History, Natural History & the Arts
On November 15, 1865 Bernhard Behrend died in Washington, D.C. He was 72.
Although there wasn’t much of a public reaction at the time of his death, Behrend is remembered today as the Narrowsburg, Sullivan County, NY farmer who challenged the President of the United States to uphold the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. [Read more…] about Abraham Lincoln, Religious Freedom & A New York Farmer
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Stephen Fried, an award-winning journalist and author of Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father (Crown, 2018), joins us to explore the life and deeds of one founder we don’t always talk about, Benjamin Rush.
Before long it will be three hundred years ago that James Franklin started printing the combative New-England Courant, employing his younger brother Benjamin as an apprentice. It set a precedent for independent newspaper publishing in the English colonies.
Demands for freedom of the press were ignored and the paper was suppressed in 1726 – but once ink starts flowing, autonomous thinking cannot be reversed. [Read more…] about In Praise of Printing And A Favorite Ben Franklin Typeface
The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776 with 12 colonies and one abstention. The delegation from New York abstained from the vote. And Pennsylvania voted in favor of independence because two of its delegates were persuaded not to attend the vote given their opposition. [Read more…] about John Dickinson, Life, Religion, & Politics
It wasn’t always fireworks on the fourth.
John Adams predicted Americans would celebrate the Second of July, the day Congress voted in favor of independence, “with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of the Continent to the other.” He got the date wrong, but he was right about the festivities in commemoration of Independence Day. And yet July Fourth events have changed a great deal since 1776. [Read more…] about Celebrating the Fourth: Some History