Episode 6

full
Published on:

1st Aug 2025

S1E6 The New Nation: From Confederation Chaos to Constitutional Union | American Yawp Chapter 6 Explained

In Episode 6 of Star-Spangled Studies, Dr. G explores Chapter 6 of The American Yawp—how the United States barely survived its “critical period” and emerged under the Constitution. Key topics include:

• Articles of Confederation and the “League of Friendship”

• Shays’s Rebellion and its impact on national unity

• Constitutional Convention debates: large vs. small states & slavery compromises

• Ratification fight: Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists and the promise of a Bill of Rights

• Hamilton vs. Jefferson: Bank, debt, and vision for America

• Whiskey Rebellion and enforcement of federal power

• Election of 1800: Peaceful transfer as “Revolution of 1800”

• Unfinished business: women, enslaved people, and religious freedom


**Links & Resources:**

– Textbook: [The American Yawp – Chapter 6: The New Nation](https://www.americanyawp.com/text/06-the-new-nation/)

– Instagram: [@star_spangled_studies](https://www.instagram.com/star_spangled_studies)

– Facebook: [Star-Spangled Studies](https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576389415625)

Explore Chapter 6 of The American Yawp in *Star-Spangled Studies*: “The New Nation.” Historian Dr. G traces the U.S. from the weak Articles of Confederation and Shays’s Rebellion through the Constitutional Convention, ratification battles, and early partisan clashes between Hamilton and Jefferson. Learn how the “critical period” nearly shattered the Republic and how the Constitution—and the Revolution of 1800—established the United States.


Keywords: New Nation podcast, American Yawp Chapter 6, Articles of Confederation, Shays’s Rebellion, Constitutional Convention, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Hamilton vs. Jefferson, Whiskey Rebellion, Election of 1800, Dr. G


Transcript
Speaker:

Hello y'all.

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It's me.

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It's me.

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It's Dr.

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G, and welcome back to

Star Spangled Studies.

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Picture this.

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Philadelphia.

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July 4th, 1788, a grand federal procession

fills the street to celebrate the

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brand new United States Constitution.

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It's a spectacle of national hope.

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Workers from every trade are marching,

blacksmiths, have set up a working forge

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on a float, and instead of making weapons.

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They're symbolically beating

swords into farm tools.

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Potter's march proudly behind the

sign that paraphrases the Bible quote,

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the Potter have power over his clay

linking God's power and artisans

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skill, and a citizens' control over

their own country in a powerful

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display of religious pluralism.

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Christian clergyman March arm

in arm with Jewish rabbis.

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This parade was a living, breathing

vision of what many Americans hope

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the United States would become a

diverse but cohesive, prosperous,

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and most of all, a unified nation.

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I.

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But just a few years earlier, this scene

would have seemed like impossible fantasy.

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The new nation, fresh from its improbable

victory over the British Empire was

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teetering on the brink of collapse.

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The government was broke.

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States were fighting with one

another, like they were angry.

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Siblings and farmers of all people

were taking up rebellious arms

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against their own government.

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So what happened in that chaotic

decade between the end of the

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revolution and this grand parade?

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Was this truly America's critical

period, the time of chaos and

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despair that nearly destroyed

the country before it even began?

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Or was the story itself a kind of

propaganda, a narrative crafted

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to justify a radical, and some

would say counter revolutionary.

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New type of government.

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Today, we're gonna dive into

that turbulent, messy, and

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absolutely crucial decade when

the United States almost wasn't.

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This is the story of a new nation

and the fight for its very soul.

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So let's go.

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So to understand this story, we need to

really start with the first government

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of the United States, and that was

based on the Articles of Confederation.

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Now, if you've taken your

high school civics class, you

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probably already heard that.

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The articles were a total failure,

and yes, they had major problems.

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I mean, holes in the Titanic type

of problems, but it's crucial to

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remember that the articles were weak.

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On purpose.

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That was by design.

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The United States had just fought a

revolution against a powerful centralized

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government that of King George and

Parliament, and the last thing that

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they wanted was to create another

centralized, powerful government.

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So they designed the Articles

of Confederation, not as a

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national government, but as a

quote, league of Friendship.

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A League of Friendship between

13 sovereign independent states.

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Congress was the main body,

but it had no president.

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It had no national court system.

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It was, as I said, independent.

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Each state, no matter its size,

had one vote, and the weaknesses

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of the system were glaring.

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Congress couldn't levy taxes directly.

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It could only request money

from the states, which.

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They often refuse to pay,

and you probably would too.

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It couldn't regulate interstate

commerce, so states started getting

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into trade wars with one another,

slapping tariffs on goods from their

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neighbors, and if you wanted to change

the articles of Confederation, you needed

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a unanimous vote from all 13 states.

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When was the last time anything was really

that unanimous when it comes to politics.

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So you get to see why this was an absolute

failure and for a time the dominant

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narrative, first powerfully articulated

by the historian John Fisk in:

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that this weakness led to the disaster.

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Fisk was writing in the late 19th

century when the nation was still

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recovering from the Civil War, and

is painted the picture of the:

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as a time of utter chaos and economic

depression and political ineptitude.

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And in his view, the country was on

the verge of anarchy, saved only by

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the heroic intervention of the founding

fathers who drafted the constitution.

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He called the quote, the most

critical moment in all the

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history of the American people.

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End quote.

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But.

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That's not really the

whole story though, right?

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By the mid 20th century, a new school

of historians led by Merrill Jensen

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began to push back on this Jensen in

his landmark book, the New Nation argued

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that the critical period wasn't so

ritical after all, he saw the:

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not as a decade of chaos and failure.

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But of hopeful, striving.

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Those were his words.

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He pointed to the successes of the

Confederation Congress, like establishing

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a bureaucracy, dealing with war debt, and

most importantly, passing the Northwest

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Ordinance in 1787, which created a process

for admitting new states, and it famously

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banned slavery in the new territories.

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Jensen argued that the chaos narrative

was largely propaganda and it was created

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by a small but powerful group of wealthy

nationalists at the time, the merchants,

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the banks and bond holders, the large

landowners who wanted a central government

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to protect their economic interests.

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They weren't saving the

country from anarchy.

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That wasn't their goal.

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They were staging a counter

revolution against the more

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radical democratic impulses of

the American Revolution itself.

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This debate between Fisk

and Jensen schools shows us

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something vital about history.

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The story we tell about the past is often

shaped by the concerns of the present.

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Fisk's narrative served to glorify

the Constitution and national unity.

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Jenssen's narrative forced us to ask who

really benefited from that constitution?

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The truth, as always, is somewhere in the

middle, in the complex story of events.

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Like Shea's Rebellion,

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if there's one event that embodies

the tensions of the:

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Rebellion in Western Massachusetts

farmers, many of them were

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veterans of the Revolutionary War.

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Found themselves in a

very desperate situation.

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They were being crushed by personal

debts as well as high state taxis levied

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because the state of Massachusetts needed

to pay off the war debt that was being

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held by wealthy merchants in Boston.

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And to make matters worse, there was a

shortage of hard currency, but creditors

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and tax collectors would only accept cash.

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When farmers couldn't pay, they

faced foreclosure on their farms.

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Their not only their farms, but their

land, their tools, their livestock.

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All of this was seized and as one

petition from a group of farmers, put

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it, quote, the present expensive mode

of collecting debts, will of necessity

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fill our jails with unhappy debtors.

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End quote.

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So what did they do?

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They did what they had learned to do

during the, during the revolution.

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They organized, they held

conventions, they petitioned the

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government for relief, and when the

government in Boston ignored them.

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They took up arms.

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Sounds like a very familiar story.

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They were led by a fellow veteran, a man

Captain Daniel shas, and they marched

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on the county courthouses to shut

them down and stop the foreclosures.

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In their minds, they weren't rebels.

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I.

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They were patriots.

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They called themselves the

regulators, and they believed they

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were protecting their rights and

acting in the true spirit of:

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But to the nation's elites, this was.

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Terrifying.

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This wasn't a protest

against some distant king.

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This was a uprising, an armed

uprising, and a rebellion against

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a Republican government, not

some monarchy across the ocean.

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George Washington who had retired

to Mount Vernon was horrified.

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He wrote to his friend Henry Knox,

a general who had been, uh, there

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to observe the situation, quote, if

three years ago any person had told me

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that at this day I should see such a

formidable rebellion against the laws

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and constitutions of our own making as

now appears I should have fought him.

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A bed mite a fit subject for a

madhouse end quote to another friend.

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He worried that quote, commotions of

this sort like snowballs, gather strength

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as they roll if there is no opposition

in the way to divide and crumble them.

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End quote.

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The rebellion was ultimately crushed

by the state militia funded by the same

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very wealthy Boston merchants, but the

shockwaves of Shea's Rebellion sent

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across these 13 states were immense.

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It convinced elite men

like Washington and others.

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James Madison and Alexander Hamilton

that the articles of Confederation

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were too weak to maintain order.

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The government couldn't protect its

own federal arsenal from a mob of angry

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farmers, and that in their eyes meant

there really was no government at all.

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The rebellion once over.

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Showed that even though the farmers

had lost their uprising, terrified

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the nation's elites into action, they

would now gather in Philadelphia not

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to tweak the government, but to tear it

down and build something entirely new.

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But what would that look

like and who would it serve?

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That's the questions

we're gonna answer next.

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After Shea's Rebellion was

crushed in Massachusetts, the

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founding fathers were left.

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Finding a solution to make sure

that this never happened again.

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They decided to meet in

Philadelphia in the summer of:

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The official story was that they

were there to revise the articles of

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Confederation, but in reality, they were

planning a peaceful overthrow of the

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United States government, so to speak.

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The delegates who gathered in Philadelphia

were instructed only to amend the

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articles, but some men there, like

James Madison came with a bigger agenda.

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Madison himself was a brilliant

political theorist, and he arrived

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with a plan already in his pocket.

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This was the Virginia Plan, which outlined

a powerful new national government

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to completely replace the old one.

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The convention met in secret

with the window shut tight in

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the sweltering summer heat.

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The stench must have been terrible, and

they did this to shield their radical

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debates from public hearing and eyes.

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The debates were intense.

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The large states.

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Favored Madison's Virginia plan

with representation based on

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the population of your state.

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But the small states, obviously being

smaller, didn't like a plan where

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they would be outnumbered, and so

they countered with what was called

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the New Jersey Plan, which demanded

equal representation for every state.

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This was the deadlock and eventually

it was broken by what has been called

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the great Compromise, creating what we

have today, the bicameral legislature.

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A house based on population and a Senate

with equal representation for each state.

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They argued fiercely over another topic.

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The nature of the executive branch.

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After fighting a war to escape a king,

the idea of a powerful, singular person.

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The president was deeply

controversial and it conjured up

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images of an elected monarchy.

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They debated how the president would be

chosen, how long would they serve, and

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what powers they would ultimately have.

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And they eventually settled on

creating the electoral college in

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a system of checks and balances,

but perhaps the most divisive and

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morally compromising debate of all

was over the institution of slavery.

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Yes, they argued about it here too.

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I.

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This wasn't just a political

disagreement, this was a raw conflict

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over the fundamental character of a

new nation supposedly built on liberty.

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And thanks to Madison's, Madison's

meticulous notes, we have a

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front row seat to the drama.

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On one side were delegates like Governor

Morris from Pennsylvania, who called

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slavery quote, the Curse of Heaven

on the states where it prevailed.

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End quote.

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George Mason, a slaveholder himself

from Virginia said this about slavery.

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Quote, slavery discourages

arts and manufacturers.

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The poor despise labor

when performed by slaves.

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They prevent the immigration of whites who

really enrich and strengthen the country.

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They produce the most

pernicious effect on manners.

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Every master of slaves

is born a petty tyrant.

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They bring the judgment

of heaven on a country.

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But delegates from the deep

South were just as adamant.

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Charles Pickney of South

Carolina stated it bluntly.

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South Carolina can never receive the

plan if it's prohibits the slave trade.

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His cousin, general Charles Cosworth

Pickney was even more direct warning

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that quote, South Carolina and Georgia,

Georgia cannot do without slaves.

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The people of those states will

never be such fools as to give up.

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So important in interest.

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The result is what we historians

call the dirty compromise to keep

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the southern states in the union.

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The Northern delegates agreed to

three major concessions on slavery.

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The first is the infamous three

fifths clause, which counted three

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fifths of enslaved population for the

purposes of representation in Congress.

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So lopsided was this power that

nine of the first 11 presidents

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of the United States were slave

owners, or from slave states.

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The second was a clause preventing

Congress from banning the

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international slave trade for 20 years.

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The third was a fugitive slave clause

that required the return of escaped

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enslaved people back to their enslavers.

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This brings us to another

great historical debate.

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Was the Constitution a noble document

forged from high minded ideals, or

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was it as the historian Charles Beard

argued in:

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to protect the financial interests

of a wealthy elite, now beard's at

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the time, progressive interpretation.

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Which suggested the founders were

more concerned with their bonds and

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landholdings than with the abstract ideal

of liberty that dominated the historical

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debate about this for decades later.

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Historians like Gordon Wood would push

back on this reemphasizing the power of

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Republican ideology, the genuine fear

of tyranny and the commitment to liberty

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as those that animated the founders.

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And what the debates over

slavery show us is that.

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Well both can be true.

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The convention was a clash of high-minded

ideals and raw, cynical self-interests.

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The Constitution emerged as a

document with profound principles,

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but also profound, tragic compromises.

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And after this long.

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Hot summer of debate.

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A new constitution was born, but

getting 55 men in a room to agree

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on it was actually the easy part.

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Now, they had to convince 13

states and millions of Americans to

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accept this radical new government.

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The result.

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Was a war of words that would

define the very soul of the nation.

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So the year is 1787 and the new

constitution has been sent to the states

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for ratification, and the American people

are now faced with a monumental choice.

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Embrace this new powerful

central government.

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Or rejected.

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The debate that followed was one of the

most brilliant and possibly consequential

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in world history carried out in

newspapers and pamphlets and in ratifying

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conventions across these United States.

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On the one side were the Federalists.

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These were those who

supported the Constitution.

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They were led by figures like

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

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They argued that a strong,

energetic national government was

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essential for the nation's survival.

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Their most famous contribution was

a series of 85 essays published in

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New York newspapers, and we know

them today as the Federalist Papers.

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In Federalist number 10, Madison tackles

the biggest fear of Republican government.

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The danger of factions are what we

might call special interest groups.

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The conventional wisdom dating back to

ancient Greece was that republics could

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only work in small homogenous societies.

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Madison turned this idea on its head.

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He argued that the real danger came from

a majority faction opposing the minority.

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In a large, diverse republic like the

United States he wrote, there would be

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so many different factions, farmers,

merchants, creditors, debtors that no

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single one could ever dominate as he

would write in Federalist 51 quote.

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Ambition must be made to counter ambition.

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End quote.

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It was brilliant if nothing

but counterintuitive an

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argument for a large republic.

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On the other side were the

anti-Federalists, and it's important

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to remember that they weren't an

organized party, but more of a diverse

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coalition of people who shared a

common fear about the new Constitution.

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They feared that the new Constitution

created a government that was too

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powerful to distant from the lives of

ordinary people, and that it was a direct

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threat to individual liberty far away.

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You know, like the king was.

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One of the more prominent anti-federalists

writers used a pseudonym, Brutus,

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and it was likely the New York Judge

Robert Yates Brutus, argued that in a

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Republic as vast as these United States.

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Representatives would become

disconnected from the people

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they were supposed to represent.

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The government would have to rely on a

standing army to enforce its laws, which

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he called quote, a government of all

others, the most to be dreaded, end quote.

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And the anti-federalists had

powerful intellectual voices

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on their side, including women.

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Mercy Otis Warren, a celebrated poet

and historian from Massachusetts,

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wrote a scathing critique called

Observations on the New Constitution.

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She saw a tragic irony

in what was happening.

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Americans had just risked their lives

to escape a distance, centralized

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tyranny, and now a mere decade later.

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They were willing to accept a new one.

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Ultimately, the Anti-Federalists most

powerful and effective argument was that

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the Constitution lacked a bill of rights.

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There was no explicit protection for

the freedom of speech, the freedom of

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the press, or the freedom of religion.

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This became the key to

ratification in state after state.

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Federalists had promised that the very

first act of the new government would

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be to pass a series of amendments

protecting these fundamental liberties.

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This became known as the co,

the Massachusetts Compromise,

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and it broke the log jam and the

Constitution was eventually ratified.

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The.

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So now that the Constitution was

ratified, the parades like the one

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in Philadelphia that we had mentioned

at the start could begin, but the

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arguments about the constitution didn't

stop, and they continue to this day.

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The fundamental disagreements between

those who feared anarchy and those

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who feared tyranny would now shape the

new government from within embodied in

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two titans of the founding generation.

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It would be Alexander Hamilton and

Thomas Jefferson and their epic clash.

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We'll get to next

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with the Constitution now in place,

George Washington was elected unanimously

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as the country's first president.

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His cabinet was a political

wrestling match waiting to happen.

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In one corner.

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You had the brilliant city loving,

ambitious Secretary of the Treasury,

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Alexander Hamilton, and in the other you

have the revolutionary icon, the slave

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owning Virginia Planter, and now the

Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson.

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Their battle of wills wasn't

just personal, it was a battle

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for the very soul of America.

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Hamilton had a bold

vision for the New Nation.

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He wanted to build a powerful,

centralized state with a vibrant

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commercial and industrial economy.

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Much like was seen in Great Britain.

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His financial plan had three key parts.

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First, the federal government would assume

the massive war debts of the states.

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This would bind the nation's

wealthiest creditors to the

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success of the national government.

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Second, he proposed the creation of

a bank, a bank of the United States,

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a national bank that would then

regulate currency, provide loans,

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and manage government finances.

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And third, in his report on

manufacturers, he had called for

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tariffs and subsidies to encourage

the growth of American industries.

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To try and break Britain's Hold on.

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Manufacturing.

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Hamilton believed in the idea of a

dynamic economy, and he felt that

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this was the key to national strength.

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He even argued that everything that

had increased the quote, total massive

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industry and opulence, is ultimately

beneficial to every part of it.

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End quote, this plan by

Hamilton horrified Jefferson, I.

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He envisioned a completely different form

of liberty, what he called an empire of

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liberty, but not built on manufacturing

or a centralized government or in cities.

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It was built on the foundation

of independent yeoman farmers.

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He feared that Hamilton's plan would

create a dependent class of factory

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workers, corrupt the nation with financial

speculation and concentrate power in

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the hands of wealthy urban elites.

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He argued that the creation of

a national bank was in itself

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unconstitutional because the powers

to create a bank was not explicitly

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granted in the granted to Congress.

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In the Constitution itself.

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This fundamental disagreement from the

very start, Hamilton's loose construction

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of the Constitution versus Jefferson's

very strict construction, gave rise to

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the nation's first political parties.

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They were the federalists led by

men like Hamilton, and then there

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were the Democratic Republicans

led by Jefferson and Madison.

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The first major test of the new

government's power came in:

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with the whiskey rebellion.

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Hamilton's financial plan to get

out of debt included an excise.

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Tax on whiskey, which was a

critical part of the economy for

373

:

Western Pennsylvania farmers.

374

:

For them, whiskey was

more than just a drink.

375

:

It was a form of currency and a

way to get their corn to market.

376

:

They saw the tax as an attack by a

distant Eastern government on their

377

:

livelihoods, and they rebelled and they

tarred and feathered the tax collectors.

378

:

The government's response was a

world away from its reaction to

379

:

what we saw in Shea's Rebellion.

380

:

Under the articles, the government had

been powerless under the constitution.

381

:

However, president Washington urged

on by Hamilton personally led an army

382

:

of 13,000 militiamen into Western

Pennsylvania to crush the rebellion.

383

:

The rebels mostly scattered, but

the message was clear as Washington

384

:

declared an A proclamation.

385

:

The government would quote, take care

that the laws be faithfully executed.

386

:

End quote, for Federalists, this

was a triumphant success proof that

387

:

the new government could maintain

order for the Democratic Republicans.

388

:

However, it was a terrifying

display of federal power being

389

:

used against its own citizens.

390

:

These domestic divisions were

amplified by new foreign crises.

391

:

When the French Revolution descended into

the reign of terror, Federalists recoiled

392

:

in horror, while Republican cheered

what they saw as a sister revolution.

393

:

The crisis escalated with the X, Y, Z

affair where French officials demanded

394

:

a bribe from American diplomats

leading to an undeclared naval war

395

:

with France known as the quasi war.

396

:

Fearing French spies and Republican

descent, the Federalist controlled

397

:

Congress passed the infamous

Alien and Sedition Acts in:

398

:

These laws made it harder for

immigrants to become citizens and

399

:

made it a crime to quote print.

400

:

Utter or publish any false, scandalous and

malicious writing against the government.

401

:

It was a direct assault on the

freedom of speech and the press, and

402

:

it was aimed squarely at silencing

Republican newspapers and critics.

403

:

In response, Jefferson and

Madison secretly drafted the

404

:

Virginia and Kentucky resolutions.

405

:

These resolutions made the

radical claim that states.

406

:

Had the right to judge the

constitutionality of federal laws and

407

:

if they found them unconstitutional

to declare them null and void.

408

:

This was a direct challenge to

federal authority and laid the

409

:

groundwork for the state's rights

arguments that would later lead to a

410

:

justify for the South, the Civil War.

411

:

The Alien and sedition

acts were a step too far.

412

:

The Federalists had overplayed their

hand, and so this set the stage for a

413

:

political showdown coming up with the

election of:

414

:

and transformative that Jefferson himself.

415

:

Would call it another revolution.

416

:

I wanna start off by saying

that the election of:

417

:

been called one of the dirtiest

campaigns in American history.

418

:

Federalists painted Jefferson as a godless

radical who would bring the terror of

419

:

the French Revolution to American Shores.

420

:

Republicans portrayed President John

Adams as a monarchist who wanted

421

:

to crush liberty under the boat

of a powerful central government.

422

:

I.

423

:

The result was a constitutional crisis.

424

:

The Democratic Republican electors had

cast their two votes for Jefferson and

425

:

his running mate, Aaron Burr, resulting

in a tie under the Constitution.

426

:

The election was thrown into the

House of Representatives, the.

427

:

Which was still controlled by the

lame duck Federalists for 35 ballots.

428

:

The house was deadlocked.

429

:

There was talk of military intervention

of secession, of even assassinations.

430

:

The young Republic seemed once

again on the verge of splintering.

431

:

Finally.

432

:

Alexander Hamilton, who despised

Jefferson, but believed Burr himself

433

:

was a man without principle intervened,

and Jefferson was elected president.

434

:

What happened next was

actually truly revolutionary.

435

:

Despite the bitter partisanship of this

election, power was transferred peacefully

436

:

from one rival party to another.

437

:

This Jefferson would later write was

the true quote revolution of:

438

:

his inaugural address to the nation.

439

:

Jefferson tried to heal the

nation's wounds after that

440

:

dirty 1800 election quote.

441

:

But every difference of opinion

is not a difference of principle.

442

:

We have called by different names,

brethren of the same principle.

443

:

We are all Republicans.

444

:

We are all Federalists.

445

:

End quote.

446

:

It was a beautiful sentiment, no doubt.

447

:

But while a political revolution

had occurred, the social revolution

448

:

promised by the Declaration of

Independence remained unfinished.

449

:

Who was left out of this new nation?

450

:

Well, women for one.

451

:

We can't forget Abigail Adams prescient

sent to her husband, John in:

452

:

that we talked about last episode, urging

him and the other founders to remember

453

:

the ladies and to not put quote, unlimited

power into the hands of their husbands.

454

:

John Adams of course, laughed it off and

he told her quote, we know better than

455

:

to repeal our masculine systems while the

revolution opened up new roles for women

456

:

in the concept of Republican motherhood.

457

:

That being the idea that women's

primary political role was to raise

458

:

virtuous, patriotic sons, it did

not grant them political or legal

459

:

equality, something that would

take another hundred plus years.

460

:

And of course.

461

:

They're worthy, those that were

enslaved in the same year as Jefferson's

462

:

Revolution, an enslaved blacksmith

named Gabriel organized a massive

463

:

rebellion in Virginia planning to

march on Richmond and demand liberty.

464

:

The plot was discovered in brutally

suppressed, but it was a terrifying

465

:

reminder to white Virginians

that the language of liberty and

466

:

revolution was not lost on the very

people that they held in bondage.

467

:

Throughout the revolutionary

era, enslaved people continuously

468

:

petition the legislatures for

their freedom powerfully using the

469

:

colonist own rhetoric against them.

470

:

Despite all of this, there were

genuine expansions of liberty.

471

:

The revolution sparked a movement

for religious freedom culminating.

472

:

The disestablishment of state-sponsored

churches and the passage of

473

:

Jefferson's, Virginia statute

for religious freedom in:

474

:

Its powerful opening, declared

that quote Almighty God hath

475

:

created the mind free end quote.

476

:

And this became a cornerstone

of American liberty.

477

:

I.

478

:

So the 1780s and the 1790s were a

period of that forged a new, powerful

479

:

and deeply compromised nation.

480

:

The Constitution created a

double framework for a republic,

481

:

but it pa papered over.

482

:

Rather than solved the fundamental

conflicts over federal versus state

483

:

power and the profound glaring

hypocrisy of a land of freedom built

484

:

on a foundation of slavery, these

were the tensions that would define

485

:

the next century of American history.

486

:

Jefferson's revolution was a victory for

his vision of a limited agrarian republic.

487

:

But in a twist of historical irony,

his presidency would unleash forces

488

:

of expansion and national power

that challenge that very vision.

489

:

And these are the topics

of our next episode.

490

:

So I'm Dr.

491

:

G and I'll see y'all in the past.

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Star-Spangled Studies
Star-Spangled Studies is a college-level U.S. history podcast created by professional historian Dr. G—built for students, teachers, and curious listeners alike. Season 1 covers the era from 1865 to the present, using The American Yawp, a free and open educational resource (OER) textbook, as its guide. Each episode unpacks key events, movements, and ideas that shaped the modern United States—through rich narrative, scholarly insight, and accessible storytelling.

Whether you're enrolled in a course or exploring history on your own, you’ll get clear, engaging episodes that follow the chapters of The American Yawp. Bring your curiosity, download the textbook, and join Dr. G for a star-spangled journey through American history.

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