American Revolution Research Articles

Bellevue Hospital, the Oldest Public Health Center in the United States of America

Bellevue Hospital is known as the oldest public hospital in the United States of America. Although its historical beginnings date back to the 1600s, it was officially founded on the second floor of the New York City Almshouse in 1736, 40years before the American Revolution. It has since been at the forefront of administering comprehensive patient care and medical education. Moreover, Bellevue has built a reputation for serving homeless, immigrant, or minority populations while also delivering care to United States presidents. This tradition of treating patients regardless of socioeconomic or racial status has made Bellevue one of the most historically renowned hospitals in the country. Today, Bellevue hospital represents a significant branch of the New York City health system and a public health leader. Moreover, it has housed pioneers in neurosurgery, including the father of functional ultrasonic neurosurgery, Dr. Russel Meyers, as well as Dr. Dorothy Klenke Nash, the only active female neurosurgeon in the United States from 1928 to 1960. Herein, we will explore Bellevue's historical and medical significance, from its humble beginnings to its current status as a public health leader.

Global Histories of Modern Europe

Abstract The historical profession emerged in Europe in the nineteenth century in tandem with the rise of the nation-state. Historians of the modern period in particular focused above all on the political history of nation-states and the diplomatic history of relations between them. Global aspects of European history were covered mainly in terms of Europe’s impact on other parts of the world, as in Hobsbawm’s “dual revolution” (the worldwide repercussions of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution), or the history of Europe’s colonial possessions overseas. And yet there were demonstrable global influences on many key developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, from the liberalism of the Latin American revolutions of the 1820s to the economic impact of the cotton-growing slave economies of the American south. The globalization processes of the late twentieth century have brought these into sharper focus and powered an approach that places Europe’s history in a broader global context of mutual interaction. Yet the nation-state is not dead, and national governments are vigorously promoting a return to national histories in the service of patriotic education. Global history is here to stay, but its place in the educational system, particularly school curricula, remains heavily contested.

The Impact of Energy Transition on the Geopolitical Importance of Oil-Exporting Countries

With the changes that have taken place in energy-related technologies, the United States has been less affected by the geopolitical risks associated with the supply of fossil fuel energy resources, especially crude oil. When the price of oil is low, the geopolitical situation of U.S. energy contrasts with that of other oil-producing countries, which are facing financial pressure due to low oil prices and a high domestic energy demand. Many other countries have been supplying crude oil compared to half a century ago, reducing the strategic importance of major oil exporters, such as key OPEC members in the Persian Gulf. The shale oil revolution in the United States and the transition of energy in countries around the world to more sustainable energy sources, especially renewable energy, have reduced the importance of security in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf for U.S. politicians, which will be intensified in the future. Especially from the middle of the Carter administration period, U.S. politicians saw the security of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf as a prerequisite for securing energy supplies for the U.S. economy, but that has changed. Despite the disruption of Russia’s fossil fuel energy supply, as one of the main energy suppliers, due to sanctions from February 2022, the global energy carriers’ prices are relatively under control. Energy transition is one of the main contributors to lowering the impact of fossil fuel energy supply disruptions on the global economy.

Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America by Karen Cook Bell

Reviewed by: Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America by Karen Cook Bell Jessica Blake Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. By Karen Cook Bell. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. viii, 248. $24.95, ISBN 978-1-108-83154-3.) In 1770, an enslaved "mulatto" woman named Margaret Grant fled her enslaver in Baltimore, only to be recaptured and resold. She escaped again while pregnant in 1773, before disappearing from the historical record, perhaps as a free woman. In Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America, Karen Cook Bell contends that "Black women … built a culture and a politics of resistance to slavery" through running away in the late eighteenth century (p. 161). Drawing on runaway advertisements, court cases, and abolitionist narratives, Cook Bell reframes women's flight as defiance against the institution of slavery. Foundational work by Sylvia R. Frey and Gary B. Nash focuses on the contributions of Black men and women who fought and labored during the American Revolution. Building on scholarship by Deborah Gray White and Stephanie M. H. Camp, Cook Bell considers the unique obstacles that women faced when trying to secure their freedom. Unlike men, enslaved women had fewer opportunities to travel and thus to break free. Motherhood further limited women's mobility, leaving them unable to move rapidly when pregnant or with young children in tow. Women had to collaborate with other enslaved people and members of society to plan their escape carefully. In five chronological chapters centered on the experiences of women around the American Revolution, Cook Bell explores individual portraits of escape. Chapter 1 focuses on how reproduction and motherhood made it more difficult for enslaved women to flee. Chapter 2 centers on the flight and recapture of Margaret Grant, a pregnant enslaved woman from Baltimore, Maryland. In chapters 3 and 4, Cook Bell pivots to other women, such as Elizabeth "Bett" [End Page 544] Freeman, who sued for her freedom by drawing on the revolutionary ideals expressed in the Massachusetts state constitution (1780), which declared all men "born free and equal" (p. 113). Chapter 5 follows enslaved women's refuge in countryside locations such as the Dismal Swamp of Virginia and the bayous of lower Louisiana. Cook Bell makes a compelling case that Black women took political action through flight and emancipation lawsuits. Elizabeth Freeman's use of the Massachusetts constitution most explicitly demonstrates Black women's adoption of new legal arguments, or to use the framework of Cook Bell, it reveals a new "radical consciousness" (p. 4). As much as Cook Bell interweaves rich storylines, she refrains from quantifying how many enslaved women escaped slavery, from where they escaped, and how their numbers changed over the course of the Revolution. Cook Bell offers captivating narratives of daring women, but she avoids discussion of whether the Revolutionary era inspired a larger or broader demographic group of women to run away. For example, by tracking fluctuations in runaway advertisements, Cook Bell could make a more persuasive claim about the widespread nature of enslaved women's politicization. In a more intriguing contribution, Cook Bell demonstrates that enslaved women forged a more revolutionary society through their collaborations with non-enslaved people. Both Grant and Freeman enlisted white men—a British convict and an abolitionist lawyer, respectively—to facilitate their efforts for independence. Likewise, runaways such as Maria exploited imperial discord between the Spanish and the French to build maroon enclaves in St. Malo, Louisiana. Certainly, enslaved women leveraged an awareness of colonial politics, but they also fostered relationships across race and class lines. In all, Cook Bell deftly pieces together engrossing stories of escape to draw out a larger, vibrant portrait of Black female resistance. Jessica Blake Austin Peay State University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World by Bryan C. Rindfleisch

Reviewed by: Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World by Bryan C. Rindfleisch Christian Gonzales Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World. By Bryan C. Rindfleisch. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 194. Paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-64336-203-8; cloth, $89.99, ISBN 978-1-64336-202-1.) Bryan C. Rindfleisch's Brothers of Coweta: Kinship, Empire, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Muscogee World examines the lives of two Muscogee brothers, Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee. He traces how they used their various leadership positions within the talwa (village) of Coweta to negotiate settler colonialism and empire in the eighteenth-century South. Rindfleisch argues that kinship was a foundational and immanent structure of the Muscogee world, and as a result, it was with family and clan interests consistently in view that Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee acted to confront colonialism and empire. Rindfleisch's narrative covers the period between the end of the Yamasee War in 1717 and the close of the American Revolution. The author contends that the story of Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee provides insight into the family dynamics of the eighteenth-century Muscogees and how such dynamics intersected with the broader currents gripping the South. The primary historiographical contributions of Brothers of Coweta are the assertions that Indigenous family and kin structures were complex and diverse and that family interests often revolved around the clan rather than the nuclear or extended family units. This book accomplishes the task it sets for itself. The first two chapters provide a good overview of the importance of family, particularly by relating what we know about Muscogee worldviews, kinship, and clan functions. They also provide a pertinent explanation as to why Coweta was well positioned to confront the forces of empire. Rindfleisch draws on the Muscogee Creation Stories and secondary literature to explain concepts like balance, to define structures like the matrilineal clan and huti (clan residence), and to delineate Muscogee gender roles. He also demonstrates that Coweta's location on the Creek Path was significant as it "further contributed to [Coweta's] influence in the deerskin trade and the Muscogee-British alliance" (p. 32). This foundation effectively sets the stage for the following chapters that trace Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee as they worked for the good of their clan by playing the French, British, and Spanish empires off against each other, toggling between alliance and war with the Cherokees, and sometimes working with, and at others against, rival clans in Coweta and other Muscogee talwas. Readers can readily perceive these tactics as driven by familial interests within the disruptive contexts of incessant Anglo-American and British demands for land and the chaos of the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. There are, however, potential points of confusion for readers. The book highlights the importance of the matrilineal clan yet focuses on two men. What roles did Muscogee women play as Escotchaby and Sempoyaffee worked on [End Page 543] behalf of their huti? Though Muscogee women's voices are extremely rare in the archive, possible contextualizations of the brothers' actions relative to those of their female kin would have been helpful. The framing of the relationship between kinship and the twinned forces of settler colonialism and empire could also prove problematic. Some might read the brothers' pursuit of familial interests as a narrow, quaint, and consequently insufficient response to the existential threat of colonialism. From this potential perspective, the Muscogees were unable to resist dispossession successfully for lack of mounting an adequate defense. Rindfleisch seems aware of this lurking problem as he writes in the conclusion that "the United States was a settler republic, hell-bent on dispossessing the Indigenous Peoples" (p. 119). However, more thorough characterization of settler colonialism as an implacable, genocidal, and juggernaut phenomenon in the eighteenth century is needed to foreclose readers' possible misinterpretations of the decolonial history Rindfleisch proffers. Overall, Rindfleisch has provided a useful and interesting story about one Muscogee family's navigation of colonialism and empire that students of Indigenous history will find helpful. Christian Gonzales University of Rhode Island Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Concord Museum, Concord, Massachusetts

<i>Concord Museum</i>, Concord, Massachusetts

Review: The Transcendentalists and Their World, by Robert A. Gross

Review: <i>The Transcendentalists and Their World</i>, by Robert A. Gross

Review: A Nation of Descendants: Politics and the Practice of Genealogy in U.S. History, by Francesca Morgan

Review: <i>A Nation of Descendants: Politics and the Practice of Genealogy in U.S. History</i>, by Francesca Morgan

An Ethical Revelation of the American Revolution: An Analysis of Communication Ethics and Hypertextuality in the Musical Hamilton

An Ethical Revelation of the American Revolution: An Analysis of Communication Ethics and Hypertextuality in the Musical Hamilton

Integration of shallow geophysics, archaeology and archival photographs to reveal the past buried at Ingleside Plantation, Piedmont North Carolina (USA)

AbstractGround penetrating radar supported by electrical resistivity tomography and gradiometer surveys were used to map buildings and infrastructure documenting sequential property use by three generations of the Jacob Forney family who began as farmers in the backcountry of North Carolina and rose to prominence in government and industry within the Southeastern United States. At Ingleside, the antebellum plantation house has been preserved, and the adjacent property remains relatively undisturbed. Context for the geophysical surveys was provided by archival photographs, written accounts including monographs and newspaper articles, and an archaeological excavation of the stone hearth within the plantation's summer kitchen. The location of an early log home with a stone‐lined cellar with ties to the Piedmont Campaign of the American Revolution (in 1781) was newly discovered. In addition, a historic road, kitchen garden, and the postholes from an early post‐in‐the‐ground building were imaged within the subsurface. The external summer kitchen and privy are associated with the plantation house constructed in 1817. Several cesspool vaults of potential privies are ingrown with trees. The results of the geophysical surveys document the evolving land use within one family in the American South and can be connected to a specific event in history, a goal of historical archaeology.

“For the Defense of the Liberties and Independence of the United States”: Remembering a Forgotten Militia Post and Quasi-War Cantonment in Plainfield, New Jersey (Part 1 of 2)

The area around Green Brook Park in Plainfield, New Jersey, was the site of two significant military encampments during the American Revolution and the new nation’s first international conflict, the Quasi-War. This is part one of a two-part article arguing the significance of the site in both conflicts through an analysis of surviving primary source material. Part one concerns the Vermeule militia post during the American Revolution. In late December 1776, a militia post was established on the property of Cornelius Vermeule, a well-known Patriot and significant landholder. This militia post is examined in the context of the forage war, the petite-guerre that raged in the New Jersey countryside between January and late June 1777. Various aspects of the post are interpreted, including its role in defending the countryside from Crown depredation, what life may have been like at the post, and what impact the militia and the post at Vermeules had on the course of the forage war and raising American military skill and morale. Part two, which is forthcoming, concerns the reuse of the site as a winter cantonment by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Ogden, William S. Smith, and three regiments of the “New Army” during the winter of 1799–1800.

Teaching Social Studies for the 250th: Revolution NJ Envisions New Initiatives to Engage Teachers and Students

This contribution to “Teaching NJ History” discusses Revolution NJ, a partnership of the New Jersey Historical Commission (NJHC), a division of the New Jersey Department of State, and the nonprofit Crossroads of the American Revolution. Specifically explored are Revolution NJ’s efforts to assess and meet the needs of teachers and students throughout the state.

Friedrich Reinhard, Count of Rechteren-Limpurg-Speckfeld (1751–1842): A Dutch-Franconian Champion of American Independence

Friedrich Reinhard, Count of Rechteren-Limpurg-Speckfeld (1751–1842): A Dutch-Franconian Champion of American Independence

Excavating the Ancestry of ‘Globetrotting’: New Perspectives on the Intersection of Racial Politics, Civil Rights Struggles and anti-Apartheid Crusades in US Track and Field from the 1920s through the 1980s

During the twentieth century, systems of racial segregation flourished in both the United States and South Africa. Crusades for racial equality aimed at dismantling racial boundaries emerged in both nations. Sport played a key role in these endeavours. Drawing colour lines in athletic competitions reinforced ideologies of white supremacy while demanding racial equality in sporting contests fuelled campaigns challenging segregation. In an American culture that used athletes as globetrotting ambassadors to promote mythologies of exceptionalism, in particular aspirational but unrealized visions of racial equity, interchanges with South Africa highlighted the complex historical intersections between politics, race, and sport. From all-white US track and field tours of South Africa that began in the 1930s, to the key role that the leading American symbol of conquering colour lines, Jack Robinson, played in athletic affairs with South Africa, to American rebellions against anti-apartheid boycotts in the 1980s, this essay introduces a special issue on ‘Excavating the Ancestry of “Globetrotting”: New Perspectives on the Intersection of Racial Politics, Civil Rights Struggles and Anti-Apartheid Crusades in US Track and Field from the 1920s through the 1980s’.

The Reverend Samuel Peters’s Natural History: A Reassessment

This article provides a reassessment from the perspective of folklore studies of the natural history section of Samuel Peters’s General History of Connecticut (1781). Peters was an Anglican priest and Loyalist who fled the Colony of Connecticut for London prior to the American Revolution. His General History has long been disparaged in the United States as propaganda and falsehood, including his report on the animals of Connecticut. Still others have regarded him as a ‘Munchausen’ or inventor of fantastical creatures. This article examines the entirety of the natural history section to argue that Peters was both sincere in his attempt to describe the animals and actively recorded local folklore concerning them.

Religion and the American Revolution. An imperial history. By Katherine Carté. Pp. xxii + 394 incl. 20 ills. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press/Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2021. $49.95. 978 1 4696 6264 0

Religion and the American Revolution. An imperial history. By Katherine Carté. Pp. xxii + 394 incl. 20 ills. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press/Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2021. $49.95. 978 1 4696 6264 0 - Volume 73 Issue 3

Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History by Katherine Carté

Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History by Katherine Carté

The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide by Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher

Reviewed by: The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide by Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher Christine E. Sears The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide. By Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2019. 176 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-5930-0. The Old Federal Road in Alabama is a vivid and witty travel companion. The first part tells the history of the Old Federal Road and the second lays out a guide for touring Alabama’s Old Federal Road. The work blends historical context with the experiential to connect us to a time during which the “land and its people were remade” (93). The first section draws on recent scholarship on Creek Indians in the Southeast to provide a succinct and inclusive history of the ancient path that would one day become a road. The foundation was “laid by Indian feet” (7) which used the path for generations. Deer skin traders and native peoples traversed the footpath up to the Seven Years’ War. At war’s end in 1763, the Spanish and French were ejected while the British set up trading posts in Mobile and Pensacola, making “formerly minor paths to the Gulf Coast … major routes” (11). After the American Revolution, American settlers charged into what are now Georgia and Tennessee, straining Creek-US relations. The US government demanded road and waterways through Creek territory while pushing a “civilization policy” (12) to transform Creeks and other Indians into settled farmers. Creeks, through whose land much of the Old Federal Road passed, farmed proficiently and had already selectively adopted many Anglo practices. The authors give ample time to Creek resistance to Americans passing through and squatting on their land, as well as to those Creeks who leveraged the needs of travelers for their own gain. The broad outlines of nineteenth-century changes are likely familiar, but the authors, by anchoring their work around the road, add important depth to that outline. Readers will not be surprised that the Louisiana Purchase instigated a transformation along the worn path. But not just Anglo settlers journeyed to the new territory. The federal government and military needed improved access to the territory for communication and defense, particularly in regard [End Page 256] to the real prize of the Purchase, the port of New Orleans. Further, the Creek were not completely sidelined by Anglo immigration in the early 1800s. Many travelers hired Creek Indians as post riders. Creeks, like Samuel Moniac, constructed houses on the route to provide fresh horses, fodder, and a stopping place on the unpopulated roadway. The year 1811 proved a pivot point in pushing the “barely tolerable path” (5) to a wheel-worthy road. Importantly, the authors highlight the federal government’s role in this change. In 1811, the US Army widened the trail and built bridges along it. In the early 1800s, the government forced Creeks to cede much of their land. And whites increasingly owned the inns and stage stops along the road while Creeks were relegated to menial jobs. The Old Federal Road, the authors note, was a “conduit that enabled both immigration and deportation” (90), moving Creek inhabitants out and cotton planters with enslaved peoples in. The United States had transformed the area from Creek territory to the Cotton South. The work is enlivened with carefully chosen illustrations that are equally inclusive. A detailed 1773 French map of Louisiana (10) highlights existing Indian trails, including some that became the Alabama Old Federal Road. An 1802 Georgia passport giving a white man permission to travel through Creek Nation territory (17) indicates Creek control of their land. Multiple illustrations of Creek Indians give faces and form to Creeks living along the path (64-65). Photos of the contemporary landscape add life to the tour guide section of the work. My favorite is the photo of an evening primrose (139), a flower written about by William Bartram, who traveled to the area in 1775. The lovely primrose grows only around Stockton, Alabama. The book’s second part is sub-divided into three sections—into the Eastern, Central, and Southern segments...

Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660–1783 by Lee B. Wilson

Reviewed by: Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660–1783 by Lee B. Wilson Justin Roberts Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660–1783. By Lee B. Wilson. Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 288 pages. Cloth, ebook. The preamble to the first comprehensive English slave code—passed in Barbados in 1661—justified the creation of this set of laws by arguing that in all of the "Lawes of England" there was "noe tract to guide us where to walke, nor any rule sett us, how to governe such Slaves."1 This would suggest, as some colonial American historians have surmised, that slavery constituted a radical departure from English legal traditions. Lee B. Wilson's Bonds of Empire offers a counterpoint. By looking at a more comprehensive set of legal practices undergirding slavery in the British Atlantic, Wilson is able to stress the continuity of English legal systems in the development of colonial slave law. She argues that colonial slave law was not "a legal aberration" (3) or "beyond the pale of English imperial legal history" (5); rather, it "was a natural extension" of the English "legal system" (10). Bonds of Empire is nominally about slave law in South Carolina, but it is really much broader and more ambitious because Wilson extends her analysis to the Caribbean colonies—particularly Jamaica—and to the maritime world. Her book follows a loose chronological trajectory from the late seventeenth century through the end of the eighteenth century. The chapters trace that arc while remaining thematically organized around the concepts embedded in private law sources such as the conditional bonds used to transfer enslaved property, the records of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, and the records of the Board of Police, which governed Charleston during the American Revolution. Wilson relies on her legal training to shed light on how these records, which most scholars have overlooked, illuminate practices related to slavery. By focusing on such sources, Wilson offers a deeper appreciation of the ways in which English law buttressed the colonists' "commercial need to treat slaves as things" (261). Bonds of Empire clearly demonstrates that the prescriptive slave codes that have drawn so much attention from slavery historians were only a narrow subset of a far more expansive body of slave law. "Bloody and punitive," the slave codes addressed the slaves as potential criminal actors in need of social control, and they focused on "stripping enslaved people of the rights" (10) of freeborn English people. The "viscerally shocking" nature of these [End Page 491] slave codes has led some historians to emphasize that their creation signals "colonial legal deviance" (39). Wilson, by contrast, turns most of her attention to "the 'private' law of slavery—embodied in quotidian transactions and routine litigation" (39). These are sources that generally depict slaves as little more than commodities. Wilson maintains that by conceptualizing slaves as chattel and making them analogous "to ships, cows, or horses" (13), enslavers were able to draw directly from traditional English legal practices and "slot slaves into extant legal procedures and forms" (17), especially instruments of English property transfer such as "preprinted bills of sale, mortgages, trusts, and conditional bonds" (13). By relying on conventional English legal practices, she argues, colonial enslavers normalized the institution of slavery, insulating it from "moral critiques" (5). This continuity in "improvisational" (10) English legal practices and traditions made colonial British slavery resilient in the face of moral criticism and adaptable to change. Ultimately, Wilson argues that the status of the enslaved as property encouraged the "replication" of long-standing English legal practices in private law, which simultaneously bolstered the institution of slavery and "contributed directly to the dehumanization of enslaved people" (21). By privileging legal sources more concerned with enslaved people as alienable property than as potential criminal actors in need of social control, Wilson reinforces the idea that this chattel principle—the idea that a person could be bought and sold—was at the essence of Anglo-American slavery. She argues that "historians have long understood that transforming people...

The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher

Reviewed by: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher Dana Y. Rabin (bio) The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton. By Andrew Porwancher. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. ix + 254 pp. In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher promises to reveal the place of Judaism in the life of Alexander Hamilton and to show the influence of Judaism on Hamilton's values, his politics, his economic policies, and his religious toleration. Porwancher claims that "the Hamiltonian-Jewish connections offer us an enriched perspective on the early republic, one that suggests the egalitarian rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence was not an empty promise, even if progress was halting" (9). Unfortunately, the author does not deliver on this promise. The book considers Hamilton's life and the founding fathers and their attitudes about both individual Jewish people and Judaism as a religion. It introduces real Jews in a peripatetic survey of events well known to Jewish historians of the period, featuring prominent Jewish men in the era and their interactions with political and economic affairs including each and every Jewish client that Hamilton represented or advised. The connection between Hamilton and Judaism is traced to his mother Rachel Faucette's marriage to Johan Levine in St. Croix. Porwancher posits that Rachel converted to Judaism in order to marry Levine and that she retained her ties to a Jewish identity even after the union with Levine dissolved, while she had a relationship with Alexander's father James Hamilton, and in the years that she raised Alexander and his brother Peter on Nevis before her death in 1768. The two documented [End Page 316] facts are that Rachel never gave up her married name and that Alexander Hamilton attended a Jewish school on Nevis. Having provided the details of Hamilton's precarious relationship with Jews during his short time in the Caribbean, the book's subsequent chapters take us through Hamilton's life from his move to New York at age 18, his matriculation at King's College (later Columbia University), his involvement in the American Revolution, his work ensuring the passage of the Constitution, his service to the new United States as Secretary of the Treasury, his profession as a lawyer, and his death in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. The penultimate chapter on church and state revisits the much-known story of George Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island. Wherever possible, the author introduces Hamilton's relationship with Jews, whether in his practice of law or in his establishment of the Bank of America. The book demonstrates the virulent and widespread antisemitism so common in the American colonies and the early republic. The dismissive and hateful rhetoric of other founding fathers—John Adams, James Madison, John Jay, and particularly Benjamin Franklin—is quoted at length. Porwancher rehearses the conflicts between Federalists and Anti-Federalists and between those colonists who wished to embed a religious test in the Constitution and those who did not, those who believed that religion had a place in the governing structure of the United States and those who did not. The attempt to demonstrate the promise of the Declaration of Independence is belied by its entanglement with histories of racism, slavery, and the extermination of Native Americans. These atrocities formed the bedrock of colonial America and the United States and accompanied the dehumanization of the enslaved, the appropriation of Native American land, and the prejudices that withheld rights from the enslaved and circumscribed those of free people of color. The relationship of any rights bestowed on Jews in the early republic certainly is related to whiteness and an understanding of religious and ethnic groups that might come to be included or partially included in this shifting category. Religious hatred, which had always excluded Jews and Catholics from certain rights of English men, seemed to change in the context of the American colonies where the divides and hierarchies were oriented differently. Throughout the author seems determined to prove that Hamilton believed in the rule of law and its corollary, equality before the law. It is certainly possible that Hamilton was not antisemitic. But the law and its inequalities were...