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Course Description

Course Description:  Debates rage over whether to put US founders on pedestals or tear down their statues. As humans, these people were complex and full of contradictions.
   • What are the founders specific legacies to be admired and deplored?
   • How did their relationships, interactions, disagreements, and fights shape the republic and affect us today?
   • What can we learn from each founder based on the facts of their lives and why are these lessons relevant to us?
   

Week 1:
   Dr. Benjamin Rush: Always Working for the Republic
   • How did the Enlightenment influence Dr. Benjamin Rush’s signing of the Declaration of Independence and service in the 2nd Continental Congress and as Surgeon General of the Continental Army?
   • Why did the American Psychiatric Association recognize him at the “father of American psychiatry" while his critics flayed him for his non-traditional views?
   • What was the significance when Rush ended the estrangement between Jefferson and Adams?

Week 2:
   General Henry Knox: Forgotten Hero
   • Why is General Henry Knox considered the best Revolutionary War general and credited with winning our independence?
   • What critical role did he play in preventing the Newburgh Conspiracy from successfully destroying the new republic?
   • How did Knox’s defensive strategies protect the young republic from its many enemies?

Week 3:
   Forgotten Founders: Gouverneur Morris, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston
   • Why have we forgotten these important founders who don’t have prominent statues everywhere yet were essential to our founding?
   • What specific contributions did each man make in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to create our republic?

Week 4:
   Edmund Randolph: Reversing Position, Changing His Mind, or Evolving?
   • What led General Washington to appoint this lawyer and public servant as his Aide-de-Camp and later as the first US Attorney General?
   • How can we explain Randolph’s actions first presenting Madison’s Virginia Plan to the Constitutional Convention, voting not to approve the Constitution, and working with Madison in the Ratifying Convention to guarantee its passage?
   • What were the scandals which led to his bitter split with Washington and his downfall?

Week 5:
   James Madison: Evolution of Thought and Practice on Creating a Constitutional Republic
   • What was Madison’s evolutionary journey from first graduate student to “Father of the Constitution,” to master politician, to a flexible, nuanced senior statesman?
   • How did he engage in each stage of our development with controversies, plots, fraud, backstabbing, secret deals, and the messy business of democracy?
   • What can we learn from his accomplishments and failures in building a limited republic on Enlightenment ideals?

Week 6:
   Revolutionary Women: Forgotten Freedom Fighters
   • Who were the women who fought in the Revolution, spied, confronted individual British soldiers, or were influential in the public realm?
   • What motivated these brave patriots who refused to limit themselves to the domestic sphere?
   • What can Margret Corbin, Nancy Ann Morgan Hart, Sybil Ludington, Elizabeth Martin, Deborah Sampson, Mercy Otis Warren, and Phillis Wheatley teach us?

Instructor: Dr. Rebecca Staton-Reinstein

 

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Section Title
Founding Fathers & Mothers, Pt 4
Type
Discussion
Days
M
Time
10:00AM to 11:45AM
Dates
Jun 30, 2025 to Aug 04, 2025
Schedule and Location
Contact Hours
10.5
Delivery Options
Course Fee(s)
Tuition credit $80.00 Click here to get more information
Section Title
Founding Fathers & Mothers, Pt 4
Type
Discussion
Days
M
Time
10:00AM to 11:45AM
Dates
Jun 30, 2025 to Aug 04, 2025
Schedule and Location
Contact Hours
10.5
Delivery Options
Course Fee(s)
Tuition credit $80.00 Click here to get more information
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