Why We Study Our Past

The Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History is one of the not-so-little platoons striving to preserve and pass on the principles of the American Founding. It is therefore deeply engaged in civic education.

I am happy to be associated with the Jack Miller Center as an affiliate scholar and pleased also that the center is co-sponsoring Acton Institute’s annual academic conference, which this year is entitled, “The Spirit of ‘76: Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and the American Founding.”

I had the chance to sit down with Elliott Drago for an interview to discuss my work on George Washington, John Dickinson, and the Founding Era.

We often forget locality and place when we think of American history. The more we think just in terms of a national story or America as an idea, the more we lose sight of the fact that American history includes every American and every place in the United States.

History is about persons and places, not just ideas, and certainly not mere politics. It matters that Washington was from Virginia and it matters that Dickinson was from Pennsylvania. It is no coincidence that the national capital ended up in Washington’s backyard and that Dickinson’s approach to liberty and order evinced the Quaker constitutionalism prevalent in Pennsylvania.

Even so, Washington stressed in his “Farewell Address” that Americans also formed a “common country”:

How are we to balance local demands and motives with our “common country”? In what ways do the parts add up to the whole?

What does the Founding look like when we approach it in this way? My forthcoming book on place, tradition, and the American Founding will answer this question through an examination of key founders.

In the meantime, I talk about these themes in this Jack Miller Center interview.

My full interview is here.