Taxes shaped early Latter-day Saint history by enabling religious competition that framed the world in which Joseph Smith lived. For example, tax policy influenced the Second Great Awakening, exempted early preachers, and continues to shape how temples, tithing, and missionary work are treated under the law. In this interview, tax law scholar Samuel D. Brunson explores the intersection of finance, governance, and faith in Latter-day Saint history.
Thomas Jefferson was a Christian in the sense that he believed in Jesus as a great moral teacher, but not as the Son of God. He even created a “Jefferson Bible” in which he reconstructed the book without references to miracles and divinity. In this interview, biographer Thomas S. Kidd places Jefferson’s beliefs and actions in the context of the Founding Fathers and the Bible.
Perhaps no book influenced America’s Founding Fathers more than the Bible. But their use of the book didn’t always have religious ties like it did for the settlers of Plymouth Colony. For example, the Holy Bible was often referenced by leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin—men who didn’t believe in its Divine origins. In this interview, Daniel L. Dreisbach explains what the Bible meant to America’s founders.
Historian David D. Hall is a an expert on the Puritans, and the author of The Puritans: A Transatlantic History. The book is published through Princeton University Press, an academic publisher that has also released high-quality scholarship such as that found in Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth.
Michael D. Hattem is the author of ‘Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution‘ (Yale University Press, 2020).
Historian Lindsay Chervinsky is the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of An American Institution (Harvard University Press, 2020).
Historian Tony Williams has tried to do the impossible: Write a 200-page biography of Alexander Hamilton.
Historian John Turner has written about evangelicals, christology, and even the Latter-day Saint prophet Brigham Young. He turns his attention to early American concepts of liberty in They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (Yale University Press, 2020).
The Newburgh Conspiracy refers to the threat of a coup during the American Revolution. Continental Army soldiers hadn’t been paid in a long time and a disgruntled letter circulated in the camp at Newburgh. Tensions flared, and for a moment it looked like all was lost. Historian David Head explains what happens next and discusses his new book, A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution.
Jamestown holds a special place in American history, alongside settlements like Plymouth Colony. In the 1600s, the Virginia Company of London shipped 56 young women across the ocean to become the brides of American settlers. Were they adventurers, victims, or something in between?