Our Documents of Freedom in Four Programs
Program 1: Thursday, August 6 at 7 PM: People's University, America 250: Revolution & Constitution
Foundations of Freedom: Building a National Government
Once peace was secured through treaty negotiations with European nations in 1783, Americans still faced a very uncertain future. Citizens needed to build a government that could protect their young country’s independence and fulfill revolutionary principles. The origins of the federal government unfolded over several fitful years. Deeply divided citizens argued, compromised, and persevered in this challenging struggle to turn abstract ideas about self-government into a viable structure. This week’s class explores the push toward the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the contentious ratification debates of 1787-1788, and the 1789-1791 conflicts over creating a Bill of Rights. Far from a single “original” design, these enduring foundations of freedom emerged from a deeply divided country, more like our own than we usually remember, with important lessons for twenty-first-century Americans.
Instructor Lorri Glover is the Bannon Endowed Professor in the History Department at Saint Louis University. Her books include The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution (2016), and Eliza Lucas Pinckney: An Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution (2020). Glover has served as president of the Southern Association for Women Historians and the Southern Historical Association.
Program 2: Tuesday, August 11 at Noon: Lunch With Books: Founding Women
Dr. Anne Marie Lofaso, Professor of Law, will introduce some of the many women whose work and courage helped shape the American Revolution but rarely appear in our textbooks. From printers and spies to business owners, soldiers, and political thinkers, these “Founding Mothers” kept households and communities running, carried ideas across networks, and pushed against the limits placed on them. The lecture will discuss how women such as Abigail Adams, Mary Katherine Goddard, and Deborah Sampson influenced our nation’s beginnings, and why their stories matter for a fuller understanding of our founding today.
Anne Lofaso is a Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati Donald P. Klekamp College of Law, where she teaches courses in constitutional, labor, and employment law. She is also the Arthur B. Hodges Professor Emerita at West Virginia University College of Law, where she taught for 18 years. Before becoming a professor, she worked as a Senior Attorney at the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., where she argued cases in federal court. A widely published scholar with more than 70 articles and several books, she brings a deep interest in how law affects real people and how overlooked voices—especially women and workers—shape our shared history. Anne holds degrees from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, and Oxford University.
Program 3: Thursday, August 13 at Noon: People's University, "A Republic — If you can keep it." Live Public Readings from the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution
On September 17, 1787, as the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia came to a close, Ben Franklin was asked whether the delegates had created a monarchy or a republic. “A republic,” Franklin famously replied, “if you can keep it.” Franklin’s words remind us that self government is fragile and difficult and must be guarded diligently, especially by the governed. In recognition of these existential truths and in the glow of our nation’s Semiquincentennial, OCPL will feature a main exhibit celebrating our relatively young experiment in keeping a republic, exploring 250 years of successes and failures, and, on August 13 at noon, we will invite members of our community to participate in public readings of selections from our most cherished documents: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Program 4: Tuesday, September 1 at Noon: Lunch With Books: National Treasure with Michael Auslin
The first complete history of our founding document, from 1776 to the 21st century, "National Treasure" is a celebration of how the Declaration of Independence became the supreme expression of the American Ideal and unity while guiding us along the often-bumpy road on the way to a more perfect Union. It is also a thrilling adventure story and a fond look at the marriage of civics and commerce that has kept the Declaration in the hearts and minds of Americans.
An award-winning historian, Michael Auslin takes us from the boarding house in Philadelphia where Thomas Jefferson put quill to paper to the Declaration’s long, harrowing, and ultimately hallowed afterlife. Through war and peace, expansion and urbanization, and demographic change and social reform, the Declaration has remained, in the words of President Gerald R. Ford, the “Polaris of our political order—the fixed star of freedom.”
As Jefferson had hoped, the principles enshrined in the Declaration became a beacon to the world. But what lessons should we take from it today? Can this statement of ideals in whose name the signers pledged their lives and sacred honor bring a disparate nation together? As we gather to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founders’ bold experiment in democracy, Auslin reminds us that this enduring document was not just a call for freedom and equality but an eloquent statement of the principles that bind us together.
Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Previously, he was an associate professor of history at Yale. He wrote National Treasure as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center and an American Heritage Partners Fellow at the Society of the Cincinnati’s American Revolution Institute. He writes a Substack, The Patowmack Packet, on Washington, DC, past and present, and lives in Virginia.
Note: Copies of National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America will be available for only $10.00 per copy. That is the lowest prioce you will find anywhere, by far.
In addition, we will announce the winner of the Benjamin Franklin Selfie contest. That person will win a free copy of the book, PLUS a sterling silver dollar coin commemorating the birth of the U.S. Constitution!
