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Episode Description
As the Center marks the 250th anniversary of the nation, we’re taking a closer look at the people, events, and ideas that set the American Revolution in motion and ultimately led to the creation and adoption of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. This moment invites us to broaden the story of the founding by exploring not only the familiar figures we often study, but also the wider community of thinkers who helped shape the principles of our constitutional democracy.
In this episode Mary Sarah Bilder of Boston College Law School and Sara Georgini of the Massachusetts Historical Society join the program to discuss two remarkable women central to 18th-century intellectual life whose ideas influenced many of the era’s most notable figures: Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren. Julie Silverbrook, Chief Content and Learning Officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
Resources
- Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention (2017)
- Mary Sarah Bilder, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (2008)
- Mary Sarah Bilder, Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution (2022)
- Mary Sarah Bilder, Hater of Kings: Catharine Macaulay’s Constitutional Regicide and the Declaration of Independence,” Boston College Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 654, (July 23, 2025)
- Sara Georgini, Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family (2022)
- Sara Georgini (series editor), Adams Papers Digital Edition, Massachusetts Historical Society
- Karen Green (editor), The Correspondence of Catharine Macaulay (2019)
- Mercy Otis Warren Letter to Catharine Macaulay, August 24, 1775, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
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