In our inaugural guest episode, I’m joined by Michael Preedy, writer and founder of Making Sentences, a literary publication that explores “writers, their work, and their ideas, revealing how they help us understand ourselves, other people, and the world.” Michael’s recent treatment of Gore Vidal’s mammoth magnum opus, Narratives of Empire, and his recommendation that I give Burr another go inspired us to sit down and figure out just what America meant to Gore Vidal.

Michael and I have been circling one another for a while now in the comments section, so it was an absolute pleasure to finally sit down with him. Along the way, we stumbled upon some of our shared intellectual heroes, including Thomas Paine and the late Christopher Hitchens, whom Vidal himself once anointed as his heir apparent, his dauphin of contrarianism.

Read Michael’s full exploration of Vidal’s Shakespearean treatment of the American experiment below.

The Metropolitan Review

Gore Vidal’s Strange, Eventful United States

Where to begin? At the end…

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a month ago · 75 likes · 36 comments · Michael Preedy and The Metropolitan Review

Editor’s Note: This essay is an updated and revised version of a piece originally published in October 2025.

The United States has long struggled to reconcile its colonial past with its imperial present. Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty” has consistently maintained that it is not an empire at all, instead obscuring its foreign interventions beneath the fig leaves of principles of national self-determination and democracy promotion. Upon the consolidation of its continental domain, it was perhaps inevitable that the expanded federal government would turn to its southern backyard for opportunities to increase its political power and economic influence in the Western Hemisphere. The ideological cover used to justify the turn towards interventionist foreign policy in Latin America was enshrined in the Monroe Doctrine.

The turn of the twentieth century, the zenith of the Age of Empire, witnessed the emergence of the United States into the league of imperial nations as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine ushered in an era of unilateral, largely unchallenged, expansion of American political and economic hegemony in Latin America. The United States carried out thirty military interventions in the first thirty years of the century, coupled with a supervision of the economic affairs of many Latin American states and a subsequent influx of private American capital, primarily in holdings in extractive industries.[1]

The interwar years witnessed the height of commercially stimulated dollar diplomacy, with direct American investment to Chile alone ballooning from $15 million in 1913 to $423 million by 1929.[2] Later wartime defense contracts turned Latin America into the arsenal of the Allies and sealed the dependence of countries such as Chile on the U.S. market and investment. In many ways, this process of informal imperialism mirrored the British free trade policies of the early nineteenth century, in which calls for open doors to trade allowed the hegemonic power to monopolize trade and resource extraction from developing client states.

In this vein, George Kennan’s concept of containment should be viewed as rooted in the zero-sum nature of imperial foreign policy in which spheres of influence are constructed on an exclusionary basis to contain great power rivals. It is within this larger trajectory of American imperial development that the Cold War era must be examined, as Kennan’s containment policy was deployed as merely the new ideological fig leaf with which to justify increased intervention in Latin America.

Elite American officials had long adopted an attitude of condescension rooted in noblesse oblige towards their Latin American neighbors. Edward G. Miller Jr., Truman’s blue-blooded, Yale-educated Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, reflected the operative prejudices of his class when he remarked that interwar and wartime American economic aid and diplomatic engagement had “fostered an exaggerated and extreme sense of self-importance on the part of individuals connected with Latin American governments.”[3] Miller, the son of a man who owned Cuban sugar plantations, cabled the ambassador in Santiago to express his concern over the possibility of greater Chilean governmental regulation and control over the mining of copper, which was dominated by two American companies, Anaconda and Kennecott.[4] The relationship was highly symbiotic as Chilean copper made up 20% of all American copper consumption and the Chilean government in return received approximately 50% of its yearly revenue from the copper industry, primarily through import duties on mining supplies and income tax, revealing the entwined importance of copper extraction to both countries.[5]

Tied to transactional economic concerns was the Cold War ideological fear of communist proliferation; a 1954 State Department memo remarked that in Chile “socialist or frankly Marxist economic theories have been in the ascendancy and have left their mark in increasing government controls over the economy.”[6] Witness here the marriage of commercial and political motivations in U.S. criticism of the policies of the Chilean government. Whether economic or ideological concerns held primacy in the motivations of American diplomats is open for debate, and likely varied on a case-by-case basis. Arguably, the majority viewed them as intertwined, where support for American corporate interests and rabid anti-communism were two sides of the same Cold Warrior coin of support for the expansion of U.S. hegemony and its offspring, the proliferation of the capitalist system and liberal democracy.

The 1952 Chilean presidential election ushered in the return of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, colloquially known as Ibáñez, who had previously served as president from 1927-1931 after defeating the communist party candidate. However, his campaign rhetoric in 1952 was “virulently anti-U.S.” and centered on a denunciation of the 1952 U.S.-Chilean military assistance pact and larger U.S. meddling in domestic political and economic affairs.[7] These critiques of perceived U.S. paternalist economic dominance of Chile acquired added poignancy by the runaway inflation that was racking the nation. Regarding the extent of the inflation, the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate for 1953 noted that “without substantial foreign aid… it is likely that the unsolved problem of inflation will lead to a political crisis in Chile during Ibáñez’s term.” U.S. leaders concurrently believed that a further deterioration in the economic situation would only embolden domestic Chilean communists, inevitably at the urging of Moscow, to “foment labor disturbances and civil disorder.”[8]

The Chileans proposed that the United States purchase 100,000 tons of reserve copper in an effort to halt a further rise in inflation. Within this proposal was a thinly veiled threat that without an American economic aid package, the Chileans would either succumb to internal communist pressure or be forced to sell the copper to the Soviet Union or another Eastern Bloc nation. The Defense Mobilization Board, reflecting the coupling of corporate interests and the national security state within the burgeoning military-industrial complex, advised that the United States preemptively purchase the copper “at the prevailing market price provided the Chilean government agrees not to sell copper to the Soviet Bloc.”[9]

The fact that this issue was brought before President Eisenhower in the forum of a cabinet meeting reveals the extent to which this zero-sum view of economic rivalry with the Soviet Union had permeated all levels of the foreign policy establishment. U.S. officials parroted Assistant Secretary Miller’s earlier sentiments about the Chileans extorting U.S. economic aid by “threatening cooperation with… the USSR.”[10] The administration eventually agreed to purchase the copper at an estimated cost of $60 million.[11]

An analysis of US-Chilean relations during the first two years of the Eisenhower Administration, situated as it is within larger patterns of American intervention in Latin America in general and the Global South more broadly, raises many questions, foremost among them being the question of agency. Both sides clearly viewed the copper deal as a transactional quid pro quo; Miller had earlier remarked on the “intransigent and blackmailing” attitude of the Chileans regarding American advocacy for Chile with such Bretton Woods financial institutions as the Export-Import Bank and the International Bank, the latter of which Miller, a former Wall Street banker, handled personally and apparently without a trace of irony.[12]

The increased American involvement in the Chilean economy during the opening stages of the Cold War must be viewed as a precursor to later U.S. opposition and covert action, including the bankrolling of political opponents of Salvador Allende which culminated in the 1973 CIA-backed coup that ushered in the rule of right-wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet. U.S. policy towards Chile must also be distilled through the larger framework of American involvement in Latin America and read alongside such developments as the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution which likewise threatened U.S. tin interests.[13]

When viewed from below, as Noam Chomsky advocated, the history of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War is not as simple as it seems upon first glance, as revealed by the transactional nature of US-Chilean relations at this time. The Chileans successfully leveraged the American fears of communist expansion rooted in Kennan’s containment policy as well as the tangible raw material demands of the American defense industry to secure vital economic aid crucial to curbing inflation. This Chilean behavior is emblematic of the wider trend in which non-aligned nations waved the specter of communism before American eyes to extract developmental and military aid. Chile was not unique in playing this fiddle of American fears to its own economic benefit.

The geopolitical ramifications of U.S. Cold War policy in Latin America still mar U.S. international standing today. American actions in Chile, like hegemonic imperial foreign policy more broadly, often produced the very reactions they were instituted to avoid. As a result of this history of American intervention in support of repressive autocrats, Latin American nationalists such as the present regime in Venezuela possess a reservoir of popular anti-American sentiment upon which to draw. In this sense, the Chilean copper was fool’s gold, as the United States reasserted its hegemony in Latin America at the price of millions of dollars and the alienation of its hemispheric neighbors, all in the name of opposition to a perceived communist threat that never materialized.

[1] Rabe, Stephen. The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. Oxford: New York, 2016. 8

[2] Ibid. 14

[3] Rabe, Stephen. The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. Oxford: New York, 2016. 32.

[4] The Secretary of State to the Embassy in Chile. 25 January 1952. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The American Republics, Volume IV https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v04/d222. 670

[5] Memorandum by the Director of the Office of South American Affairs (Attwood) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Holland) 12 May 1954, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The American Republics, Volume IV https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v04/d233748.

[6] Memorandum by the Director of the Office of South American Affairs (Attwood) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Holland), Ibid. 748.

[7] Memorandum by Milton Barall of the Office of South American Affairs to the Director of That Office (Attwood). 13 January 1953. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, The American Republics: Volume IV, 693-696. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v04/d233. 693-694.

[8] National Intelligence Estimate. 24 August 1953. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, The American Republics: Volume IV, 710-721. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v04/d240. 710.

[9] Minutes of a Cabinet Meeting, Held at the White House, 10:05 a.m., March 12, 1954. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, The American Republics: Volume IV,

[10] National Intelligence Estimate. 24 August 1953. Ibid. 713.

[11] “U. S. Agrees to Buy 100,000 Tons Of Chilean Copper at World Price; Stockpile Purchase, Estimated to Cost $60 Million at 30 Cents a Pound, Ends Long Deadlock on Imports.” 26 March 1954. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1954/03/26/archives/u-s-agrees-to-buy-100000-tons-of-chilean-copper-at-world-price.html

[12] The Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Miller) to the Ambassador in Chile (Bowers). 7 January 1952. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The American Republics, Volume IV https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v04/d220 667.

[13] The Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Miller) to the Ambassador in Chile (Bowers). 7 January 1952. Ibid. 666.

In 1791, a massive slave revolt erupted on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti), the crown jewel of the French Empire. What followed was much more than a mere rebellion; it became the most far-reaching movement of the Age of Revolutions.

In this episode of Beyond Ideology, we trace the Haitian Revolution from its causes in the brutal plantation economy of Saint-Domingue through the rise of Toussaint Louverture, through Napoleon’s disastrous attempt to re-colonize the island, to end with Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s declaration of Haitian independence in 1804.

Along the way, we explore the contradictions of the Enlightenment as personified by Thomas Jefferson and his diplomatic response to the world’s first Black republic. We also unpack the economic forces behind slavery, class, and empire and examine why the Haitian Revolution went further than either the American or French Revolutions.

The story of the Haitian Revolution, perhaps the most consequential revolution in modern history, deserves to be more widely known. This is our humble attempt to right that wrong.

Next time: Allen takes us to South America for the extraordinary life of Simón Bolívar, the “Napoleon of the South,” and his struggle to destroy Spain’s empire in the Americas.

From Our Bookshelf

Want to dive deeper into the Haitian Revolution? Here are the two books that shaped this episode:

The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James:

The canonical classic that restored global awareness of the Haitian Revolution. First published in 1938, James, a Trinidadian Marxist academic and activist, wrote the book as a blueprint to inspire anti-colonial movements in Africa and the Caribbean.

Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois:

THE comprehensive modern history of the Haitian Revolution, tracing Saint-Domingue from the origins of the French colony through the slave uprising, the rise of Toussaint Louverture, and the long struggle that culminated in Haitian independence.

📺 Watch exclusive clips on YouTube

Support Beyond Ideology while building your bookshelf. The links above are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for helping us continue the conversation.

Chapters

00:00 — “Liberty or Death”: The Birth of Haiti
01:10 — Columbus, Hispaniola & the Origins of Colonial Slavery
02:35 — Saint-Domingue: The Richest Colony in the World
04:19 — Sugar, Slavery & a System Built on Death
05:30 — Race, Class & the Colonial Social Order
09:22 — The Five Phases of the Haitian Revolution
11:38 — Jefferson, Haiti & the Contradictions of Liberty
16:00 — The Slave Revolt of 1791
17:30 — The Rise of Toussaint Louverture
23:24 — Napoleon Turns His Attention to Haiti
27:30 — The Fall and Death of Toussaint Louverture
29:00 — Haiti Declares Independence
31:15 — Why the World Tried to Isolate Haiti
32:12 — The Most Revolutionary Revolution?
36:16 — Class, Inequality & Revolutionary Violence
38:58 — Haiti’s Place in the Age of Revolutions
39:45 — Next Time: Simón Bolívar

In August 1776, a severe-looking man with cascading waves of dark hair stepped off a ship in Philadelphia. At thirty, he was approaching middle age in a time when those fortunate enough to survive infancy often died in their sixties or early seventies. He was ten years older than the man who has since overshadowed him, the Marquis de Lafayette, who would not arrive in America aboard his hired ship until February.

Although nominally a nobleman, Thaddeus Kościuszko was not a wealthy man. In Poland, he had made ends meet by tutoring the daughters of a local magnate, Lord Sosnowski; as tutors often do, he fell in love with the daughter of the house, Louise. Sosnowski adamantly opposed the match, telling the young man that as “pigeons are not meant for sparrows,” nor are “the daughters of magnates…meant for the sons of the common gentry.”

Heartbroken and knowing that with such a well-placed enemy, his career in Poland was at an end, Kościuszko rode off in search of a surrogate country. In the salons of Paris, revolutionary rumblings were reported from Britain’s North American colonies. As word spread of Lexington and Bunker Hill, Kościuszko decided to cast his fate to the winds and sail for America. Perhaps on the long crossing, he entertained himself with a new pamphlet, then all the rage in enlightened society, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

The bold Pole knew not a soul in the New World, so he beat a path to Benjamin Franklin’s door; certain that one man of science would recognize another. Kościuszko was a true Renaissance man in the Enlightenment mold; he had studied military engineering and painting in Paris. As the sage of Philadelphia opened his door, the young man offered to take an examination in military engineering to prove his mettle. Franklin laughed, acknowledging that there was no one on the continent with enough competence to administer such a test. However, Franklin knew that the new nation’s citizen army sorely needed a dose of military professionalism. After a rudimentary geometry exam, Franklin recommended that Kościuszko oversee the construction of defensive fortifications on the nearby Delaware River.

Kościuszko soon secured himself a commission as a colonel of engineers. Two months later, Washington requested his services in the Northern Department presently encamped in the Hudson Valley. He arrived at Fort Ticonderoga just in time to watch as it was abandoned to General John Burgoyne’s advancing redcoats as the Continental Army fled south down the mighty river. During the retreat, Colonel Kościuszko led a series of dashing rearguard actions, felling trees and damming streams, to slow the pursuing British.

In mid-August 1777, General Horatio Gates assumed command of the Northern Department from the disgraced Phillip Schuyler. This change of command was fortuitous for Kościuszko, as it sowed the seeds of his finest hour. As he surveyed the rolling hills along the banks of the Hudson, he recommended that Gates fortify the high ground at Bemis Heights. Gates acquiesced, and Kościuszko’s men set to work, the sound of their spades echoing along the valley.

On October 7, Burgoyne’s army was dashed to pieces against the bristling fortifications of Bemis Heights. Sharpshooters exacted a heavy toll, as line after line of British regulars met their end. Ten days later, dashing “Gentleman Johnny,” a full-time soldier and part-time playwright, surrendered his army to Gates. The Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the Revolutionary War; having proven that they could defeat the world’s mightiest army, the Americans cemented an alliance with France in early 1778. Without Kościuszko’s foresight, the outcome at Saratoga might have been quite different.

In March, Kościuszko was posted further south on the opposite bank of the Hudson to fortify the American position; Fort Arnold, at West Point. This series of fortifications was sited on a crucial chokepoint where the Hudson’s course was broken by a series of sharp bends. The Continentals threw a great chain across the river that would prevent British ships from sailing down from their position at Fort Ticonderoga to link up with their comrade General Sir Henry Clinton in New York City. West Point would earn its place in the annals of infamy as the scene of Benedict Arnold’s great betrayal. The disillusioned American general later supplied the British with the plans of Kościuszko’s fortifications and intended to surrender them to the enemy before the plot unraveled downriver in Westchester.

In early 1780, having completed his engineering work, Kościuszko transferred to the South, where the war had shifted in the wake of British efforts to inspire a Loyalist uprising. In the South, the Pole first encountered the evil of slavery at close quarters. A natural egalitarian, Kościuszko commanded racially integrated platoons throughout the conflict. During the Saratoga campaign, he had struck up a friendship with Agrippa Hull, a freeborn man from Massachusetts. He would often return to these experiences in later life, chastising his friend and life-long correspondent, Thomas Jefferson, for not living up to the principles of universal liberty espoused in his declaration.

Following the end of the war in 1783, Kościuszko returned to his native Poland. Fired by the Spirit of ‘76 and inspired by the success of the American nation at arms, he hatched a plot to throw off the Russian imperial yoke. In 1772, the once mighty Kingdom of Poland had been carved up by the rival powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In the Russian sector, the puppet Polish king, Stanislaw, governed on behalf of Catherine the Great.

In 1791, the Polish parliament, the Sejm, inspired by the revolutionary events in America and France, declared the nation a constitutional monarchy. This experiment in liberal government was immediately snuffed out by the Russian army a few short months later. Yet the flame of liberty flickered on; and in 1794, Kościuszko—adopting the mantle of the Polish Washington—ignited a rebellion against the Russians.

In May, channeling the egalitarian ethos of the Declaration of Independence, Kościuszko declared his own manifesto, the Proclamation of Połaniec, which granted the serfs personal freedom and rights over the land they cultivated. All of Poland was now united against the foreign invaders. Yet in the end, it was not enough. A combined Russo-Prussian force squashed the rebellion at the Battle of Maciejowice on October 10, 1794.

Thaddeus Kościuszko, who had been wounded in the battle, spent the next two years in a Russian prison. He was only released upon the death of Catherine the Great in 1796. Kościuszko was exiled from Poland and, after a brief return to America—during which Congress awarded him $12,286 in back pay—he settled in France.

Kościuszko retained his republican principles for the remainder of his days; he would repeatedly refuse to serve in Napoleon’s Polish Legions, regarding Bonaparte as a sinister threat to liberté and égalité. In his final years, Kościuszko returned to Poland, where he emancipated the serfs on his few remaining ancestral lands in 1817. The hero of two revolutions died alone on his estate in October of that year; he was seventy-one. He had never married; many speculate due to his lifelong unrequited love for Louise Sosnowski.

Few men lived the principles of the American Revolution more faithfully than Thaddeus Kościuszko. He had fought for liberty on two continents, rejected tyranny in every manifestation, and spent his final years fighting to extend the promises of 1776 to those whom the revolution had left behind.

Kościuszko’s liberal principles continued to echo across the Atlantic after his death. In his will, he declared that the proceeds of his American estate should be used to purchase the freedom of enslaved people, including those of the will’s named executor, Thomas Jefferson. The Virginian refused to serve as executor of his dead friend’s will, citing his age and distraction with founding the University of Virginia.

In one of the great betrayals of the revolutionary age, the architect of the Declaration of Independence refused the last request of the man who had crossed the ocean to make the words of Jefferson’s Declaration a reality.

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There are times when a president’s legacy becomes dominated by the trials and travails of the era in which they governed. Think of Jimmy Carter and the era of stagflation and malaise. Herbert Hoover’s legacy has not been able to escape the long shadow of the Great Depression. Well into the 1930s, the tent cities that sprang up across the country were dubbed “Hoovervilles,” never mind that Franklin Roosevelt now occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Whenever lists of American presidents are compiled and analyzed, Hoover is inevitably either glossed over or reduced to a caricature of a wealthy, miserly bean counter who was out of touch—or even worse didn’t care—about the fate of millions of suffering Americans. Like Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Hoover is seen as a stodgy conservative placeholder between the dynamic (for better or for worse) presidencies of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. The legacy of these two Democratic presidents, along with the two world wars that occupied much of their time in office, dominated twentieth-century politics and left an imprint that continues to shape the world today.

Hebert Hoover is due for a reexamination. In addition to being president, he served in five administrations, three Republican and two Democratic. Well into the 1960s, newly elected presidents tried to recruit Hoover to lead high-stakes projects. His last offer came from JFK, when Hoover, now in his eighties, encouraged Kennedy to look for someone younger. One of the great ironies of Hoover is that he was alternately courted and vilified by liberals and conservatives alike. He also spent more time in the national spotlight than Wilson and FDR combined and left an indelible but often forgotten mark on history.

The Man Behind the Caricature

Hoover’s worldview was shaped by lived experiences of repeated economic calamities. Born in Iowa to a Quaker family during the depression of 1873, his father died when he was six, his mother when he was nine. These deaths split the family, as the young orphan was separated from his siblings and sent to live with various relatives; by the time he was eleven, he was living with his third set of foster parents.

Hoover exhibited his trademark inexhaustible work ethic when he went to work at an early age. He was accepted to Stanford not as a result of any innate brilliance, but because a sympathetic professor saw how hard the young man worked. He graduated, barely, with a degree in engineering and set out to make his way in a world wracked by the Panic of 1893. The lessons of these lean years would guide Hoover the remainder of his days. He had learned the value of twin virtues of hard work and charity—from an early age he sent any extra money to his siblings to help ease their way. He would remain forever grateful for his early mentors who saw his raw potential and provided him with the opportunities to pull himself out of the circumstances he was born into.

After graduating, Hoover embarked on a career as a mining engineer and businessman, which led to him spending most of the years between 1897 and 1914 living and working outside of the United States. At the time, this was a novel experience for an American of Hoover’s socio-economic background, and it led to his forming unique opinions about his homeland and the larger world it inhabited. Ambitious, determined, and ruthless, by the outset of World War I, Hoover had amassed a small fortune. Never the miser of popular misconception, the self-made man expanded his charitable work well beyond the scope of his own family. The culmination of his philanthropic efforts occurred later in the war, when he led a volunteer effort to feed the starving population of Belgium during the lean years of German occupation and British blockade.

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At home, he joined the Wilson Administration to chair the Committee on Food Supply and Prices. Uncharacteristically for a conservative, he injected the federal government deep into American domestic life, urging mothers to make sacrifices at the dinner table that would enable the government to feed the troops on the front lines. He eventually split with Wilson over the Treaty of Versailles and the harsh treatment of Germany, predicting, ominously, that if the victorious powers did not rebuild Europe economically, a war would soon follow. Characteristically, Hoover did not just talk about rebuilding Europe; he acted, leading the American Relief Administration, which fed millions across Central Europe and the Soviet Union.

Mr. Hoover Goes to Washington

By 1920, Hoover was pondering a bid for the top office in the land. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with whom he had become good friends, attempted to recruit him to run for president as a Democrat on a Hoover-Roosevelt ticket. In one of the great what ifs of the twentieth century, Hoover turned him down, believing the Democrats couldn’t win. Hoover instead spent the 1920s, not campaigning, but polishing his technocratic credentials. From 1921-1928 he served as Commerce Secretary in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. While at the helm, Hoover expanded the federal bureaucracy. Hardly the government-slashing conservative, he created national agencies that were forerunners of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission. In an era of laissez-faire and Jazz Age excess, Hoover built up a reputation as a solid man and dedicated public servant who could get things done with both maximum efficiency and maximum reach.

Hoover finally claimed the prized GOP nomination in 1928 and won the election in a landslide. Eight months into his presidency, calamity struck. The stock market crashed and the Great Depression, which roiled the nation until 1939, began. His reaction to one of the most devastating economic events in world history is remembered largely as callous. Part of this was decidedly his own doing. Hoover was a hard-charging business executive who lacked the patience and political savvy to work effectively with Congress. As an orator, he was stilted, cold, and aloof. His calls for the rugged individualism that had served him throughout his own life and economic hardships seemed harsh and uncaring. In another great irony, Roosevelt mercilessly mocked these calls for fortitude during the 1932 presidential campaign, only to echo them in his first inaugural address.

FDR gained more than just rhetoric from his predecessor; many New Deal policies had their origins in Hoover’s earlier executive actions. By 1932, Hoover had already rolled out large government work projects, forged agreements with business leaders to maintain wages, and created the Reconstruction Finance Commission to provide emergency loans to failing businesses. Hoover was clearly not opposed to government intervention; rather, he agreed with the majority of contemporary progressive leaders who believed that it was the responsibility of the state and local governments, not the federal government, to provide direct financial support to the American people.

Therein lies the great irony. The man who was celebrated throughout Europe for feeding the starving masses in Belgium, Central Europe, and the Soviet Union had his presidency undone by a worldwide economic calamity that he could not solve. The Recession of 1937 scuttled most of the progress of the New Deal, returning the economy to 1932 levels. This presents a strong case that FDR couldn’t solve the economic riddle either. Arguably, it was only the onset of a new world war, and the subsequent nationalization of a war economy via Lend-Lease, followed by national mobilization, that pulled the United States out of the Great Depression.

Herbert Refuses to Go Gentle into that Good Night

After losing the presidency, Hoover repeatedly plotted to get it back. He didn’t leave Washington quietly and remained a constant critic of FDR. While he remained a popular speaker at Republican National Conventions, his general lack of popularity sidelined him from domestic politics. However, when his country and the world needed him, Hoover stepped up. When Europe needed to be fed once more in the aftermath of World War II, President Harry Truman called on Hoover to do the job. When Dwight Eisenhower sought to reorganize and streamline government, he tapped Hoover to lead the charge. His vanity and egotism aside, Hoover was in many ways the model of the midcentury public servant, driven by a sense of duty to his country and humanity writ large.

Hoover’s greatest post-presidential domestic impact centered on his significant influence on the evolution of the conservative movement during its wilderness years of the era of liberal hegemony. He became the hinge between Theodore Roosevelt progressivism and Barry Goldwater conservatism. Hoover’s role as the calcifier of modern conservatism is revealed in his guiding litmus test, which he deployed to consider the wisdom of any policy: “Does this safeguard an equality of opportunity?” He counterbalanced this progressive impulse with a conservative, “Does it maintain the initiative of our people?” Through these two questions, Hoover embodies the debate between liberalism and conservatism at the heart of our nation’s founding.

Herbert Hoover’s presidency will inevitably remain forever shrouded by the Great Depression. However, Hoover, the man, deserves a little more reflection. His four years in the Oval Office have left him tarred as a wealthy, uncaring miser who stood aloof from the sufferings of ordinary Americans. Yet, his hardscrabble life, his humanitarian work, and his guiding philosophy reveal a complicated man who spent a lifetime trying to reconcile his inner contradictions. In that struggle, he is far ahead of many politicians and many of us, who go through our days confined within the self-imposed prison of the unexamined life.

Hungry for more? Check out our latest podcast on Hoover and fellow forgotten president, James Garfield.

📺 Watch exclusive clips on YouTube

Sources:

Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte. Vintage Books, 2017.

American Individualism by Herbert Hoover. Hoover Institute Press Publication, 2016 (originally published in 1922 by Doubleday, Page, and Company).

“U.S. Presidents: Herbert Hoover,” University of Virginia Miller Center, https://millercenter.org/president/hoover

Support Beyond Ideology while building your bookshelf. The links above are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for helping us continue the conversation.

Hoover has become synonymous with the Great Depression. If Garfield is remembered at all, it’s for his assassination.

Both deserve a reevaluation.

In this week’s episode of Beyond Ideology, we revisit two of America’s most misunderstood presidents to ask a larger question:

What has the Spirit of 1776 meant across the generations?

Allen tackles Herbert Hoover. whose extraordinary pre-presidency life had witnessed him rise from orphan to mining engineer, millionaire, international humanitarian, and cabinet secretary. Long before the Depression destroyed his reputation, Hoover fed millions across Europe and articulated a vision of American Individualism rooted in opportunity, responsibility, and service.

Conor examines the life of James A. Garfield, a man who may have been the greatest president America never had. Like Hoover, Garfield rose from poverty to become a professor, preacher, lawyer, Civil War general, congressman, and ultimately president. His remarkable life was cut short after only 200 days in office, leaving historians to wonder what might have been.

The lives of these two lost presidents reveal that at its heart, the American experiment has always been a great debate between different visions of the American Dream.

Those debates did not end in 1776; they continue today.

Our Bookshelf:

1. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte

The definitive Hoover biography

Kenneth Whyte’s masterful biography is the best modern reassessment of Herbert Hoover. Rather than reducing Hoover to a Depression-era caricature of Hoovervilles and aloof disregard for human suffering, Whyte follows him from his impoverished childhood through his rise as a self-made engineer, global humanitarian, cabinet secretary, and ultimately president. The result is a deeply human portrait of one of America’s most misunderstood public figures.

Why read it?
It challenges the conventional caricature of Hoover and reveals the extraordinary humanitarian whose career and impact extended far beyond the White House.

2. American Individualism by Herbert Hoover

Hoover’s political philosophy

Published amidst his successful 1928 presidential campaign, American Individualism stakes out Hoover’s vision of the American Dream. In this slim volume—the 1920s equivalent of a campaign platform—Hoover rejects both laissez-faire absolutism and European collectivism, to argue for a uniquely American balance between individual liberty, equality of opportunity, voluntary cooperation, and a limited yet compassionate government.

Why read it?
It explains Hoover’s worldview and driving ideals in his own words.

3. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

The assassination of James Garfield

Part political drama, an equal part true crime, and a dash of medical thriller, Millard masterfully weaves at least three narratives into one tapestry that illuminates 1880-1881. She juxtaposes the unlikely political rise of James Garfield with his murderer Charles Guiteau’s, descent into madness. Along the way, she introduces a cast of unforgettable characters, from Alexander Graham Bell to Charles Guiteau.

Why read it?
It is the most engaging introduction not only to this forgotten president but to Gilded Age America in all of its corruption and splendor.

Read Conor’s full book review:

4. From Radical to Unifier: The Political Transformation of James Garfield by C.W. Goodyear

The political history

Goodyear moves beyond Garfield’s assassination to examine the ideas and convictions that shaped his remarkable political career. He traces Garfield’s evolution from Radical Republican congressman in the 1860s to consensus-building national leader by the late 1870s. This examination offers the fullest account yet of Garfield’s vision for Reconstruction, civil service reform, and the future of the American republic.

Why read it?
It restores Garfield to his rightful place as one of America’s most thoughtful statesmen.

Our Watchlist

Death by Lightning (Netflix)

The dramatization

Netflix’s adaptation of Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic brings Garfield’s extraordinary rise and tragic assassination to life with outstanding performances (Nick Offerman’s stole the show) of political intrigue and murderous scheming. While dramatized, it captures the colorful characters, clash of egos, and high stakes politicking of Gilded Age Washington.

Why watch it?
It’ brings an overlooked era back to life in all of its gilded corruption.

Read next:

📺 Watch exclusive clips on YouTube

Support Beyond Ideology while building your bookshelf. The links above are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for helping us continue the conversation.

I live for those delicious moments when life imitates art.

I was running late for the curtain of La Bohème, because Allen told me that I had to work late to hammer some objectivity into my twenty-one-gun broadside against the illiberalism of progressives. We had just wrapped our weekly editorial call, in which we always place our friendship on hold so that we can get down to the total warfare of copy editing.

Picture Woodward and Bernstein via Zoom, with Allen playing the part of the conservative-leaning, wary, and wizened Bob Woodward to my tempestuously liberal, fire-breathing (but steadfastly coiffed) Carl Bernstein. Our editing sessions often mirrored the watercooler sessions in All the President’s Men, with Allen bringing a methodical professionalism while I came crashing through the screen with a saddlebag of fiery mixed metaphors stacked precariously like a literary Leaning Tower of Pisa—see what I mean?

Anyway, all that is relevant for you to know, dear reader, is that I’m the Robert Redford of Beyond Ideology.

Classic Hollywood analogies aside, this weekly ritual is usually a jovial routine in which Allen would ask if I was attempting volume two of Das Kapital, to which I invariably responded by asking when Barry Goldwater wanted his typewriter back.

For us, the editorial process is where the challenges of this undertaking come to light, for we often must consciously fight human nature and our most deeply held political principles to remind ourselves to engage across the aisle to reach our stated aim of going beyond ideology. It is a classic case of modelling the behaviors we are espousing, like parents trying not to swear in front of the children. This week, however, we were falling far short of our founding ideals.

Earlier in the day, I sat watching as Allen made track changes on my essay, watching his comments become sharper the further south he scrolled. Suddenly, the little “A” in Google Docs disappeared, and I knew that Allen had, in fact, left the building somewhere in the penultimate paragraph. I felt the same sickly feeling creep into my bowels that is usually reserved for a domestic misstep of flower-buying proportions.

My phone rang, and Allen immediately began to crucify my prose for being too venomous for publication. Too many ad hominem attacks on “penthouse progressives” interspersed with overboiled rhetoric and self-indulgent flights of liberal condescension. Allen was clearly channeling his inner Ben Bradlee-turned principal.

In the end, I had to begrudgingly admit that he might have had a point; I was supposed to be the liberal after all. We hung up, and I steeled myself for the editorial Sophie’s choice before me, cutting a paragraph about academic navel-gazing here, a sentence about the cancel-culture KGB there.

I still maintain that they were the best lines in the piece.

I lost myself in this act of sacrilege until my phone buzzed again, probably Allen with a fresh batch of soul-crushing edits. The reality was far worse.

It was the Missus. She was at Lincoln Center, where was I?

Oh, hell.

I shot out of the office quicker than vitriol off my keyboard and dashed to the subway. There were delays on the 1 at Times Square, no surprise there. After idling in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the armpit of America for an epochal six minutes, my Atlantean well of patience had run dry, and I decided that I could walk the twenty-odd blocks much faster than the subway.

So, I emerged from the underworld like a resurrected Odysseus to carve my way through the gawping masses besieging Times Square. I dodged the odd zombie from Cleveland and Okie from Muskogee and emerged on Broadway relatively unscathed, yet characteristically fuming at the slow walkers, whose grazing was delaying my tardiness.

I zigzagged my way through the crowd like a Dreadnought dodging torpedoes and set a course for Lincoln Center. Somewhere in the upper fifties, I came across two Brooklynites unseasonably dressed in beards and beanies handing out some brightly colored attempt at journalism. As I approached these embodiments of the Democratic Socialists of America, a smile crept across my face.

Is this how Allen saw me?

Seeing my freshly pressed suit and part so deep it could be the Mariana’s trench, my newfound fellow traveler likely thought he spotted an easy mark for heckling.

As he handed me the paper, the man hit me with some snarky socialist attempt at wit, which was drowned out by the much more refined voice of David Bowie in my headphones. I gave him a jaunty, almost Churchillian wave of the paper and eagerly shook it open mid-stride.

I scanned the masthead; the bilingual edition in my hands was from Enero-Febrero—that’s January and February to the non-cosmopolitan capitalist cog—I couldn’t help wondering what had caused the delay in distribution. Perhaps there had been some strike among socialist journalists that I had missed in my daily scan of the bourgeois press.

It turns out my friends weren’t from the DSA, for nestled beneath a condemnation of America’s imperial intervention in Venezuela—a fair point, if you ask me—was a scathing, positively double-barreled denunciation of New York City’s new centrist mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

I flung myself from the torrent of tourists and sought shelter in the awning of a nearby Starbucks. The article was a brilliantly incoherent rant arguing that the mayor’s current retreat from socialism was merely the opening act of his inevitable surrender to the billionaire class. There was something in there about his wife’s art being insufficiently avant-garde too that was even less grounded on this planet.

“This is brilliant,” I said to myself as some capitalist stooge looked at me askance as she left the Imperial Coffee Co.

I giddily stuffed my copy of Workers’ Way or Daily Insurrection, or whatever it was called, under my arm, my impish wickedness bubbling out of me at the thought of scandalizing the beau monde by bringing a copy of Pravda to La Bohème. This was mere foreplay compared to the chaos I had planned for the next day, when I would send Allen my latest essay, an entirely plagiarized article on Mamdani’s moderation and status as a corporate shill.

Stay tuned to your local bourgeois rag, dear reader, for an article about a man who broke Google Docs.

July 5, 1776

Philadelphia.

The sun beats upon the bricks of Market Street as dawn breaks over the new nation.

Inside John Dunlap’s print shop, the presses roar like cannon.

The twenty-nine-year-old Irish-born printer had worked through the summer night. Around him lay piled two hundred copies of the Declaration of Independence.

Dunlap tears a hot sheet from the press with ink-stained fingers and squints to examine his work.

It’ll do. The newspaperman is anxious to splash the words across his masthead; scoops like this only come once in an era.

But first comes duty. He is, after all, the official printer of the Continental Congress.

He waves the sheet at one of his apprentices, motioning for the boy to come over. He reverently blows on the oversized paper to dry the ink before stuffing it into the young man’s hands.

Off you go.

A few minutes later, John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress and now de facto head of state, is roused from his chamber.

Boston’s leading merchant is no stranger to an early morning.

He scans the still-warm sheet, squinting in the low light.

An impish smile creeps across his face.

Independence is an idea no more; it is finally in print.

Copies of Dunlap’s declaration are stuffed into weather-beaten saddlebags as dispatch riders set out in every direction to carry the news across the continent.

By week’s end, the immortal words will ring out in taverns and churches, mills and marketplaces, from New Hampshire to Georgia.

Prefer to Watch? Subscribe on YouTube to follow the Dispatches docuseries.

July 6, 1776

Philadelphia.

The sun is setting on the second day of the American experiment.

The words of the Declaration of Independence appear publicly for the first time in the Pennsylvania Evening Post.

However, some Americans deserve more than a public notice.

John Hancock scans what he has written one last time.

The Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the Connection between Great Britain and the American Colonies, and to declare them free & independent States; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the Head of the Army in the Way, you shall think most proper.

Convinced that his words capture the gravity of the moment, he crisply folds the letter in two. In the flickering candlelight, he drips wax upon the paper, affixing the seal of the infant nation.

He thrusts the letter into the hands of a waiting courier.

The man tips his ragged hat and dashes from the room. In a flash, he is seated atop his mount, spurring his horse northward in a cloud of dust.

One hundred miles to the north, dusk descends over New York Harbor. Rumors have been swirling through the ranks all day of revolutionary developments in Philadelphia.

A crowd of uniformed men descends the stairs of an elegant Broadway townhouse. Across the street, a towering statue of the King in Roman garb, sits definitely astride his horse, as if daring the rebels to cross.

One of the men, a head taller than the rest and with an unmistakable air of command, breaks off from the throng and walks towards the water’s edge. He passes a sentry who awkwardly comes to attention. Scarcely more than a boy. The man sets his jaw and continues on his solitary march.

George Washington stares through the gloom towards Staten Island, wondering when his foe will pounce. The stoic Virginian remembers that this is his second war, and recalls the days long gone when once he wore a scarlet coat.

He thought of that day last July. Could it truly be a year ago now? That day, fair John Adams put his name forward to command.

He’s spent a year at the head of the army, yet he is the last to know that he now commands the army of an independent nation.

July 8, 1776.

Philadelphia.

High noon. A gentle breeze ruffles the leaves overlooking the square behind the State House.

Such a crowd has scarcely been seen in Philadelphia before. Five battalions of militia are drawn up in array, their bayonets sparkling in the sunlight beneath dancing banners.

A group of men appears in the State House door and gathers on the humble steps. Thomas Jefferson leans his lanky frame against the Doric column flanking the entrance as Benjamin Franklin, favorite son of the city, steps to the fore, with John Adams at his elbow.

Drums roll, the men come to attention.

John Hancock makes way as another man pushes through the throng, a few loose pages in his hands.

The square falls silent.

John Nixon, merchant and colonel in the militia, surveys the crush of people before him. His eyes fall upon the men under his command, clad in hearty brown coats with scarlet facings. Scattered amongst them are the ladies and gentlemen of the city, Whig and Tory alike, bedecked in all their finery out to see what all the fuss is about. Mingled with them are the common sort, farmers who have left their fields, and sailors who have abandoned their ships.

Nixon lowers his gaze to the task before him, grateful for the breeze that stirs the pages, concealing the trembling of his hands.

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”

An officer’s horse neighs nervously, jingling its bridle, as Nixon works himself into a lather.

“...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

Behind the orator, tears well in Adams’s eyes, for here is the separation for which he has so long strived.

“...that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Nixon pauses and surveys the silent crowd; even the children have fallen silent.

Thomas Jefferson leans harder into the pillar for support as his grievances are proclaimed against the tyrant King George; all twenty-seven of them ring out, one by one.

From the crowd, John Dickinson looks on, his face a mask.

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress…”

Nixon’s voice cracks as it rises to the crescendo.

“...solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown…”

Franklin, once the reluctant revolutionary, smiles serenely.

“…For the support of this declaration,” Nixon’s voice trembles ever so slightly, “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Thirteen cannon boom in unison across State House Yard.

The smoke blows away, leaving only Jefferson’s words to hang heavy in the air.

July 9, 1776

New York.

Six o’clock in the evening. A gentle breeze off the East River drives scudding clouds across the southern tip of Manhattan Island.

On the grassy square of the Commons, beside King’s College, the Continental Army has assembled. Atop his horse, General Washington surveys the scene, his eye passing over the kaleidoscopic array of uniforms, the blue and buff of his staff, the deep brown homespun, the scarlet of the Pennsylvania dragoons, the deep green hunting shirts of the Virginia sharpshooters.

He nods to the young man at his side.

The adjutant steps forward. In dress he resembles the commanding general, his hair impeccably powdered and his sword hilt gleaming. In his gloved hand he carries the day’s orders.

His lone voice slices through the heavy air.

“John Evans of Captain Ledyards company and Hopkins Rice of Captain Pierce’s company having been tried by a General Court Martial whereof Col. Read was President and found guilty of “Desertion,” were sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes…”

The assembled men shift uneasily in their columns, more desertions. Drunkenness and brawling have swept like a fever through this patchwork army of Pennsylvania farmers and New England seamen. An army is always happier on the move.

“...The Honorable Continental Congress having been pleased to allow a Chaplain to each Regiment, with the pay of Thirty-three Dollars and one third per month…”

A low groan is heard rumbling through the ranks.

“...The Honorable the Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the Connection which subsisted between this Country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent STATES…”

The men erupt into a volley of cheering, Washington smiles, allowing the stoic mask to slip from his face.

The resounding words declared in Philadelphia a few short days ago are read to the men who must now transform them into reality.

Three hearty huzzahs are raised. The army becomes a mob, joined by civilians, it surges down Broadway, heading for the harbor. They do not stop until they reach Bowling Green.

There sits their enemy, larger than life atop his gilded steed. The tyrant king George is dressed like a conquering Roman hero, a laurel wreath upon his golden brow. It will do him no good.

A rope appears, and then another. A crusty seaman, no stranger to working a line, throws the braided rope around the king’s neck. Then another. And another.

Soldier and civilian, all Americans now, strain with interlocked arms. Men slip and slide like children at play.

The crowd cheers them on.

The horse totters upon its pedestal. The king wavers.

The assembled citizens throw their weight against the creaking ropes, all at once King George smashes to the ground with a thud. His lead head is severed from his body. His laurel crown lies shattered in the dust.

The statue falls, a new nation rises.

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At Beyond Ideology, we’re doing something different; we’re going beyond Independence Day to explore the full picture of the American Revolution.

In America’s national mythology, July 4, 1776, is treated as the culmination of the colonies’ long efforts to break free from the British yoke. As always, the historical record is not so simple. July 4, to quote Winston Churchill on the Battle of El Alamein, was merely “the end of the beginning.”

The delegates of the Continental Congress may have declared independence, but Washington’s ragtag army had to make the Declaration of Independence a reality.

Once independence was won on the battlefield in 1783, an even more difficult task began; a new constitutional system had to be built upon the ruins of the old order. In 1787, the American system that endures to this day emerged from the Constitutional Convention through a series of compromises whose legacy is still disputed today

In this episode, we lend our voices to the founding debate and reflect on why the revolutionary events of 1776 still matter today.

We believe this anniversary should be more than a commemoration; it is an opportunity for national renewal, one rooted not in nostalgia and myth, but in a deeper understanding of our shared history and the cultural legacy that unites us.

We close by reflecting on what America means to us and our hopes for the future.

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In Philadelphia, the men who declared independence did not know whether they would succeed or hang together from the same gallows tree. One hundred miles away in New York, George Washington did not know if he could hold together his ragtag army of Pennsylvania farmers, Massachusetts militiamen, and Virginia planters against the mightiest empire in the world.

We know how the story ends.

They didn’t.

That’s the idea behind Dispatches From the Revolution.

Over the coming months, we’ll relive the events of 1776 exactly as they unfolded:

Day by day. Vote by vote. Battle by battle.

If you want to know the history beyond the mythology, this series is for you.

Each dispatch will be accompanied by a companion mini-documentary on our YouTube channel, bringing the Revolution to life through both the written word and the spoken story.

Join us as we experience the Revolution as the Founders did:

One uncertain day at a time.

Welcome to the Revolution.

The Draft

June 28, 1776

Philadelphia.

The seeds of independence are being sown in steamy Philadelphia.

Within the chambers of the Assembly in the State House, five men shift nervously in their Windsor chairs. Their great work complete, they must now present their declaration to Congress.

Together, the men rise and walk towards the President’s desk. They shall either carry the cause together or hang as one from the gallows tree.

At their approach, John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, sweeps away reams of letters and scraps of blotting paper, making way for their offering.

The tall Virginian, second only in height to the mighty Washington, unfurls his handiwork, unrolling it across the green baize.

Hancock’s eyes dance across the parchment, surveying the lilting prose, arrayed like marching columns across the page.

Jefferson takes a halting step backwards and bumps into the stout stomach of John Adams, who has called for independence for over a year now. He looks on with a stony visage, his hand upon his hip as if wrapped around the pommel of an imaginary sword, his jaw as resolutely set as always.

Beside him, old Benjamin Franklin fiddles with a button on his vest, his innate impishness for once smothered by the gravity of the moment.

Behind Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston glance about the room.

Hancock finishes his reading and hands the pages over his shoulder to Charles Thomson, secretary to the Congress.

He nods to the men before him, as the Committee of Five, work done, returns to their seats.

The muggy Friday night drags on as the draft is read out.

Thomas Jefferson, a stray lock of auburn hair dancing upon his damp brow, sits with his high shoulders sunken against his chair, never taking his eyes off the dusty floorboards.

John Adams tries to meet his colleague’s eye, to no avail. The man from Massachusetts surveys the room, trying to take the pulse for independence.

Beside Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, once a leading voice in the Patriot cause, now wears a look of exasperation upon his pallid face.

Edward Rutledge, the dandy of the Deep South, fans a linen handkerchief before his bored eyes.

The reading ends. A vote is called.

Congress passes a resolution to reconvene on Monday, July 1, to vote on independence.

Thomas Jefferson has played his part; the gauntlet has been thrown down. Now Adams must carry the debate.

John Hancock bangs the president’s gavel. Congress adjourns.

It is the last weekend before the birth of America.

The Debate

July 1, 1776

Philadelphia.

America’s largest city is sweltering.

Inside the Pennsylvania State House, the Continental Congress reconvenes, to debate Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence.

The delegates file in. The doors and windows are shut tight behind them, for one never knows where a British spy may lurk.

10 am. John Hancock raps his sticky gavel on his desk. Once more, Lee’s resolution is read aloud. The question before the men remains clear, whether “these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.”

The stage is set for the most important debate in American history.

John Dickinson of Philadelphia, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies and among the earliest champions of American rights, is no friend of British tyranny, yet today he takes his stand against independence.

Bold words erupt out of his pallid face. He beseeches Congress to hold off breaking from the mother country. They cannot win this fool’s errand he argues. They have no navy. No alliances. No money.

Dickinson cautions prudence and patience. He ends with this warning, to declare independence would be to “brave the storm in a skiff made of paper.”

He returns to his seat. The sound of rain drops against the window panes is the only sound that pierces the stale air.

The delegates look at each other with stony faces.

The rain beats heavier against the glass as lightning rents the air.

As if on cue, fiery John Adams, son of a Boston shoemaker, leaps to his feet, as thunder booms like cannon. This pugnacious New Englander has always been in the vanguard of the revolution. To Adams, independence merely acknowledges a reality already written in blood at Lexington and Concord.

After two hours, he collapses into his chair, spent by the efforts of a two hour oration worthy of Cicero.

Others rise in his wake to take up the cause. The debate lasts nine hours.

Nine colonies vote yes.

Pennsylvania and South Carolina vote no.

New York abstains.

Delaware is deadlocked. The fate of the revolution lies with this tiny colony.

A courier rides out into the night in search of Caesar Rodney, Delaware’s missing delegate, and a fire-breathing advocate of separation from Britain.

Meanwhile, one hundred British warships have appeared off New York. Within their creaking hulls is the largest army ever dispatched to the New World.

The Vote

July 2, 1776

Philadelphia.

Gloom descends over the State House.

The previous day’s storm has turned the weather unseasonably cool, as if to quench the fires ignited by the debate between John Dickinson and John Adams.

The skeletal figure of Caesar Rodney appears, mud-splattered and bone-tired, having ridden 80 miles through the night in a midnight ride of his own.

He collapses, spurs rattling, into his Windsor chair. He takes a moment to compose himself. Half his face is concealed beneath a green silk scarf, worn to hide the cancer slowly eating away at his cheek.

He raises a resolute eye and breaks the deadlock.

Delaware votes for independence.

South Carolina changes course.

Pennsylvania remains divided.

John Dickinson and Robert Morris still refuse to support independence. Rather than block the measure outright, they absent themselves from the chamber.

Their departure changes everything.

Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson cast Pennsylvania’s vote for independence.

The vote is taken again.

Twelve colonies vote for independence.

New York abstains.

The United Colonies have declared themselves free and independent states.

A new nation is born.

John Adams declares that future generations will commemorate July 2 forever as “the day of deliverance...”

History has other plans.

At the very moment, 9,000 British soldiers land unopposed on Staten Island.

The Revisions

July 3, 1776

Philadelphia.

The temperature has dropped ten degrees, which is a godsend to the delegates gathered in the State House.

Now that independence is a fact, it is time to get down to the details.

Hancock’s gavel calls the men to order.

The quiet, auburn-haired Thomas Jefferson nervously shifts in his chair. Before him rests the ink-stained manuscript he has spent weeks crafting.

The Declaration must now be edited. The assembled delegates set about their task with relish, striking out paragraph after paragraph.

Jefferson’s normally pleasant countenance darkens as sentences enshrouded in Shakespearean lyricism are struck out. John Adams, his fellow author, rises time and again to defend the words.

Most painful of all, Congress scraps Jefferson’s proudest achievement, a stem-winding denunciation that lays the sins of the slave trade at the feet of the tyrant King George.

The tall Virginian begins to pace the room like a caged panther, his fury mounting with each revision.

Jefferson returns to his seat. Beside him, Ben Franklin, the wizened sage of Philadelphia, watches the scene unfold with amusement.

A twinkle in his bifocaled eyes, Franklin wraps an arm around poor Thomas and tells of a man he once knew.

John Thompson was his name; hatter was his trade.

One day, he hung a sign upon his shop which read: “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money.”

He asked his friends what they thought. What was he left with, Franklin asked?

Just his name and a hat.

A slight smile dances at the corner of the young man’s mouth.

The sage’s point is clear.

The Declaration is no longer Jefferson’s alone.

It belongs to Congress.

It belongs to America.

After hours, Jefferson’s inquisition ends. The congressional editors have made over eighty changes.

Yet the words that will resound through the ages remain, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The gavel is struck; Congress is adjourned.

The Calm

July 4, 1776

Philadelphia.

Another cool day dawns over the new nation. The delegates file back into the chamber, a calm descends over them, for their most importance work has been done.

Thomas Jefferson warily takes his seat, wondering what this day has in store for his beloved Declaration.

Hancock gavels in the proceedings. Hands are raised as a fresh round of edits is proposed.

Jefferson groans. Adams frowns. Franklin smiles.

Mercifully, the work is done by eleven. A vote is called to make the words official.

Twelve colonies vote yes. New York abstains. John Dickinson remains nowhere to be seen.

President John Hancock retrieves his quill and bends over the declaration, resolutely inscribing his name in a neat hand. Secretary Charles Thomson signs as well. The rest remain in their chairs, watching silently as independence is authenticated.

Outside, the people of Philadelphia carry on with their lives.

Farmers harvest crops.

Merchants conduct business.

Children play in muddy streets.

There are no fireworks.

No parades.

No cheering crowds.

No sense that history has been made.

As evening falls, delegates, worn down by days of sitting ceaselessly in session, return quietly to their lodgings.

The first days of July 1776, wrote the first chapter of the American story. The days ahead will test the noble sentiments of Jefferson’s Declaration and reveal whether a ideas can become a reality.

Independence has been declared, now it must be won.

The Revolution continues tomorrow.

Follow along here on Substack, on YouTube, on Instagram, and wherever you get your podcasts as we relive the American Revolution exactly 250 years later:

Day by day. Vote by vote. Battle by battle.

Had Benedict Arnold been killed at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, history would remember him as one of the great martyrs to the cause of American independence. Generations of American schoolchildren would have revered his name alongside those of Washington and Lafayette. Instead, through his singular act of treason, this former hero of the revolution has become one of the most infamous traitors in Western history. If Dante were penning his Inferno today, one would likely find Arnold in the Ninth Circle of hell, clasped between Brutus, Cassius, and Judas within Lucifer’s gnashing jaws.

Yet most Americans only remember the culmination of Arnold’s story, his treachery at West Point. Few know his massive earlier contributions to the American cause. At Ticonderoga, Arnold won the first American victory of the war. At Saratoga, he seized the initiative to stem the British onslaught in the decisive battle that would bring France into the war. Benedict Arnold is the great what-if of the American Revolution. The true tragedy of this descent into treachery is that there were two betrayals, the first of Arnold by his country, and the second of his country by Arnold.

Like many acts of treason, Arnold’s was neither foreordained nor monocausal. Before his betrayal, Arnold was one of the most skilled generals in the Continental Army. In his prowess as a battlefield commander, he outshone his superiors, including General Horatio Gates and even George Washington himself. Where other Continental generals hesitated, Arnold advanced, earning him Washington’s favor as his “fighting general.” Benedict Arnold was in many ways the George Patton of the American Revolution, dashing, fearless, brash, and bold on the one hand, and egotistical, paranoid, vain, and conceited on the other.

Benedict Arnold was born into a socially prominent, yet middling, family in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1741. While Arnold was still a boy, his father’s alcoholism squandered the family fortune, leaving a deep wound of social disgrace that would fester in Arnold’s bosom for years as he drove himself relentlessly to transcend circumstance. At age sixteen, he enlisted in the militia to fight in the French and Indian War. Following the war, the young man built himself a successful merchant shipping enterprise. Like many of the Founders, Arnold’s embrace of the Patriots’ cause was enabled by his considerable wealth.

When the shot heard round the world was fired in neighboring Massachusetts in April 1775, Arnold, true to his hard-charging character, immediately sprang into action, placing his iron will and ingenuity at the service of his fledgling country. A month after Lexington and Concord, Colonel Arnold devised a bold plan to seize Fort Ticonderoga, a British garrison in upstate New York. Treading country he had traversed in the previous war alongside frontiersman Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain boys, the rebels captured Fort Ticonderoga from its sleeping garrison in a daring surprise attack.

The raid was the first American offensive against the British and thus had inestimable propaganda value to the Patriot cause. It was also of major strategic importance as the fort’s location at the confluence of Lake Champlain and Lake George prevented British reinforcements from sailing down from Quebec to threaten New York. Arnold, drawing on his shipping background, became the admiral of the lakes, deploying a fleet of small boats and sailing sloops to stymie British efforts to sail south from Canada.

Arnold’s victory at Ticonderoga also had an immediate effect on the primary theater of war in Boston. In a feat of logistical genius and superhuman grit, a two-hundred-pound, twenty-five-year-old former bookseller, Henry Knox, hauled Ticonderoga’s guns over the Berkshire Mountains nearly 300 miles to Boston. Newly appointed commander-in-chief George Washington deployed this mixed bag of seventeen mortars, howitzers, and a massive 24-pounder cannon on the Dorchester Heights to seal the fate of the besieged British garrison in Boston.

From the staging area at Ticonderoga, in September, Arnold set off with 1,100 men overland through Maine to invade Canada. Outside Quebec in appalling weather on New Year’s Eve, the Americans were decimated by a superior British force in their first defeat of the war. General Richard Montgomery was killed, and Arnold was severely wounded when a musket ball shattered his leg. For his bravery, Arnold earned the respect of Washington and a promotion to brigadier general.

Benedict Arnold’s finest hour came at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, the Stalingrad of the American Revolution that marked the turning point in the war. In June 1777, British general and part-time playwright John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne marched south with 8,000 men from Quebec to drive for New York City in an attempt to cleave the rebellious colonies in two. Burgoyne’s strategy was premised on the notion that once New England—that hotbed of rebellion—was cut off from the rest of the colonies, the revolution could be strangled.

In June 1777, Burgoyne’s army—the leading prong of a three-pronged British attack designed to converge on Albany—sailed down Lake Champlain through the summer haze. On July 6, after a half-hearted siege and some performative gunfire, Fort Ticonderoga fell to the British. The loss of the fort, deemed impregnable by the Patriot press, caused an uproar in Congress, leading to the sacking of General Philip Schuyler, a socially prominent New Yorker who owed his command to political influence. Schuyler was replaced by General Horatio Gates as commander of the Northern Department; he would later end his career as Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law.

Horatio Gates, although more capable than Schuyler, was a timid man and an overly cautious general who had deployed a fighting retreat to delay Burgoyne’s army as it marched further south down the shores of Lake George. In August, Fort Edward fell as the British threatened Albany. Gates decided to make his stand on a spit of high ground on the west bank of the Hudson, near the village of Saratoga.

The Continental Army, directed by the Polish military engineer Thaddeus Koscuizko (stay tuned for more on this forgotten founder next month), fortified the Bemis Heights into a seemingly impregnable defensive line that effectively barred the way to New York. The American line would be anchored by the Hudson River on the right, and by 3,000 men commanded by Arnold on the exposed left flank.

The Battle of Saratoga was, in fact, a series of military maneuvers and engagements that lasted nearly a month as the British probed for weak spots in the American line. On the morning of September 19, three British columns marched towards the American left flank. In the early afternoon, Arnold, at the head of his men, including Captain Daniel Morgan’s famed sharpshooters, rode out to meet them north of the American lines near John Freeman’s farm.

A brutal battle ensued in which Freeman’s fields were raked with grapeshot and dyed red with the blood of British, Hessian, and American dead. The fate of the day seesawed back and forth as the field changed hands time and again. Arnold sprang onto his gray charger and rode for General Gates’ headquarters on Bemis Heights, begging for the reinforcements that would win the day for the Americans. The ever-cautious Gates refused, citing his fears that a larger British force would attack the American right flank along the river road. This British main thrust under German General Baron Friedrich von Riesdel never materialized. The bloody day ended with the British able to claim a pyrrhic victory as they held the battlefield at Freeman’s Farm.

For the next three weeks, both armies deployed their pickets and exchanged intermittent fire as they eyed one another warily across the heavily wooded no man’s land of the Hudson Valley. Burgoyne’s army had suffered heavy casualties and was now marooned in the wilderness, running low on provisions as it awaited relief from General Henry Clinton’s force marching north from New York City. Meanwhile, the well-provisioned Patriot army had swelled to 13,000 men as intrigue racked Continental headquarters.

General Gates refused to acknowledge Arnold’s crucial role in the action at Freeman’s Farm and promoted General Benjamin Lincoln over Arnold to serve as second-in-command. Arnold flew into a rage and threatened to resign his commission. A wary truce ensued as the American commanders laid their differences aside beneath the shadow of the British guns aimed at them in the valley below.

On the morning of October 7, Burgoyne, knowing that time was not his ally, made his move. Brigadier-General Simon Fraser, with 1,500 men at his back, surged towards the American lines on Bemis Heights. As the cannonade grew heavier, Arnold, who was lunching with Gates and Lincoln, convinced his commander to allow him to ride to the battle to rally the army.

Under a withering hail of musket balls, Arnold rode into the fight as cheers erupted from the American ranks. Their resolve steeled by the appearance of the popular general, the Continentals began to turn the British flanks. After Fraser tumbled off his horse, mortally wounded by a musket ball through the stomach, the British lines broke as they fled back to their entrenchments. Arnold spurred his horse in hot pursuit, carrying the tide of the Continental Army with him.

Sword drawn, Arnold aimed his charging steed towards the nearest British position, and earthwork manned by Hessians, their mustaches and bayonets bristling in the afternoon sun. Arnold galloped up the rising ground before he himself was struck down. A musket ball tore through his left leg, shattering the bone, before crashing into his mount as man and horse thudded to the ground. The American general was pinned beneath his dying horse as the Patriots turned the British retreat into a rout.

As the smoke cleared, Gates once again repeated his earlier treachery, claiming the lion’s share of credit for the victory that Arnold had won. The seeds of Arnold’s own treachery were sown when he was struck down by a British bullet in his moment of triumph and then left to fester on the sidelines as his timid superior stole his martial glory.

Following Saratoga, the now twice-wounded and permanently crippled Arnold was appointed military commander of Philadelphia, where he spent much of 1778 in convalescence, stewing in his own juices. In 1779, he married eighteen-year-old Peggy Shippen, regarded by many as the most ravishing woman in all the colonies, as well as the heiress of a fabulously wealthy Loyalist judge. In his ceaseless devotion to the American cause, Arnold had left his business interests unattended to the point of collapse. Haunted by memories of how his alcoholic father ruined the family, he grew irate, watching as younger and less experienced generals with political connections were promoted over him by an ungrateful Congress.

Arnold, the proud, self-made merchant, refused to play courtier to Congressmen; he was a soldier, not a statesman. Additional salt was rubbed into the wound when the civil authorities accused Arnold of turning a profit from his military governorship. These charges were buttressed by the general’s extravagant lifestyle, financed by his new wife’s dowry, accrued by her Tory father. Writing to Washington in May 1779, Arnold demanded a court-martial to clear his name, acidly remarking that “having become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet ungrateful returns.”

The court ultimately cleared Arnold of the charges of profiteering in January 1780; however, Washington felt duty-bound to issue a formal rebuke of his subordinate’s conduct.

“The Commander-in-Chief would have been much happier on an occasion of bestowing commendations on an officer who had rendered such distinguished services to his country as Major-General Arnold; but in the present case, a sense of duty and a regard to candor oblige him to declare that he considers his conduct as imprudent and improper.”

Despite Washington’s repeated public reference to his great services rendered to the cause of the revolution, Arnold found himself feeling not merely abandoned by the country that he had become permanently handicapped fighting for, but actively vilified by the civil authorities. As the focus of the war shifted south as part of Britain’s “Southern Strategy”—an attempt to win the war in the South based on the erroneous belief that Georgia and the Carolinas were Loyalist strongholds—Arnold found himself increasingly adrift from the course of events, with little to do and much to stew over as these wounds were left festering deep within his breast.

Earlier in 1779, swayed by his young wife and her Tory circle, Arnold opened secret negotiations with the British through Philadelphia merchant Joseph Stansbury, who crossed British lines into New York. Stansbury was assisted by Loyalist William Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son and the last colonial governor of New Jersey, who introduced him to Major John André, a British intelligence officer who had the ear of Henry Clinton, now commander-in-chief of British forces. André would become Arnold’s handler as the two engaged in a secret correspondence. By July, Arnold was providing the British with detailed information on troop strength and movements while demanding compensation to the tune of £10,000 (over £1.5 million today) to cover his business losses.

Following the defeat of the British defeat at Saratoga, the Americans constructed a series of fortifications overlooking the Hudson. A great chain was hauled across a sharp bend in the river at West Point to deny the British unrestricted navigation on this vital water highway between Quebec and New York City. Washington finally relented to Arnold’s ceaseless entreaties for a battlefield commission and appointed him commander of the garrison at West Point in August 1780.

The stage was set for an act of treason of Shakespearean proportions that would culminate on the banks of the Hudson about one hundred and fifty miles south of the scene of his greatest triumph at Saratoga.

As he settled into his new headquarters, Arnold renewed his correspondence with Major André, who was presently stationed downriver in New York City. By early September, André had hatched a plot in which Arnold would surrender his garrison at West Point to the British. Arnold agreed to sell the fort and its 3,000-man garrison for £20,000 and a commission as a brigadier general in the British Army.

The conspirators set a plan to meet in September to consummate the devil’s bargain, and André sailed up the Hudson on the armed sloop, H.M.S. Vulture. After a series of foiled attempts, the two men met on the night of September 21 in an isolated spot on the west banks of the Hudson near Haverstraw. During their conference in a nearby farmhouse, Arnold handed over the plans detailing the American defenses at West Point and a pass for safe conduct through the American lines, advising André to conceal them in his boot.

During their meeting, the Vulture was fired upon by an American patrol, forcing it to flee downriver. Major André found himself deep behind enemy lines and set off on foot towards the city. He was captured two days later on the opposite bank of the Hudson near Tarrytown. The incriminating documents tucked into his boot were soon discovered, and Arnold’s treachery was revealed.

The disgraced American general received the news the next morning, September 24, while awaiting the arrival of George Washington at his headquarters for a breakfast conference. Arnold immediately fled, reaching the riverbank where he was rowed out to the Vulture, now safe in the bosom of the enemy. In 1781, Arnold would turn his sword against his former army in Virginia and would later command the force that burned New London in his home state of Connecticut.

Major John André, on Washington’s orders, was hanged for espionage near the site of his capture in Tappan, New York, on October 2, 1780.

One of the great ironies of American history is that Benedict Arnold contributed more to the American cause than many well-known founding fathers. He was a superior tactician and battlefield commander to either Gates or Washington. His bravery and grace under fire were second to none. Arnold fell victim to the all-too-human sin of vanity; the seeds of his betrayal were sown by Congress’s failure to recognize and compensate him for his immense sacrifices to the Patriot cause.

Arnold’s insistence on payment undermines any claims that his treason was motivated by a philosophical change of heart. His crimes are even more heinous because they were devoid of any fleeting semblance of principle. Brutus and Cassius acted to save the Roman Republic; Arnold betrayed his country in a fit of rage over the ingratitude of his country, motivated by a desire to recoup his lost fortune.

The tragedy of Benedict Arnold reminds us that history is seldom ever black and white. The trajectories of nations, like those of individuals, are never as clear-cut as mythology proclaims. Benedict Arnold was an early Patriot and one of the most skilled battlefield commanders in the Continental Army. Time and again, he risked his life, liberty, and property in the cause of independence only to watch his fortune slip away as his sacrifices went unrewarded and unrecognized. Arnold’s treachery reveals the dark side of the American Revolution and reminds us that even principles have their limits.

The American Revolution was not the product merely of extraordinary men of superhuman intellect and Odyssean willpower; it was the work of an astonishingly diverse cast of statesmen and smugglers, writers and wastrels, visionaries and villains whose stories still have much to teach us. Many of these forgotten founders never received proper credit for their role in the birth of the American experiment.

As part of our America 250: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Age, each month for the next year, we will spotlight a forgotten Founder who has been unfairly swept into the dustbin of history. By telling these stories, we will go beyond the mythology of 1776 to tell the true story of the American Revolution.

The year 1776 began auspiciously for the cause of American independence. In March, after a long siege, the British evacuated Boston. In July, in red-hot Philadelphia, independence was declared. The fair winds did not last long. As the delegates were voting to immortalize Thomas Jefferson’s words, the largest Royal Navy fleet ever to sail for the New World appeared on the horizon off New York. A few days later, 9,000 British regulars and Hessian mercenaries landed unopposed on Staten Island. British troop strength would soon swell to 30,000, a number larger than the population of Philadelphia.

On August 27, the British landed on Long Island and rolled up the Yankee flank. By September, Washington and his men had been forced to evacuate Manhattan, the redcoats in hot pursuit. December found the ragged volunteer army, enlistments rapidly expiring, dissolving as it fled south across New Jersey.

It was the new nation’s darkest hour.

Among the throng was a ruddy-faced man of average height. Beneath his heavy brows, a look of steely defiance flashed in his flinty eyes. An Englishman by birth and a pamphleteer by trade, the man had first come to the colonies two years earlier with the assistance of Benjamin Franklin, a man who was no stranger to the printed word himself. Thirty-seven-year-old Paine immediately took to his revolutionary surroundings in Philadelphia. He immersed himself in the swirling currents of radical politics in America’s most enlightened city, following the debates of the Continental Congress at close quarters. It was not long before Paine was inspired to set his quill to paper to translate his observations into the most strident call for secession from Britain yet heard.

The early years of the American independence struggle witnessed a cascade of pamphlets published by leading citizens such as John Adams of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and John Dickinson of Philadelphia. In these mass-produced essays, the founding patricians made educated appeals for the rights of American citizens grounded in classical history, English common law precedent, and the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

Paine’s genius lay in translating these lofty, elite debates into homespun democratic prose that could rouse a farmer from his hearthside, his heart aflame with love of country. In a short, prosaic pamphlet, Common Sense, Paine stripped away much of the Ciceronian rhetoric and classical allusions preferred by the founders to make the first public case for independence directly to the common man. By popularizing Locke’s notions of social contract theory, Paine asserted that the colonists had a natural right to cast off the tyrannical yoke of hereditary government. Common Sense was an overnight sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, the eighteenth-century equivalent of going viral. Paine’s clear, punchy sentences, grounded in self-evident moral truths, persuaded thousands that independence was the only course. By the summer of 1776, Paine had transformed the calls of a radical minority for independence into the emerging consensus of a nation at arms.

One of the great ironies of the revolution is that it took an Englishman to push many Americans over the precipice into open revolt.

Twelve short months later—a lifetime in any revolution—the verdict of common sense appeared grim. The Patriot cause was foundering. Paine’s most uplifting and immortal prose would stem from these dark, wintry days, as Washington’s army deserted en masse, making the cause of independence seem little more than a forlorn hope. Paine himself was swept up in the retreat through New Jersey, and as he looked around him at the haggard men, shoulders shrunken in desperation, he once more put pen to paper.

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.”

This was the beginning of The American Crisis, a series of thirteen essays through which Paine, having inspired the revolution, would now fortify it with his sustaining prose through the nightmare year of 1776-1777. George Washington may have been the rock of the revolution, the man whose stoic example held the Continental Army together, but Paine was the prophet whose words inspired the Americans to endure the darkness that surrounded them. His words convinced an army of farmers and blacksmiths, shopkeepers and laborers, that they could defeat the mightiest empire in the world.

Following such a heady first act, the rest of the revolution would be a denouement for Paine. In 1777, he served as secretary to the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs. Characteristically, he was unable to refrain from searching for dragons to slay; he grew openly critical of Silas Deane, who Congress had appointed to open secret negotiations with France. Paine accused Deane of being an unprincipled war profiteer, which raised the ire of the latter man’s patron, Robert Morris, one of the principal financiers of the revolution. Deeper battle lines were drawn as Paine squared off early against the emerging commercial elite that would come to dominate the Federalist Party under Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s. As a result of his muckraking, Paine was fired from the committee in 1779.

Paine’s final act in the revolutionary drama would occur in 1781 when he sailed with Colonel John Laurens to secure 2.5 million livres in aid from the French. The pamphleteer’s pen largely fell silent during the inter-revolutionary years of the mid-1780s as he turned his attention to more temporal pursuits, chasing business opportunities in Philadelphia, London, and Paris.

However, Paine’s silence was short-lived; his politics would become increasingly radical as another revolutionary decade dawned in 1789. Like Thomas Jefferson, Paine heartily embraced the French Revolution despite its violent excesses, serving as a member of the National Convention. During his brief political career, Paine voted in favor of the creation of the French Republic and helped draft the Girondin constitution with Condorcet in 1793. Contrary to later claims of Paine’s violent radicalism, in the convention, he voted against the execution of Louis XVI.

Paine’s alliance with the moderate Girondins nearly resulted in his death. On the orders of the Montagnards— the left-leaning Jacobins who supported Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror—Paine was arrested in December 1793. While in prison, his restless pen began to flow again, as he delivered a full-throated broadside attack on Christianity and a refutation of the legitimacy of the Bible entitled The Age of Reason. Long regarded as the pinnacle of Enlightenment rationalism, Paine popularized religious skepticism—formerly the purview of the aristocratic elite—which resulted in a deist revival in America that significantly lowered Paine’s stock in the country he had helped found.

Paine was finally released from prison in November 1794 due to the lobbying efforts of the new American ambassador, James Monroe. Following his second revolution, the old radical returned to the United States in 1802 at the invitation of his comrade, President Jefferson. Paine died in obscurity on June 8, 1809, in Greenwich Village, and was refused a burial by the Quakers of New Rochelle because of his freethinking.

Thomas Paine’s lot has been that of all freethinkers, which is to be eternally misunderstood, rejected, and vilified by those whose minds cannot fathom a world without neat, categoric groupings by class, faith, race, or ideology. However, he casts a longer shadow over not merely the American Revolution, but also the birth of the modern Western world than many of the other founders.

Paine’s written debate over the course of the French Revolution with conservative Anglo-Irish parliamentarian Edmund Burke remains the defining debate of modern politics. In 1790, Burke published his ringing refutation of the Parisian revolutionaries in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he prophesied—echoing Aristotle—that the anarchy of unrestrained democracy would result in dictatorship. Paine fired back in 1791 with a pamphlet of his own, Rights of Man, which argued for the permissibility of revolution when government remains unresponsive to calls for reform. All schisms within liberalism from 1789 to the present can be traced directly to this great debate (see our founding podcast below for more).

What Common Sense was to the American Revolution, Rights of Man became for the French. Part II of Paine’s resounding response to Burke provided a blueprint for the budding French Republic, as he advocated for written constitutions, progressive taxation, the abolition of aristocratic privileges, and welfare programs—radical innovations at the time. Like Lafayette, Paine was a man who stood at the swirling center of revolutionary events on both sides of the Atlantic; from this advantageous position, he played a crucial role in the birth of the modern democratic world.

Before the Declaration of Independence, there was Common Sense; before Thomas Jefferson, there was Thomas Paine.

Prefer to watch? Check out our Five Minute Histories on YouTube!

The American Revolution was far more than a war for independence. It was an ideological revolution, a political rebellion, and the opening salvo of the international Age of Revolutions that would forge the modern world.

The American Revolution has produced thousands of histories, biographies, and interpretations. Some explain why Americans rebelled. Others show how independence was won on the battlefield. Still, more explore the birth of the American Republic in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Together, they provide an ideal introduction to the American Revolution and the ideals, individuals, and events that created a new political order.

Whether you are new to the Revolution or looking to take a deep dive to commemorate the semiquincentennial, here are our top picks.

The American Revolution Essential Reading List

1. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution- Bernard Bailyn

The canonical classic

In 1967, Bailyn revolutionized the study of the American Revolution, ushering in the modern popular view of 1776. Nearly every major interpretation of the Revolution over the past half-century has been written in either support or opposition to this book.

He argued that the colonists were driven, not merely by grievances over taxation, but by deeply held political beliefs rooted in the seventeenth-century English republican tradition. He traces how, through pamphlets, newspapers, sermons, and speeches, Americans harnessed this earlier tradition to fashion their own revolutionary movement.

Why read it?
It explains what the Founding Fathers believed they were fighting for in their own words.

2. The Radicalism of the American Revolution-Gordon S. Wood

The political history

Gordon Wood was a student of Bailyn’s, and he clearly picked up the torch. Where Bailyn explained the causes of the Revolution, Wood explored its consequences, arguing that the Revolution unleashed one of the most profound social transformations in modern history. The Founders replaced a feudal society founded upon hierarchy, deference, and inherited status with one built on a foundation of equality, individualism, and democracy.

Few books better capture the magnitude of the changes unleashed by 1776.

Why read it?
Wood shows us how truly radical the revolution was, reminding us that the great debates of the revolutionary age were not between liberals and conservatives, but among liberals and radicals.

3. The British Are Coming- Rick Atkinson

The military history

In volume one of his three-volume military history of the Revolutionary War, Atkinson provides a vivid account of the conflict’s opening years. He takes readers on a journey from the shot heard round the world at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 to the surprise American attack at Princeton in January 1777.

Why read it?
It is the most accessible and engaging military history of the Revolution currently available.

4. 1776- David McCullough

The best narrative history

No book has done more to place readers alongside George Washington’s Continental Army as they navigate the militarily disastrous year of 1776. We often forget that there were two American revolutions, the political and the military. Once independence was declared, it was up to George Washington to rally his men through a year of trials to ensure the revolution’s survival on the battlefield.

Why read it?
It reminds us that the success of the American Revolution was far from certain, particularly at its moment of birth.

5. The Glorious Cause- Robert Middlekauff

The definitive one-volume history

The first entry in the prestigious Oxford History of the United States, The Glorious Cause, is the finest single-volume history of the Revolution period. Covering the years 1763-1789, Middlekauff traces the origins of imperial crisis from the Seven Years' War, through the struggle for independence, to the creation of the Constitution with remarkable depth and clarity.

Why read it?
It’s the best all-encompassing, one-volume history of the entire Revolution.

Where to Start

If you are completely new to the American Revolution, we suggest you dive in with this order:

1. 1776

2. The British Are Coming

3. The Glorious Cause

4. The Radicalism of the American Revolution

5. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

By the time you finish those five books, you’ll understand not only what larger imperial events inspired the American colonies to rebel, but how the Revolutionary War was won, and the second founding moment of 1787, when the Constitution created the American Republic.

Only have time for one? Read The Glorious Cause. No other single volume covers the political, military, and intellectual history of the Revolution so effectively.

Beyond the Podcast:

Continue the Conversation with the Books We Discussed

Want to dive deeper into the themes from this episode? Check out the book that framed our debate.

Founding Brothers- Joseph J. Ellis

The Revolution is often told as a story of armies and battles. Ellis instead focuses on the enduring relationships and heated political rivalries among the men who built the Republic.

Through a series of anecdotes such as the Burr-Hamilton duel, the Jefferson-Adams correspondence, and Washington’s farewell address, Ellis reveals how these personal rivalries shaped the nation’s early history.

Why read it?
Because the American nation was forged by imperfect human beings, not men made of marble.

What books would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments and subscribe to follow our America 250 project as we relive the Revolution in real time, day by day, vote by vote, and battle by battle.

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In less than three weeks, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence.

To mark this historic moment, Beyond Ideology is launching America 250: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Age, a multi-year exploration of the American Revolution, the founding generation, and the enduring legacy of 1776.

At a moment when partisan rivalry has smothered civic unity, we believe that America 250 can serve as a moment of national renewal.

The founding reminds us that Americans have always argued fiercely about the future of their country. Yet it also reminds us that we share a common inheritance. Two hundred and fifty years later, we have an opportunity not only to rediscover our history, but also to deepen our understanding of one another and renew our appreciation for the institutions and ideals that have endured across the centuries.

As we approach July 4, 2026, we invite you to subscribe and join us for a moment of national renewal rooted in the founding events of 1776.

Over the coming months, Beyond Ideology will explore the Age of Revolutions through essays, podcasts, videos, and a new historical series examining the ideas, personalities, and events that transformed America, and ultimately the world.

At the heart of America 250 will be 1776: Dispatches from the Revolution, our flagship series.

For many Americans, the Revolution has become a collection of familiar names and distant dates. Too often, the founders are chiseled in marble. They were revolutionaries, statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and idealists. More than anything, they were deeply flawed human beings grappling with the eternal questions that still divide us today: What is liberty? How do we define equality? How can we square the two?

Beginning next week, we will tell the story of the pivotal moments of the American Revolution in real time, through the eyes of the men and women who lived it.

Day by day.

Vote by vote.

Battle by battle.

From the early debates in blazing Philadelphia to the weary American lines at Yorktown, Dispatches from the Revolution will allow readers to experience the American Revolution as it unfolded. Often, 1776 is portrayed with a sense of historical inevitability and national triumphalism that overshadows the fact that the outcome of America’s first civil war was far from certain.

If you want to experience the American Revolution as the Founders lived it, follow along on Substack, YouTube, and Instagram.

A Moment for National Renewal

America’s 250th birthday presents a rare opportunity to step outside the noise of the present to rediscover the people, ideas, and events that shaped our republic.

The success of the American Revolution was not inevitable. Nor is the survival of the American experiment guaranteed. The inheritance of the Founders can only be sustained by each new generation. Over the next year, we invite you to join us as we revisit the Revolutionary Age, not as distant spectators, but as active participants in an ongoing American story.

The story of 1776 is still being written.

This essay expands upon themes discussed in our podcast episode Lenin & Wilson: The Men Who Broke the World, and our video The Russian Revolution in Five Minutes.

Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin deserve a harsh verdict from history.

Both men were intolerant of dissent and willingly deployed the apparatus of the state to silence political nonconformists. Lenin deputized Felix Dzerzhinsky to deploy the Cheka—the precursor of the KGB—to intimidate political opponents into silence with murder and exile. In 1919, in response to Lenin’s revolution, Wilson would likewise authorize his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to arrest—and in many cases deport—suspected communists, radicals, and labor organizers. The first Red Scare resulted in the worst period of police repression in American history up to that point. Wilson’s weaponization of the Justice Department and policy of coercive deportation of political dissenters echoes loudly in the age of Trump.

Lenin and Wilson’s intolerance stemmed from a shared arrogance that approached the level of myopia. This egotism stemmed from a mutual belief that their intellectual brilliance entitled them to dictate the fates of tens of millions of people. This is the thesis of Arthur Herman’s 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder, which launched our conversation on last week’s podcast. In the main, Herman’s historical analysis is sound. It is also a much-needed corrective to the prevailing academic apologia that portrays both Wilson and Lenin as merely failed idealists.

Progressive academics in particular prefer to paint the two men with the brush of undermined visionaries. In such sympathetic renderings, Wilson emerges not as what he was, a failed statesman who deployed impotent navel-gazing utopianism as a balm to great power conflict, but as a man whose vision was scuttled by a reactionary and increasingly isolationist Congress. This is relatively benign compared to the intellectual somersaults that have been turned to resurrect Vladimir Lenin’s reputation from the dustbin of history.

Although most of the academic apologists for Lenin who sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s have either since retired or died, there remains an undertone of tolerance for the message of Vladimir Lenin. The influence of the historiography of Cold War Revisionism is reflected in the persistence of a reflexive anti-American and anti-capitalist bias among many scholars, particularly in the humanities. The prevalence of postcoloniality is itself consciously derived from a Marxist-Leninist worldview. As a result, postmodernist academics and their activist disciples are prone to ignoring the heinous early crimes of Lenin and his Bolsheviks that enabled their consolidation of power.

In an age where the sins of European and American imperialism are the academic bête noire, attention is rarely paid to the eliminationist rhetoric constantly spewed by Lenin and his revolutionary collaborator, Leon Trotsky. Leftists prefer to portray Lenin as the Marxist Moses whose utopian dream of international socialism was hijacked by Josef Stalin, who subsequently aborted Lenin’s international workers’ movement into a bloodthirsty totalitarian regime that massacred tens of millions of innocent people.

Similarly, Woodrow Wilson’s habitual blundering, domestic illiberalism, and clinical naivety are often brushed aside as he is regarded as the founding father of the modern progressive movement. This is hardly surprising, considering the progressive movement is presently guided by academics and advanced by student activists. Those who wish to predict what a twenty-first-century Progressive presidency would look like only need to study Wilson’s two terms to find their answer.

While Wilson was at the wheel, American exceptionalism and imperial ambitions metamorphosed into a messianic international mission as the academic-turned-president merged America’s global destiny with his own. During his earlier career as a political scientist, Wilson had been influenced by the work of nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel, although best known for coining the term zeitgeist (the spirit of the times), propounded another theory: that of world-historical individuals—such as Caesar and Napoleon—who were capable of bending the very forces of history to their will.

These Hegelian notions of the transformative potential of the individual will would eventually influence both progressive prescriptions for the expansion of ameliorative statism and Karl Marx’s historical determinism. Given this intellectual pedigree, it is unsurprising that Vladimir Lenin was also a student of Hegel’s, as he too regarded himself as a towering figure destined to initiate epoch-shattering events. Crucially, with both Lenin and Wilson, the will that mattered was not the people’s will, but their own.

Herman effectively argues that the difference was a matter of both degree and means. Wilson’s reckless naïveté unintentionally plunged the world into chaos through his simplistic Fourteen Points. However, incompetence and evil are poles apart. Lenin emerges from the page, for what he unequivocally was, a repressive autocrat who openly espoused the extermination of ideological and class enemies and who instituted a totalitarian police state in Russia within two weeks of seizing power.

However, Herman often overplays his hand, falling victim to the same Hegelian fallacy of the transformative agency of world-historical individuals that he criticizes Lenin and Wilson for possessing. Nowhere is this more evident than in his repeated overstatements that Woodrow Wilson had the power to save Russia’s embryonic liberal democracy, the Provisional Government. Herman argues that through rhetorical support coupled with material and financial aid, Wilson could have propped up Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky’s liberal government and prevented the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917. This is to overstate the influence that Wilson—or any foreign leader, for that matter—had over the domestic Russian political development during the revolutionary year of 1917.

Furthermore, a glance at Herman’s bibliography reveals that he has largely ignored the primary source record, relying instead on secondary source histories like his own to support his argument. Works of diplomatic history like this cannot ignore the correspondence between diplomats, so let us turn to that record to see what exactly American government officials thought of the Russian Revolution as it unfolded.

The Myopia of American Exceptionalism

American foreign policy, since its inception, has been uniquely ideological in nature. This philosophical component has often been expressed in a moralizing tone rooted in ideas of American exceptionalism. The ideological composition of American foreign policy was first expressed in Thomas Jefferson’s notion of an expansionist “empire of liberty.” Jefferson’s dream of a rampant America stretching westward along the trail blazed by Lewis and Clark blossomed into the idea of Manifest Destiny—America’s homegrown version of Britain’s “white man’s burden” and France’s mission civilisatrice.

Following its victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898, American imperial ambitions spread beyond the North American landmass. The U.S. emerged from the conflict with colonial toeholds in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. In many ways, the war was the moment that the U.S. was finally capable of enforcing the hemispheric hegemony first expounded in the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.

U.S. diplomatic reaction to the Russian Revolution mirrored Woodrow Wilson’s exceptionalist worldview—bolstered by the geopolitical emergence of the American empire—that viewed the United States as the moral leader of the world. American diplomats approached Russia in 1917 while riding this crest of imperial ascent and then proceeded to misinterpret internal developments in the country because they believed in the universal applicability—and desirability—of liberal democracy. The failure of American foreign policy in revolutionary Russia was the first of many twentieth-century instances of theoretical American exceptionalism crashing into the realities of an alien culture.

Following the armistice, American officials would become increasingly skeptical of the Bolsheviks, as the end of the war against Germany removed the primary reason for courting Russia in the first place. Americans in Moscow—now the capital—would increasingly remark on Bolshevik illiberalism as the consolidation of power allowed the mask of utopianism to slip from the face of the regime, revealing the violent totalitarianism of Leninism. By 1918, Ambassador David R. Francis would dub Lenin’s government a “pretended government established by force and not recognized by [the] Russian people.”[1]

By the time the Paris Peace Conference convened in 1919, many senior U.S. diplomats had come to regard Bolshevism as the “negation of everything American,”[2] which was reflected in Washington’s refusal to formally recognize the Soviet state until 1933.[3] Throughout the revolutionary years, the trend that began with the Provisional Government remained; the United States continued to wait for a stable government to emerge, a government that was built on favorable terms, a government that never came to pass.

A Diplomatic Record of American Misconceptions

American officialdom’s embrace of messianic interventionism and failure to grasp the unique nature of Russian political development was augmented by the increased role Christianity played in American national identity formation in the late nineteenth century. Wilson himself was the son of a Presbyterian minister, whose State of the Union addresses tended to devolve into finger-wagging sermons. This quasi-missionary American worldview was exemplified in a belief that Russians were akin to little Christian brothers—albeit culturally backward ones—of the American citizenry. George Kennan—the explorer who was a distant cousin of the more famous George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War containment theory—was the first to espouse this “little brother” idea, which he deployed to garner American support for the populist and nominally democratic movements cropping up in Tsarist Russia in the 1870s and 1880s. However, initial American support began to wane in the wake of increased political violence perpetrated in the 1880s. International opinion was particularly shocked by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

This concept of a Slavic “little brother” who longed for democracy reveals that the official American misunderstanding of the Russian people has its roots much further back than the Bolshevik Revolution. President Wilson exhibited the enduring appeal of this misconception during his declaration of war against Germany in April 1917 when he stated, “Russia was in fact always democratic at heart.” However, the revolutionary events of the remainder of the year led many Americans to realize that Russians were not, in fact, their democratic brothers in the global conflict against the Germanic monarchies and were quite capable of charting their own national destiny without the guidance of an older brother.[4]

American doubts about Russia’s readiness for democratic government permeate the diplomatic traffic at this time. These jingoistic sentiments reflect contemporary British and French claims regarding colonized peoples’ inability to govern themselves (for more on this, see my essay on post-WWI Anglo-French imperialism in the Middle East). Following the February Revolution, American Ambassador Francis voiced his doubts about the Provisional Government in his communiqués with Secretary of State Robert Lansing. The cables of July 1917 reveal a strong American desire for a stable Provisional Government capable of quelling disorder among the ranks and keeping Russia in the war.

In a private conference with Russian ministers, Francis delivered an ultimatum, stating that he “would recommend no further [economic] assistance until [a] stable government [was] formed [that] would prosecute [the] war.”[5] It is beyond debate that the American diplomats in Russia at this time cared primarily, if not solely, about maintaining the war effort against the Central Powers and that their single-minded pursuit of this objective blinded them to a clear analysis of the prevailing political winds in Petrograd.

This American myopia and failure to decouple internal Russian political developments from the war is repeatedly highlighted by the fact that throughout the State Department cables, Lenin and the Bolsheviks are regarded as little more than German agents sent by Berlin to disrupt the Russian war effort. Consul North Winship, stationed in Moscow, wrote, “Lenin and the Maximalists (Bolsheviks) are pursuing a line of action welcome to and even partially organized and financially supported by Germany.”[6]

The Germans had indeed hoped Lenin would incite a revolution that would pull Russia out of the war, as this would enable the German High Command to concentrate its forces on the perennially stagnant Western Front so that it could deliver a knockout blow. However, such a monocausal analysis ignores decades of popular Russian discontentment with and dissident activism against Tsarist autocracy. It is likewise noteworthy that, at this stage, no moral qualms were leveled against Bolshevism as an ideology. Wilson himself set the official tenor with his apologetic accounts of the Bolsheviks being merely misguided democrats who would inevitably return to the liberal fold to institute representative democracy. The American foreign policy priority was keeping Russia in the war, regardless of what faction held the reins of state, so long as the reins were held tightly.

The Impotence of the Provisional Government

The summer of 1917 was a tale of governmental impotence in Petrograd as Kerensky was sidelined by developments in the streets. For months, the Russian army had been deserting en masse as starvation and the approaching German Army—the Teutonic advance guard was scarcely 250 miles away in Latvia—sowed anarchy in the Russian capital. In July, four days of spontaneous violence erupted as factory workers, soldiers, and sailors protested the inability of the Provisional Government to halt the German advance and feed the Russian people.

Kerensky and his ministers believed—with some truth—that the Bolsheviks had orchestrated the uprising in order to leverage the chaos to stage a coup. This conclusion led Kerensky to crack down on the party in a series of targeted arrests. Lenin fled across the border to Finland, while those Bolsheviks with more integrity, like Trotsky, were imprisoned. This episode highlights a lifelong trend; Lenin was habitually ready to kill for his beliefs but apparently unwilling to die for them.

The next month witnessed an assault from the other end of the political spectrum by army units under the command of General Lavr Kornilov. Although the details remain murky, in late August, Kornilov, believing that the Bolsheviks were staging another coup, marched on Petrograd with his army. Kerensky believed that this was an attempted monarchist insurrection to restore the Tsar to the throne and called on the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies—the Petrograd Soviet had existed alongside the Provisional government in a de facto dual-power structure between the February and October revolutions—who defeated Kornilov’s soldiers. The Kornilov Affair had the doubly detrimental effect of augmenting Bolshevik power while subsequently destroying the power of General Kornilov and his army, the only force capable of countering the rise of Lenin.

The Provisional Government was the only power capable of saving itself. Over the course of the summer of 1917, it proved itself incapable of doing so. Herman’s idea of Wilson’s agency to intervene decisively to save Kerensky’s government is undermined by the fact that the president could not even mobilize and deploy to France the one million American troops agreed upon with the Entente Powers. Furthermore, the documentary record of American diplomatic communications proves that the Americans were not only impotent to materially change events on the ground in Petrograd; they entirely lacked a clear sense of what was going on. This combination of ignorance and impotence suggests that any intervention would have been as stillborn as the later American military deployments around Murmansk and Vladivostok in 1918 during the Russian Civil War. Given the state of anarchy and unmitigated chaos embroiling the Russian capital from February to October 1917, it is difficult to see what any individual—even a Hegelian world-historical titan—could have done to alter the course of events.

Woodrow Wilson is guilty of many faults; however, failing to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 is not one of them. The real tragedy of 1917 was not that Wilson failed to save Russian liberalism, but that both Wilson and Lenin refused to recognize the limits of ideological power. As a result of Wilson’s clinical diplomatic naivety and Lenin’s orchestrated terror campaign of world revolution, the world would be plunged into nearly a century of ideologically inspired violence. Tens of millions would ultimately pay the ultimate price for Lenin and Wilson’s shared belief that history itself can be bent to the force of human will.

Continue Exploring the Russian Revolution

Watch:

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The companion podcast post also features our reading list, Five Essential Books to Understand the Russian Revolution, for readers who wish to explore the subject in greater depth.

[1] Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, Vol 1. Chp. 6 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2010) 245. http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1918v1/reference/frus.frus1918v1.i0013.pdf

[2] Dr. David S. Foglesong, Dreams of a Free Russia: Russian Revolutions in the American Political Imagination, 1881-1917. Lecture, Villanova University. 31 October 2017.

[3] Recognition of the Soviet Union, 1933. US Department of State. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/ussr

[4] Dr. David S. Foglesong, Dreams of a Free Russia: Russian Revolutions in the American Political Imagination, 1881-1917. Lecture, Villanova University. 31 October 2017.

[5] Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, Vol 1. Chp. 6 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2010) 161. http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1918v1/reference/frus.frus1918v1.i0013.pdf

[6] Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, Vol 1. Chp. 6 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2010) 167. http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1918v1/reference/frus.frus1918v1.i0013.pdf

This week, we debated the legacies of Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin.

Were they visionary idealists, or arrogant ideologues convinced they could remake the world?

Every episode of Beyond Ideology is only the beginning of the conversation.

One of our goals is to encourage readers and listeners to go beyond the headlines to explore the books that have forged our worldviews. Few events reward a deep dive more than the Russian Revolution.

This epoch-shattering upheaval was one of the most consequential chapters in human history. More than the collapse of a dynasty or the triumph of a political movement, it was a world-historical turning point whose consequences shaped everything from the rise of fascism and the Second World War to the Cold War and the ideological conflicts that still fracture the modern world.

For those looking to continue the journey beyond the podcast, here are five books that offer an excellent introduction to the revolution, its protagonists, and its enduring legacy.

Our Bookshelf:

Five Essential Books to Understand the Russian Revolution

If you’re looking to understand how and why the revolution happened, and what it meant for the people who lived through it, these are the books we’d recommend starting with.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

The epic classic

One of the greatest works of Russian literature, Doctor Zhivago is the definitive literary depiction of how revolution can destroy ordinary lives. Through the story of former aristocrat Yuri Zhivago, Pasternak examines the human cost of ideological upheaval better than any work of history ever could.

The novel—which was banned in the Soviet Union—was smuggled to the West for publication and helped earn Pasternak the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958.

If you want to understand what it felt like to be caught in the maelstrom of the Russian Revolution, start here.

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

The fall of a dynasty and the death of the old world

Before there was Lenin, there were the Romanovs.

Massie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the tragic story of Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, and the collapse of the three-century-old Romanov dynasty. Richly researched and beautifully written, it provides the indispensable cultural and historical backdrop to the revolution itself.

If you want to understand what the revolution destroyed before analyzing what it created, this is the place to begin.

A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes

The best narrative history

If I could recommend only one history of the Russian Revolution, this would be it.

Orlando Figes combines sweeping political history with deeply personal stories to show how a society collapsed into revolution and civil war. Rather than focusing solely on Lenin and the Bolsheviks, he brings peasants, workers, soldiers, and ordinary families into the story.

The result is a masterful account of one of history’s greatest tragedies and perhaps the best single-volume history of the revolution ever written.

Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime by Richard Pipes

The canonical classic chronicling the birth of the Soviet Union

Few historians did more to shape the modern understanding of Soviet history than Richard Pipes.

In this influential work, Pipes argues that the Bolshevik dictatorship was not an accident of circumstance but a direct consequence of Lenin’s revolutionary project. Drawing on decades of scholarship, he traces the consolidation of Bolshevik power, the destruction of political opposition, and the foundations of the Soviet system that would later be perfected under Stalin.

Agree with Pipes or not, this remains one of the essential works for understanding the early Soviet state.

The Red Wheel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The masterpiece, 60 years in the making

No writer grappled more deeply with the legacy of the Russian Revolution than Solzhenitsyn.

He began his monumental historical novel cycle, The Red Wheel, in the 1930s to explain how Russia descended into catastrophe from 1914 to 1917. Combining meticulous historical research with literary brilliance, Solzhenitsyn reconstructs the political failures, moral compromises, and human choices that made revolution possible.

It is not an easy read, but for those willing to invest the time, few works offer a deeper meditation on the causes, consequences, and human costs of revolutionary upheaval.

Ironically, the Soviet Union collapsed before Solzhenitsyn completed the last volume of his opus in 1992.

Beyond the Podcast:

Continue the Conversation with the Books We Discussed

Want to dive deeper into the themes from this episode?

These books helped shape our conversation about Lenin, Wilson, and the birth of the twentieth century’s ideological conflicts.

1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman

The book that inspired much of our discussion. Arthur Herman traces how two competing visions of modernity—Wilsonian liberal internationalism and Leninist revolutionary socialism—emerged from the upheaval of 1917 and shaped the century that followed.

America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism by David Foglesong

A fascinating account of the often-overlooked American intervention in the Russian Civil War. Foglesong explores why the United States became involved and how those decisions influenced later diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow.

Stalin: Passage to Revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny

The bridge from Lenin to Stalin

One of the enduring debates about the Russian Revolution is whether Stalin represented a betrayal of Lenin’s vision or its logical conclusion.

Ronald Grigor Suny’s acclaimed biography explores Stalin’s often overlooked early life and political development to reveal how the future dictator emerged from the revolutionary world of the late Russian Empire. Along the way, Suny offers valuable insight into the revolutionary culture that shaped both Lenin and Stalin.

Few books better illuminate the transition from revolution to dictatorship.

The Russian Revolution remains one of history's greatest warnings; it has likewise spawned one of its great debates. More than a century later, historians still argue over why it happened, what it achieved, and whether its descent into totalitarianism was inevitable.

What books shaped your understanding of the Revolution? Let us know in the comments and continue the conversation.

📺 Watch exclusive clips on YouTube

Support Beyond Ideology while building your bookshelf. The links above are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for helping us continue the conversation.

In 1970, Led Zeppelin III went over like a lead balloon with the critics. Part electric Viking saga, the rest acoustic Celtic spiritual, the album left critics initially scratching their heads. Among fans, the album’s release was highly anticipated—with over a million preorders in the U.S.—and instantly topped the charts. Despite the hype, the album polarized hard rock devotees, with many regarding it as an incoherent acoustic detour on the band’s road to inevitable stardom.

LZ III is Zeppelin’s Rubber Soul; it is the vinyl Rubicon when the band broke free from their early restraints to experiment with new genres, recording techniques, and instrumentation. This artistic diversification was signaled in the shift from pedal-thumping hard rock towards lighter Celtic-infused folk music (“Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp”) and acoustic meandering (“Gallows Pole,” originally an English folk ballad, “The Maid Freed from the Gallows”). Like The Beatles, Zep fully hit their stride with this experimental album and emerged from the transition to produce their best work. The world would not have “Stairway to Heaven” if not for the genre-bending jamming of Led Zeppelin III.

The quartet’s next two albums, Led Zeppelin IV (1971) and Houses of the Holy (1973), were the fruits of this experimentation. The albums were the pinnacle of the distinct Led Zeppelin sound that paired

Jimmy Page’s winding acoustic guitar intros with the mid-track Blitzkrieg of crashing vocals and percussion by Robert Plant and John Bonham. The genius of Zeppelin’s later arrangements was this seamless blending of two distinct songs—one folksy acoustic, the other brain-battering hard rock—into one coherently glorious whole. “Over the Hills and Far Away,” and the “Rain Song” in particular, exhibit this chiaroscuro effect that is hallmark Zeppelin.

A Zeppelin fan sitting down for a first spin of LZ III in the fall of 1970 would have experienced a sense of déjà vu with the opening track, “Immigrant Song,” a typical early Zep chord-burster weaving the tale of the Viking plunder of Anglo-Saxon England. The mythical imagery of warriors would become a staple in the later Zeppelin canon, witness such martial tunes as “No Quarter,” “Achilles Last Stand,” and “The Battle of Evermore.”

The Nordic theme of “Immigrant Song” was no accident.

The band kicked off their 1970 summer tour in Reykjavík, before moving on to Bath and Germany. Frontman Robert Plant’s brief survey of the surreal landscape inspired him to weave this musical tapestry of the “land of ice and snow,” under the “midnight sun” where “the hot springs blow.” Six days after opening the tour in Reykjavik, the band wielded the “Immigrant Song” like a Norse battleaxe, debuting it before 150,000 people at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music.

The one thing critics agree on is that at the Bath Festival, Led Zeppelin took off like a runaway rocket, becoming the bestselling rock gods of the 1970s. Robert Plant’s Iceland-inspired “Immigrant Song” launched the band into superstardom atop a musical longship. The band would open every concert from 1970 to 1972 with the number, and it stands second only to the immortal “Stairway to Heaven” as the band’s most-streamed song on Spotify.

The “Immigrant Song” was the bridge between the band Zeppelin had been and the legend they were to become; the tale of that journey is written in the grooves of their third album. As Plant’s Viking war cry faded away, youthful eyebrows were likely raised with the first strummed chords of the album’s second track, “Friends,” as the melody begins to soften. Across the rest of the album, Zep teases their audience, lulling them back into complacency with the blues-rock renaissance of “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” The B side sent fans scrambling to their turntables to see if they had spun the right record as “Tangerine” and “That’s The Way” shattered preconceptions while showing the world what the future of rock would be.

Led Zeppelin’s transformation did not occur in a vacuum. The late 60s and early 70s were a time of folk revival on both sides of the Atlantic. Following years of commercialized pop and hazy psychedelia, musicians wanted to communicate more transcendent messages to disillusioned youth who wanted more than mere entertainment from their music. In Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, Crosby, Stills, & Nash were blending folk rock with singer-songwriter folk numbers to craft music with meaning, which erupted into the distinct California Sound that reached its zenith with The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.

In the immediate post-Beatles landscape, as the Rolling Stones and The Who pummeled hard rock music into granite, many English artists were likewise searching for the sound of the future in this larger folk revival. Now-forgotten balladeer Nick Drake vied with the American-inspired Fairport Convention for mastery of the English folk scene. Led Zeppelin returned from its 1970 summer tour straddling each of these musical worlds. They had made their bones in their first two albums, blasting the hardest, bluesiest rock the world had yet seen in 1969. Yet traces of a more transcendent sound comprising deeper melodies and medieval harmonics often lurked between the power chords of Led Zeppelin I. The acoustically driven “Black Mountain Side” foreshadowed the elemental magic that was to come.

Glimpses of Robert Plant’s love of folklore and mysticism had appeared in earlier tracks, particularly 1969’s “Ramble On,” when Plant howls to the moon about J.R.R. Tolkien’s “darkest depths of Mordor.” The ice-cold Norse injections of Led Zeppelin III propelled the band into musical Valhalla, where they will remain for all eternity, resurrecting medieval sagas into rock ‘n roll anthems. The album’s strange fusion of English folk revivalism and Norse mythology was a result of Plant and Page’s rejection of modernity and their turn towards the mythological in search of music grounded in eternal truth rather than passing fads.

The spark that ignited in Reykjavik was kindled in Wales.

In May 1970, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page did what mystics have done for centuries: they retreated into the mountains in search of something more. There in the misty depths of Snowdonia—the rugged Welsh region whose very name seems to carry within its lyricism the promise of dragons and wandering druids—the two men retreated to Bron-Yr-Ur—an isolated eighteenth-century cottage where the Plant family had occasionally vacationed in the 1950s.

LZ III’s acoustic experimentation was inspired by this withdrawal from the world and subsequent rejection of modernity as the two men unplugged from society as well as their Marshall amps. Like Neil Young out in California, they retreated into the wilderness with their guitars and emerged with songs that would define the band’s future trajectory.

The songwriting duo of Plant and Page returned to England and were joined by bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham in rehearsals at Headley Grange—a former workhouse that was transformed into a leaking, drafty studio. There, around the spiraling wooden stairway where Bonzo erected his drums, Led Zeppelin was forged. The Headley Grange sessions—like Rubber Soul before it—were a democratizing moment when Zeppelin became a fully-formed partnership. Whereas the band’s first two albums had been largely Page’s creations, in Wales, the Plant-Page songwriting partnership was cemented. At a Headley-Grange, the band blossomed into an organic whole with the infusion of Jones’ musical virtuosity—the man could make a toothpick hum—and the compositional foregrounding of Bonham’s irreplicable rhythmic timing exploded the last remaining fetters that restrained them.

The band’s metamorphosis in Led Zeppelin III was not a one-act show. In Wales, the wizards conjured up a creative spark with an infusion of Celtic themes and ancient ballads. In Iceland, the rock ‘n roll Vikings summoned up a Nordic whirlwind to temper the red-hot melodies. At Headley Grange, the maestros distilled this heady brew of the ancient and the avant-garde into the classic Zeppelin sound.

Led Zeppelin went to Iceland in search of stardom. There, inspired by roaring Norse sagas and the mythical landscape, they discovered the song that would propel them beyond superstardom into mythology itself.

Some rise to the occasion. Others leave scars that endure for generations.

This week, we debated the legacies of America’s most controversial presidents, from James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson to Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.

Were they merely unsuccessful leaders, or did they fundamentally damage the American experiment?

Every episode of Beyond Ideology is only the beginning of the conversation.

One of our goals is to encourage readers and listeners to go beyond the headlines to explore the books that have forged our worldviews. Few subjects over a richer tapestry of human achievement, hubris, and folly than the lives of America’s presidents.

Our Bookshelf

Five Essential Presidential Biographies

If you’re looking to understand the individuals behind the office—and the office behind the individuals—these are the books we’d recommend starting with.

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro

The greatest political biography ever written

Not only the finest presidential biography ever written, but perhaps the greatest book about political power in American history.

The third volume of Robert Caro’s monumental study of Lyndon Johnson follows LBJ’s rise to become Majority Leader of the United States Senate and his improbable role in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Caro transforms legislative procedure into high drama, revealing how power is accumulated, wielded, and abused. Whether one admires Johnson or despises him, this book is indispensable for understanding how politics actually works.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

The making of an American titan

The early years of most biographies are often the least interesting. Morris proves the exception.

From sickly child to cowboy, soldier, reformer, historian, explorer, and statesman, Theodore Roosevelt’s youth reads like an adventure novel. Morris demonstrates how the traits that would later define Roosevelt’s presidency were forged long before he entered the White House.

Few biographies better capture the formation of greatness.

Grant by Ron Chernow

The redemption of a misunderstood president

For generations, Ulysses S. Grant was remembered primarily as a failed president and successful general.

Chernow’s masterful biography restores Grant to his proper place in American history. He presents a deeply human portrait of a man whose greatest battles were often internal. Simultaneously courageous, loyal, trusting, and flawed, Grant emerges as one of the most decent individuals ever to occupy the White House.

The result is both a biography and a compelling reassessment of Reconstruction itself.

Becoming FDR by Jonathan Darman

The crisis that created a president

Before he became FDR, he was simply Franklin Roosevelt.

Darman focuses on the pivotal years surrounding Roosevelt’s struggle with polio and demonstrates how personal adversity transformed a privileged and often superficial politician into one of the most effective leaders in American history.

Without polio, Darman argues, there may never have been an FDR.

Whether one agrees or not, the book offers a fascinating meditation on the relationship between suffering and leadership.

Richard Nixon: The Life by John Farrell

The tragedy of Richard Nixon

Few presidents remain as consequential—or as controversial—as Richard Nixon.

Farrell neither excuses Nixon’s crimes nor reduces him to caricature. Instead, he presents a deeply insecure but profoundly gifted politician whose paranoia ultimately destroyed him.

Like many great tragedies, Nixon’s story is that of a man whose greatest enemy was always himself.

Beyond the Podcast:

Continue the Conversation by Reading the Presidents in Their Own Words

Want to dive deeper into the presidents discussed during the episode?

These additional works offer valuable insight into how presidents understood themselves—and how they hoped history would remember them.

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Widely considered the finest presidential memoir ever written, Grant’s autobiography combines military insight, humility, and literary excellence.

An American Life by Ronald Reagan

A warm and engaging memoir that helps explain Reagan’s enduring political appeal and influence over modern conservatism.

Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography

Brash, energetic, and unapologetically Rooseveltian. No one understood Theodore Roosevelt better than Theodore Roosevelt.

RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Read critically, but read nonetheless. Nixon’s attempt to shape his own legacy provides invaluable insight into how he viewed Vietnam, détente, and Watergate.

📺 Watch exclusive clips on YouTube

Support Beyond Ideology while building your bookshelf. The links above are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for helping us continue the conversation.

I am not convinced that the world we inhabit today is worse or more difficult than in the times that have preceded ours. I do not believe we are witnessing the crumbling of democracy or the end of civilization. On the other hand, we also do not live in a golden age or an era of civilizational panacea. We live, as mankind always has, in an evolving society. This realization is both frustrating and exhilarating, as it is fraught with danger, yet ripe with possibility.

The world has never been stagnant. Each millennium or decade, every year or month, down to the most fleeting second, exposes new challenges and resurfaces old wounds. Neither we humans nor the society we inhabit is perfect. Society itself is a jumbled collection of our own constructions uneasily mixed with millennia of inherited culture. Both our innermost selves and the world we live in are works in progress. By using the phrase “in progress,” I am referring to the passage of time and the attempts we make to improve the world around us. Both result in a state of impermanence.

As we try to understand and improve our world, we face two barriers: we feel helpless to make a difference and frustrated when others’ beliefs differ from ours. One important and often overlooked tool is the power of discourse.

When we pay attention to how we interact with each other, we are harnessing the power to change the world. Nowhere is this transformative potential defined more clearly than in The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, a heady book-length blend of Toltec wisdom and modern psychology by Don Miguel Ruiz.

The Four Agreements are outlined as follows:

• Be impeccable with your words. Think before you speak. Speak kindly. Don’t spread falsehoods. Words can heal or harm. Choose them wisely.

• Don’t take anything personally. Respect that others may see situations differently. Don’t view this as a personal attack. Honor their perspective and remember that their views of you may not reflect your beliefs. They, like you, are entitled to their own opinions.

• Don’t make assumptions. We are not mind readers. Instead of jumping to conclusions, ask questions. Seek to understand the beliefs and motivations behind others’ words and actions. Asking questions does not mean we must agree or accept their viewpoint, but it can help us consider alternative ideas and raise awareness of our own bias. Substitute understanding for judgment.

• Always do your best. As stated earlier, we and the world we live in are works in progress. The singular activity in which we can exert complete control over our environment is our individual perspective and effort. We need not aim for perfection. Perfection is an illusion and the enemy of the possible. What we must do is arrive daily, in all situations and at all times, as the best person we can be in that moment.

The Four Agreements are simple and profound, both difficult and incredibly necessary. They represent our best opportunity to move beyond ideology to get to know and respect others for who they are, not who we wish them to be. It is only from this starting point of acceptance and understanding, rooted in our shared humanity, that we can engage in reasonable, productive discourse to create the society we deserve. This change happens one chance encounter, one shared activity, and one fleeting moment at a time.

The paradox is that, in our evolving world, we have very little control; yet by making a concerted effort to follow the Four Agreements, we can take positive control of our environment. This is not an easy path, but it is one that transcends helplessness and breaks down the partisan walls we have built between us.

The Four Agreements set a clear standard that we strive to honor at Beyond Ideology. By embracing productive discourse that engages across the political binary, we each hold the power to shape a world that future generations will be grateful to inherit. Let us rise to this challenge, confident that our words and actions today can create lasting change for tomorrow.

Use our Amazon link above to get an exclusive discount on The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

This is not the debate we’re having anymore.

In Episode 2, we step back, not as partisans, but as historians, to ask the fundamental question:

How did we get here?

From Vietnam and Watergate to the rise of populism on both the left and right, we trace the slow erosion of political trust, the collapse of serious debate, and the emergence of a more volatile, violent, and performative politics.

Along the way, we challenge lazy historical analogies (no, this isn’t Nazi Germany), explore parallels to the Russian Revolution and interwar Europe, and make the case that Donald Trump is not the cause, but the symptom of a deeper civilizational erosion.

This isn’t a political rant; this is a historical diagnosis.

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• The Moon and Sixpence by M. Somerset Maugham

• Why Buddhism Is True? by Robert Wright

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