In 1764, the Bostonian Samuel Adams railed against Parliament's new Sugar Act. The law actually lowered the customs duties that Americans paid on their imported sugar and molasses, but to Adams and others, it was a form of taxation without representation. By submitting to Parliament's will, Adams asked, "are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?"

To our modern ears, Adams's words smack of hypocrisy. How could free Americans justify comparing themselves to slaves when many colonists held fellow human beings in bondage? Or, as the Englishman Dr. Samuel Johnson would ask in 1775, "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" But as both sides knew, the politics of slavery were as powerful as slavery itself. For more than a century, British subjects throughout the Atlantic world had used the blurred lines between freedom and unfreedom to claim the moral high ground over their political opponents. And as a dispute over taxes erupted into the American Revolution, the politics of slavery and the prospect of abolition raised fundamental questions about the very meaning of the revolution itself.

In this episode, Dr. Jim Ambuske is joined by Dr. Matthew Mason to discuss his recent book, Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World.

Hosted by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Executive producers are Dr. Lynn Price Robbins, Jeanette Patrick, and Patrick Long. Audio and video editing by Patrick Long. Revolutions in Retrospect is a joint production of Primary Source Media and Revolutionary Histories.

For modern Americans, age is a prime factor in many milestones: learning how to drive, voting for the first time, and legally consuming alcohol. Using age as a standard for laws began in the founding era. Despite many advancements in the understanding of human development, it has largely remained unchanged since.

And while we might think of these age-based laws as safeguards for children, they were in fact developed with the goal of better controlling them. Is it time that such laws, both civil and criminal, were updated for modern society?

In this episode, Dr. Lynn Price Robbins is joined by Dr. Holly White to discuss her new book, Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States.

Hosted by Dr. Lynn Price Robbins. Executive producers are Dr. Jim Ambuske, Jeanette Patrick, and Patrick Long. Audio and video editing by Patrick Long. Revolutions in Retrospect is a joint production of Primary Source Media and Revolutionary Histories.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." So begins the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. In our own time, these words are part of the American Creed, the most important part of a document that set a new nation on its revolutionary course. But to Thomas Jefferson and the men who wrote the Declaration in the summer of 1776, these stirring words were but window dressing to the charges levelled against the men who they held responsible for a civil war and had made independence necessary.

In that moment, no part of the Declaration mattered more to them than the list of 27 grievances directed at King George III, a series of indictments that accused the monarch of betraying his British American subjects. Yet, more than just the king lurked behind each count. He alone could not "impose Taxes on us without our Consent" nor have "plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people" without help from a gallery of tyrants and rogues. Names like Gage, Hutchinson, Tryon, or Duggingston may not appear in the Declaration, and they may be obscure to us, but to Jefferson and other British Americans, their presence was self-evident.

In this episode, Dr. Jim Ambuske is joined by Dr. Robert Parkinson to discuss his new book, Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence.

Hosted by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Executive producers are Dr. Lynn Price Robbins, Jeanette Patrick, and Patrick Long. Audio and video editing by Patrick Long. Revolutions in Retrospect is a joint production of Primary Source Media and Revolutionary Histories.