American Political History

The full story of this country, told through the people who lived it. From the soldier in the mud to the statesman at the table. Chronological, self-contained seasons, built on the primary sources. New episodes Tuesdays and Thursday.

American Political History is a history podcast hosted by Jacob Edwards-King, with 153 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Jacob Edwards-King hosts American Political History, a history show with 153 episodes published.

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  Episode #5

  The Grand Convention - One Vote

  Oct 6, 202635 minS16

  On June 11th, 1787, Roger Sherman proposed the settlement — population in the House, one vote per state in the Senate — and the Constitutional Convention voted it down without a debate. This is the story of the 5 weeks it cost to walk back: Luther Martin’s 2-day endurance speech; Benjamin Franklin, 81 and unchurched, asking a deadlocked room why it had never once prayed — and the convention adjourning without a vote because it couldn’t afford a chaplain; Gunning Bedford telling the large states “I do not, gentlemen, trust you” and threatening a foreign ally; the July 2nd tie, 5–5–1, decided by an absent bachelor and a Connecticut-born Georgian’s lonely aye; Washington writing that he repented ever having agency in the business; and July 16th — 5 states to 4, Massachusetts divided against itself — when the equal vote of the states carried by the width of a single delegation. Then the large states caucus to plot their answer... and discover, in Madison’s own words, that they have nothing. The Senate was born out of accidents. It never came out. Send us Fan Mail

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  Episode #4

  The Grand Convention - I Will Never Confederate

  Oct 1, 202633 minS16

  In the second week of June 1787, the small states stopped losing votes politely. David Brearley proposed erasing every state boundary and redrawing America into 13 equal parts. William Paterson declared New Jersey would never confederate on proportional representation — “I would rather submit to a monarch, to a despot, than to such a fate” — and James Wilson answered that Pennsylvania would never confederate on anything else. This is the story of the counterstroke: the New Jersey Plan, 9 resolutions that stayed inside the congressional commission and quietly contained the seed of the supremacy clause. And it is the story of the most astonishing day of the summer — June 18th, when Alexander Hamilton, outvoted by his own delegation and silent for 3 weeks, held the floor for 6 hours to propose a senate for life, an executive for life, and the British constitution as “the best model the world ever produced”... and sat down to total silence. Praised by everybody, supported by none. Then Madison rises, takes the New Jersey Plan apart disease by disease, and names the rest of the summer: the great difficulty lies in representation. Send us Fan Mail

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  Episode #3

  The Grand Convention - Merely Federal

  Sep 29, 202630 minS16

  On May 29th, 1787, Edmund Randolph — 33 years old, governor of Virginia, owner of the finest voice in the room — rose to open the main business of the Federal Convention, and 3 notebooks took him down. Madison recorded a statesman’s autopsy of the Confederation and an exhortation not to let the moment pass. Doctor McHenry caught the raw material Madison left out: “Are we not on the eve of war?” and the maxim that America’s chief danger arose from “the democratic parts of our constitutions.” And Robert Yates, Governor Clinton’s watchdog, heard a confession — “a strong consolidated union, in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated.” This is the story of the 2 days that set the summer’s course: the polite resolution to “correct and enlarge” the Articles, withdrawn by its own mover and replaced with the doctrine that a union “merely federal” will not do; Gerry’s warning that a convention with this power could annihilate the Confederation; Gouverneur Morris’s answer — a supreme government now, or a despot in twenty years, “for come he must”; the vote, 6 states to 1. And before the day ends, tiny Delaware threatens to walk. Then the first great question of design: who elects the people’s house — Sherman wanting the people to have as little to do as may be, Gerry blaming the excess of democracy, and Mason and Wilson answering with the grand depository and the federal pyramid on the broadest possible base. Send us Fan Mail

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  Episode #2

  The Grand Convention - An Assembly of Demigods

  Sep 24, 202630 minS16

  4 prisoners from the Walnut Street jail carried Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention in a sedan chair — the oldest delegate, 81, riding above the cobblestones to sit with the youngest, a 26-year-old former army captain. Jefferson, reading the delegate list in Paris, called them “an assembly of demigods.” William Pierce of Georgia, sitting among them, wrote down what they actually looked like — and his private sketches of every man in the room are the heart of this episode: Madison, whose greatness “every Person seems to acknowledge”; Hamilton, brilliant and vain, caged by the two colleagues sent to outvote him; Wilson, who argued by force of reasoning; Sherman the shoemaker-turned-judge who “seldom fails”; the silent Robert Morris; and a young Charles Pinckney lying about his age. It is also the story of who wasn’t there — Jefferson and Adams an ocean away, and Patrick Henry, refusing his seat because, as Virginians told it, he “smelt a rat.” Meet the demigods... as their own colleague saw them. Send us Fan Mail

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  Episode #1

  The Grand Convention - Eleven Days Early

  Sep 22, 202628 minS16

  James Madison stepped off the New York stage on May 3rd, 1787 — 11 days before the Federal Convention was scheduled to open, and 22 days before it actually could. This is the story of those waiting weeks and the first days of business: the muddy roads that held the delegates back, the Virginia delegation caucusing every afternoon to shape a plan that would speak first, General Washington’s escort into the city, and his apology, from the president’s chair, for his own inexperience. It is also the story of the rules the textbooks skip. Why Rufus King and George Mason demanded that no man’s vote be recorded by name. Why any settled question could be reopened. And why the most argumentative men in America agreed that nothing spoken in that room would reach the outside world — a decision Jefferson called “abominable” from Paris, Madison called prudent, and General Washington enforced with a dropped paper, a bow, and a silence no one ever broke. Before a single idea was debated, they built the room that made the arguing possible. Send us Fan Mail

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