This week, the second of two shows featuring a conversation between Clay S. Jenkinson and John Ragosta. Ragosta is an author, professor, and historian of early America.
#1152 John Ragosta (Part Two)
This week, the second of two shows featuring a conversation between Clay S. Jenkinson and John Ragosta. Ragosta is an author, professor, and historian of early America.
Professor Joseph Ellis joins us this week for further discussion about his new book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. The Cause is the product of Ellis' lifetime of writing about America’s founding era. The book enlightens and challenges the story of the founding of our nation.
This week we talk with President Jefferson about the British point of view of rebellion in America which eventually led to the Revolutionary War. The conversation begins and ends with Jefferson's thoughts on Benjamin Franklin, who had been an anglophile hoping for peace between the two nations, but ended up as a leading voice for American independence.
This week in an interesting debate match, Clay Jenkinson and Joseph Ellis argue over who is the “Indispensable Man” of the American Revolution. Ellis argues for George Washington, while Jenkinson says it has to be Jefferson. A very wise listener suggests that they are both wrong: it’s Benjamin Franklin.
"The French ... thought it was an assassination, a war crime, that Washington was a murderer."
— Peter Stark
We speak with Peter Stark, author of Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father.
We discuss George Washington’s formative years and character traits, his travels into the Ohio country, and his relationship with lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie. We talk about how Washington’s involvement in the Battle of Jumonville Glen touched off the French and Indian War.