Episode Details

How do you get people living in thirteen different colonies to come together and fight for independence?

What ideas and experiences would even unite them behind the fight?

Patriot leaders asked themselves these very questions, especially as the American Revolution turned from a series of political protests against imperial policies to a bloody war for independence. What’s more, Patriot leaders also asked themselves once we find these ideas and experiences, how do we use them to unite the American people?

Robert Parkinson, an Assistant Professor of History at Binghamton University and author of the award-winning book, The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution, has some ideas for how patriot leaders answered these questions.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/144

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
• The Octo: Eight Curated Blogs About Early American History
• "Historicizing Freedom & Black Abolitionism," Black Perspectives
• "A 'Thorough Deist?' The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin," Age of Revolutions
• OI Reader App for Free Chapter of The Common Cause

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 016: Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy
• Episode 086: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London
• Episode 122: Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America
• Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances
• Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft

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