutchinson.
00:30:15.563 --> 00:30:18.845
And he was writing a
00:30:18.944 --> 00:30:21.227
response to someone who had
00:30:21.307 --> 00:30:22.406
criticized him for
00:30:22.527 --> 00:30:24.568
supporting Scots immigrants
00:30:24.868 --> 00:30:25.808
to leave Scotland.
00:30:26.509 --> 00:30:27.931
And I thought, well, what is this?
00:30:28.851 --> 00:30:29.191
Now,
00:30:31.172 --> 00:30:32.232
people have written about Scots
00:30:32.272 --> 00:30:33.074
immigrants before.
00:30:33.114 --> 00:30:34.734
David Dobson, J.M.
00:30:34.755 --> 00:30:36.295
Brumfield have done a lot of
00:30:36.336 --> 00:30:36.955
terrific work.
00:30:37.395 --> 00:30:38.396
But what really interested
00:30:38.457 --> 00:30:41.859
me was the political response,
00:30:42.059 --> 00:30:43.461
particularly in Scotland,
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:47.003
to what they conceived of as a crisis.
00:30:48.003 --> 00:30:51.767
Because the land owners, the legal jurists,
00:30:51.807 --> 00:30:53.228
the politicians began to
00:30:53.347 --> 00:30:55.309
argue that if we allow
00:30:55.569 --> 00:30:56.431
these people to leave,
00:30:56.490 --> 00:30:58.711
it will drain Scotland of its resources.
00:30:59.732 --> 00:31:01.775
And especially as events
00:31:01.835 --> 00:31:03.935
took a difficult turn in North America,
00:31:04.336 --> 00:31:05.518
increasing fears that
00:31:06.508 --> 00:31:08.009
if we keep allowing people to go,
00:31:08.288 --> 00:31:10.250
they could be on the wrong side, you know,
00:31:10.329 --> 00:31:11.369
particularly Highlanders
00:31:11.430 --> 00:31:14.510
who they never really quite get over the,
00:31:15.010 --> 00:31:15.152
um,
00:31:15.511 --> 00:31:17.792
suspicions after the Jacobite rebellion.
00:31:17.873 --> 00:31:20.413
So, so I was off to the races after that.
00:31:20.854 --> 00:31:21.114
Wow.
00:31:21.134 --> 00:31:22.433
It's a great topic.
00:31:23.174 --> 00:31:23.615
And, uh,
00:31:24.161 --> 00:31:25.882
Yeah, I'm slowly working on a book.
00:31:25.961 --> 00:31:27.403
My editor is very patient,
00:31:27.903 --> 00:31:29.183
but I'm writing a podcast
00:31:29.223 --> 00:31:29.964
and a book right now.
00:31:30.065 --> 00:31:30.845
That's good.
00:31:30.904 --> 00:31:32.066
Yeah, yeah.
00:31:32.806 --> 00:31:33.707
We'll try to cut this short
00:31:33.727 --> 00:31:36.308
so you can get back to writing.
00:31:36.489 --> 00:31:37.690
Jonathan tells me that there
00:31:37.710 --> 00:31:38.849
were Scottish prisoners of
00:31:38.910 --> 00:31:40.411
war all over Massachusetts
00:31:40.471 --> 00:31:40.872
beginning in 1776.
00:31:40.872 --> 00:31:41.571
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:31:41.592 --> 00:31:42.492
Yeah, because in early 1776,
00:31:42.492 --> 00:31:42.932
members of the 71st
00:31:42.952 --> 00:31:43.593
Highland Regiment were
00:31:43.613 --> 00:31:44.733
captured by American privateers.
00:31:44.753 --> 00:31:44.834
Yeah.
00:31:53.358 --> 00:31:56.621
when they were sailing to
00:31:57.000 --> 00:31:59.083
reinforce General Gage in Boston.
00:31:59.803 --> 00:32:02.263
And there is some evidence
00:32:02.304 --> 00:32:04.645
to suggest that that leads
00:32:04.726 --> 00:32:06.226
to or inspires part of
00:32:06.286 --> 00:32:07.626
Jefferson's original draft
00:32:07.666 --> 00:32:08.827
of the Declaration when he
00:32:08.907 --> 00:32:10.969
equates Scotch soldiers
00:32:11.009 --> 00:32:12.309
with foreign mercenaries.
00:32:12.630 --> 00:32:13.150
Interesting.
00:32:13.450 --> 00:32:14.590
So that eventually gets
00:32:14.631 --> 00:32:16.432
deleted by Witherspoon.
00:32:16.912 --> 00:32:17.732
Yeah, interesting.
00:32:18.113 --> 00:32:18.232
Yeah.
00:32:18.452 --> 00:32:19.093
Yeah.
00:32:19.192 --> 00:32:20.094
As that's the episode where
00:32:20.114 --> 00:32:21.473
the ship comes into Boston,
00:32:21.513 --> 00:32:22.934
not realizing that the
00:32:22.994 --> 00:32:24.174
British have already evacuated.
00:32:24.755 --> 00:32:25.576
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:25.655 --> 00:32:25.895
Yeah.
00:32:26.056 --> 00:32:26.355
Whoops.
00:32:26.915 --> 00:32:27.855
Bad luck all around.
00:32:28.317 --> 00:32:29.257
Yeah.
00:32:30.057 --> 00:32:32.637
And there are other Scots, of course.
00:32:32.917 --> 00:32:34.278
I remember at the time of
00:32:34.298 --> 00:32:35.479
the ratification debates,
00:32:35.499 --> 00:32:35.939
there was a lot of
00:32:35.979 --> 00:32:36.740
discussion of a Lord
00:32:36.779 --> 00:32:38.019
Belhaven who had opposed
00:32:38.059 --> 00:32:39.121
the union of Britain and
00:32:39.240 --> 00:32:41.280
England and Scotland back in 1707.
00:32:41.280 --> 00:32:43.442
And the anti-federalists
00:32:43.541 --> 00:32:45.482
kept citing Lord Belhaven and
00:32:46.526 --> 00:32:48.107
The Federalists also said
00:32:48.208 --> 00:32:49.189
they were kind of wary, though,
00:32:49.209 --> 00:32:49.869
because he had been
00:32:50.009 --> 00:32:52.071
executed for his opposition to the Union.
00:32:53.208 --> 00:32:55.470
Yeah, that one I'm not quite aware of.
00:32:55.569 --> 00:32:56.390
But interestingly enough,
00:32:56.410 --> 00:32:57.711
there was a lot of debate
00:32:58.811 --> 00:33:01.913
in the late 1770s when they
00:33:01.933 --> 00:33:02.894
were drafting the Articles
00:33:02.934 --> 00:33:03.796
of Confederation.
00:33:03.816 --> 00:33:06.518
And there's interesting back
00:33:06.577 --> 00:33:07.798
and forth between Benjamin
00:33:07.838 --> 00:33:08.459
Franklin and John
00:33:08.479 --> 00:33:09.359
Witherspoon because they're
00:33:09.400 --> 00:33:10.420
asking Witherspoon,
00:33:11.020 --> 00:33:12.102
what kind of union is
00:33:12.162 --> 00:33:13.102
England and Scotland?
00:33:13.142 --> 00:33:14.563
What is Great Britain?
00:33:15.263 --> 00:33:16.404
Because they're trying to think about,
00:33:16.505 --> 00:33:17.905
is this going to be a republic,
00:33:17.965 --> 00:33:19.247
a federated republic, or...
00:33:19.906 --> 00:33:21.748
as it is within, in Britain at the time,
00:33:22.127 --> 00:33:22.528
essentially an
00:33:22.588 --> 00:33:23.729
incorporating union that
00:33:23.808 --> 00:33:24.890
creates a new state.
00:33:25.450 --> 00:33:25.891
Interesting.
00:33:25.931 --> 00:33:26.151
Yeah.
00:33:26.371 --> 00:33:27.111
That's why over the old
00:33:27.172 --> 00:33:27.991
state house in Boston,
00:33:28.011 --> 00:33:29.393
we have the lion and the unicorn,
00:33:29.432 --> 00:33:30.614
and that was built shortly
00:33:30.814 --> 00:33:31.834
after the union.
00:33:31.913 --> 00:33:33.855
So we're thinking about this new entity.
00:33:34.276 --> 00:33:34.715
Right, right.
00:33:34.736 --> 00:33:35.215
Yeah.
00:33:35.236 --> 00:33:35.375
Yeah.
00:33:36.683 --> 00:33:38.786
And then Franklin, sometime in the 1760s,
00:33:38.846 --> 00:33:41.627
said the fear was that the
00:33:41.667 --> 00:33:42.989
whale would swallow Jonah.
00:33:43.048 --> 00:33:44.170
But he said, in this case,
00:33:44.650 --> 00:33:45.990
Jonah has swallowed the whale.
00:33:46.172 --> 00:33:46.731
Exactly.
00:33:46.751 --> 00:33:47.813
Looking at Lord Booth and
00:33:47.833 --> 00:33:49.193
other Scots who had become
00:33:49.233 --> 00:33:52.115
such influential figures in the empire.
00:33:52.457 --> 00:33:52.957
Well, I mean,
00:33:53.156 --> 00:33:55.999
when the Scots joined the Union, I mean,
00:33:56.019 --> 00:33:57.000
that was one of the primary...
00:33:58.161 --> 00:33:59.261
main motivators for joining
00:33:59.281 --> 00:34:00.182
the Union is they could get
00:34:00.261 --> 00:34:01.303
access to the empire.
00:34:01.982 --> 00:34:04.364
It would be inside the
00:34:04.403 --> 00:34:05.404
Navigation Acts now.
00:34:05.444 --> 00:34:05.664
I mean,
00:34:05.684 --> 00:34:07.346
the Scots had tried empire at Darien.
00:34:07.846 --> 00:34:09.086
It failed miserably.
00:34:09.106 --> 00:34:10.748
They had tried at Nova Scotia,
00:34:10.768 --> 00:34:11.867
and the early 17th century
00:34:11.907 --> 00:34:12.568
had not worked.
00:34:13.728 --> 00:34:14.929
But when the Scots joined the Union,
00:34:14.989 --> 00:34:17.233
and particularly from the 1750s onwards,
00:34:18.012 --> 00:34:18.813
they essentially take
00:34:18.873 --> 00:34:20.255
control of the tobacco trade.
00:34:21.277 --> 00:34:24.199
A disproportionate number of
00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:25.880
Scots are colonial governors,
00:34:26.402 --> 00:34:27.302
army officers.
00:34:28.163 --> 00:34:28.884
Ned Lansman,
00:34:29.043 --> 00:34:31.606
great historian of Scotland and America,
00:34:31.746 --> 00:34:32.568
says that Scots are
00:34:32.608 --> 00:34:34.869
entrenched in the machinery of empire.
00:34:34.949 --> 00:34:35.331
And they...
00:34:36.070 --> 00:34:36.652
they made it work.
00:34:36.771 --> 00:34:37.273
And, you know,
00:34:37.554 --> 00:34:38.355
to your earlier question
00:34:38.375 --> 00:34:39.275
that it helps to explain
00:34:39.335 --> 00:34:41.278
why so many Scots are loyal
00:34:41.519 --> 00:34:42.380
in the 1760s and 1770s.
00:34:42.420 --> 00:34:44.443
Because as you said,
00:34:44.483 --> 00:34:45.465
the empire really was
00:34:45.545 --> 00:34:46.646
working for them and they
00:34:46.686 --> 00:34:47.748
were working in it.
00:34:47.889 --> 00:34:48.309
So yes.
00:34:48.570 --> 00:34:49.612
Right, right, right.
00:34:49.711 --> 00:34:49.931
Yeah.
00:34:49.952 --> 00:34:51.193
And they, but they, uh,
00:34:52.047 --> 00:34:53.367
They annoyed Virginia planters,
00:34:53.547 --> 00:34:55.369
particularly Anglo-Virginians,
00:34:55.429 --> 00:34:58.411
who are worried that, as they would say,
00:34:58.471 --> 00:35:00.992
quote, enslaving them to debt and whatnot,
00:35:01.112 --> 00:35:02.014
because they are very
00:35:02.074 --> 00:35:03.614
efficient at using the credit system.
00:35:04.655 --> 00:35:05.496
The Virginians just couldn't
00:35:05.516 --> 00:35:06.115
help themselves.
00:35:06.916 --> 00:35:07.817
They couldn't.
00:35:09.438 --> 00:35:10.619
We've been talking with Jim
00:35:10.639 --> 00:35:12.480
Emboski from the Roy
00:35:12.519 --> 00:35:14.021
Rosenzweig Center for
00:35:14.061 --> 00:35:15.041
History and New Media,
00:35:15.081 --> 00:35:16.523
producer of the World's
00:35:16.563 --> 00:35:18.304
Turned Upside Down podcast, and
00:35:18.829 --> 00:35:19.851
involved with other public
00:35:19.891 --> 00:35:21.773
history projects, podcast projects.
00:35:21.813 --> 00:35:23.056
Jim, it's been great talking to you.
00:35:23.097 --> 00:35:24.639
Is there anything else we
00:35:24.659 --> 00:35:26.101
should talk about before we let you go?
00:35:27.637 --> 00:35:30.059
I would just say to folks, thank you, Bob,
00:35:30.119 --> 00:35:31.599
for all the work, and you, Jonathan,
00:35:31.641 --> 00:35:32.501
behind the scenes there for
00:35:32.521 --> 00:35:33.302
all the work you're doing
00:35:33.342 --> 00:35:34.503
to promote the 250.
00:35:34.503 --> 00:35:37.626
This is a real moment where we can,
00:35:37.646 --> 00:35:38.407
I think,
00:35:38.447 --> 00:35:39.789
re-energize the public's interest
00:35:39.829 --> 00:35:40.429
in history.
00:35:41.130 --> 00:35:42.530
And also, as you know,
00:35:42.590 --> 00:35:43.853
and many of your audiences know,
00:35:43.873 --> 00:35:46.375
we're going to be excited
00:35:46.434 --> 00:35:47.295
in 2026 for the 250, the declaration.
00:35:47.315 --> 00:35:47.376
But
00:35:50.818 --> 00:35:51.860
that's just the declaration.
00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:53.621
The war doesn't end for another few years.
00:35:53.702 --> 00:35:55.282
And so there is a lot of
00:35:55.382 --> 00:35:56.905
ground that we can cover.
00:35:56.965 --> 00:35:58.186
There's a lot of creativity
00:35:58.206 --> 00:35:59.606
that we can tap into.
00:35:59.726 --> 00:36:02.949
And so hopefully the
00:36:03.010 --> 00:36:03.869
audience is out there that
00:36:03.889 --> 00:36:06.072
are excited to hear what we have to say.
00:36:06.913 --> 00:36:08.514
Hopefully, and we'll keep them excited.
00:36:08.574 --> 00:36:09.054
So thank you.
00:36:09.094 --> 00:36:09.815
Thank you for all you're
00:36:09.835 --> 00:36:10.635
doing with the world's
00:36:10.675 --> 00:36:11.936
turned upside down and other things.
00:36:11.996 --> 00:36:14.860
So speaking of our audience,
00:36:14.920 --> 00:36:16.460
I want to thank our friends in
00:36:17.742 --> 00:36:18.702
around the country and also
00:36:18.742 --> 00:36:20.943
around the world who tune in every week.
00:36:21.043 --> 00:36:22.304
And if you're in one of these places,
00:36:22.364 --> 00:36:23.804
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:36:23.824 --> 00:36:26.244
jlane at revolution250.org,
00:36:26.264 --> 00:36:27.166
and he'll send you some of
00:36:27.246 --> 00:36:29.266
our Rev 250 swag.
00:36:29.326 --> 00:36:31.407
So this week, Lincoln, California,
00:36:31.867 --> 00:36:34.188
Irvington, New Jersey, and Spartanburg,
00:36:34.228 --> 00:36:36.628
South Carolina, Yokohama, Japan,
00:36:36.929 --> 00:36:38.949
and here in the Bay State, Boston,
00:36:38.989 --> 00:36:39.530
and Brighton.
00:36:39.570 --> 00:36:40.610
Thank you all for listening
00:36:40.650 --> 00:36:42.510
and all folks in places
00:36:42.570 --> 00:36:43.891
beyond and between.
00:36:44.652 --> 00:36:46.032
And now we will be piped out
00:36:46.193 --> 00:36:47.052
on the road to Boston.