Leadership and Legacy: Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library

In what ways did the United States remain bound to Great Britain in the decades after American Independence? As it turns out, the law and legal ideas served as a connection between Americans and their former British brethren. In today's episode we talk to Dr. Nicola Phillips of Royal Hollway, University of London, about the life and career of Thomas Erskine. The Scottish-born Erskine was a member of an elite family whose ranks included Henry, Lord Advocate of Scotland, and David, 11th Earl of Buchan and correspondent of George Washington. Thomas, who practiced law in England, championed ideas on freedom of the press and trial by jury that resonated with Americans as they remade their laws to suit the new republic. This episode is part one of a four-part miniseries on the history of early American law featuring Drs. Nicola Phillips, Kate Brown, Lindsay Chervinsky, and Jessica Lowe.

About Our Guest: Nicola Phillips, Ph.D., is Lecturer in History at Royal Hollway, University of London where she also co-directs The Bedford Centre for the History of Women and Gender. She is an expert in Gender History c. 1660-1830 and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her first book examined the legal, cultural, social and economic position of Women in Business, 1700-1850 (Boydell Press, 2006). Her second book, The Profligate Son; Or, a True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice and Financial Ruin in Regency England (OUP, Oxford & Basic Books, New York 2013) was listed as one of the top ten books of the year by The Washington Post. Nicola is a former Library of Congress Georgian Papers Programme Fellow.

About Our Host:

Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. leads the Center for Digital History at the Washington Library. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, Ambuske graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA Law, Ambuske co-directed the 1828 Catalogue Project and the Scottish Court of Session Project. He is currently at work on a book about emigration from Scotland in the era of the American Revolution as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press.

What did George Washington write in his personal copy of the Constitution? Who left behind messages inside some of Washington’s books? How did Washington learn to become a professional soldier?

Mount Vernon introduces its latest podcast and video series, The Secrets of Washington's Archives. Come explore the books, manuscripts, and maps found inside the George Washington Presidential Library’s special collections and hear stories about George Washington, the American Revolution, and the Presidency.

The series will release June 5, 2023 for Mount Vernon members and June 19 for audiences everywhere. Learn more at www.georgewashingtonpodcast.com.

Music by SoulProdMusic at Pixabay.

In this episode, Jim Ambuske sits down with first year Ph.D. student Jordan Pellerito of the University of Missouri who is interning this summer at the Washington Library. Pellerito tells us about her Master’s degree work on the Marquis de Lafayette and how she is spending her summer working with the Library’s collection of Rare Books while researching early U.S. Chambers of Commerce.

About our Guest:

Jordan Pellerito is a first year Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri. Pellerito recently completed her M.A. American History at Missouri and currently holds an internship at the Washington Library.

About Our Host:

Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. leads the Center for Digital History at the Washington Library. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, Ambuske graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA Law, Ambuske co-directed the 1828 Catalogue Project and the Scottish Court of Session Project. He is currently at work on a book about emigration from Scotland in the era of the American Revolution as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the British Empire began dismantling the slave system that had helped to build it. Parliament banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, and in 1833 the government outlawed slavery itself, accomplishing through legislative action what the United States would later achieve in part by the horrors of civil war. Abolition has long been a cause célèbre in the British imagination, with men like William Wilberforce receiving credit for moving the empire to right a moral wrong. Yet as our guest today argues, there were other, equally powerful motivations beyond morality that fueled British efforts to abolish slavery. On today’s show, Dr. Padraic Scanlan joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new book, Slave Empire: How Slavery Made Modern Britain. Scanlan is an Assistant Professor of History at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto. And as you’ll hear, there was as much money to be made in the abolition of slavery as there was in slavery itself.