Episode Details

In this episode, Luke talks with Terry Bouton, author of Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. His forthcoming book is The American Monarchists: The Founders who Betrayed the Revolution.

This is part one of a two-part conversation. Here, Terry introduces the conflicts that developed between the British metropole and colonists in the Americas, the conflicts between propertied and propertyless colonists, and how the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution did and didn’t change the nature of social struggles and political participation. Terry argues that for various reasons, many contemporary historians of the 18th-century U.S. haven’t sufficiently grappled with the economic and monarchical interests at play. Woody Holton’s work is mentioned. I recently spoke with Jason Maloy about the Paine-Adams debate and the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution’s unicameral structure and expanded suffrage base.