The Long Eighteenth Century
Eliza Lucas Pinckney Gets the (Indigo) Blues
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) owned enslaved people, and it was her exploitation of their labor that made her achievements as an agricultural innovator possible. Eliza Lucas was born on Antigua, which was then part of the British Leeward Islands, where she grew up on one of…
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Molly Pitcher(s?)
In 1876, caught up in the patriotic excitement of the first centennial of the American Revolution, the people of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, raised a stone inscribed “Molly Pitcher” over the previously unmarked grave of a local resident, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley (ca. 1754–1832). In the years before her death, Hays claimed to have served at the…
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From the Archives: Running From Bondage: A Q & A with Dr. Karen Cook
As Juneteenth and America 250 intersect, I’m returning to a book and an interview that led me to think about the American Revolution from the perspective of enslaved women perspective. It changed some of the ways I thought about the freedom, slavery, and the formation of my country. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸. 🇺🇸. 🇺🇸 It is…
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