Lorri Glover

A handbook for teaching Washington's legacy, the American founding era, and responsible engagement in contemporary civic life Crafted by a diverse group of expert historians, museum professionals, and K–12 teachers, Learning Through George Washington is an engaging, multifaceted exploration of how to teach and learn about the American Revolutionary era. For more than twenty-five years, these educators have gathered at Mount Vernon to participate in dynamic dialogues about Washington's life, eighteenth-century America, and the challenges of teaching this complex history to everyone from the curious public to advanced college students. The essays, each shaped by personal expertise, tackle subjects ranging from interpreting primary sources to discussing controversial topics, such as American slavery and Native dispossession, with accuracy and respect. By emphasizing primary source–based inquiry, material culture, and effective pedagogical methods, this collection invites readers to explore Washington's legacy and its continued relevance today. Perfect for history enthusiasts, educators, and students, Learning Through George Washington not only deepens our historical understanding of the founding era but also provides valuable resources for further study, ensuring that Washington's call for the "general diffusion of knowledge" remains alive and well into the twenty-first century.

A handbook for teaching Washington's legacy, the American founding era, and responsible engagement in contemporary civic life Crafted by a diverse group of expert historians, museum professionals, and K–12 teachers, Learning Through George Washington is an engaging, multifaceted exploration of how to teach and learn about the American Revolutionary era. For more than twenty-five years, these educators have gathered at Mount Vernon to participate in dynamic dialogues about Washington's life, eighteenth-century America, and the challenges of teaching this complex history to everyone from the curious public to advanced college students. The essays, each shaped by personal expertise, tackle subjects ranging from interpreting primary sources to discussing controversial topics, such as American slavery and Native dispossession, with accuracy and respect. By emphasizing primary source–based inquiry, material culture, and effective pedagogical methods, this collection invites readers to explore Washington's legacy and its continued relevance today. Perfect for history enthusiasts, educators, and students, Learning Through George Washington not only deepens our historical understanding of the founding era but also provides valuable resources for further study, ensuring that Washington's call for the "general diffusion of knowledge" remains alive and well into the twenty-first century.

The award-winning biography of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, an innovative, highly regarded, and successful woman plantation owner during the Revolutionary era “Glover not only recovers the life of a remarkable eighteenth-century woman, she also issues a challenge to the gendered narrative of the Age of Revolution. Eliza Lucas Pinckney would undoubtedly approve!”—Carol Berkin, author of Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence Winner of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic's James Bradford Biography Prize and the South Carolina Historical Society's George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722–1793) reshaped the colonial South Carolina economy with her innovations in indigo production and became one of the wealthiest and most respected women in a world dominated by men. Born on the Caribbean island of Antigua, she spent her youth in England before settling in the American South and enriching herself through the successful management of plantations dependent on enslaved laborers. Tracing her extraordinary journey and drawing on the vast written records she left behind—including family and business letters, spiritual musings, elaborate recipes, macabre medical treatments, and astute observations about her world and herself—this engaging biography offers a rare woman’s first-person perspective into the tumultuous years leading up to and through the Revolutionary War and unsettles many common assumptions regarding the place and power of women in the eighteenth century.

In May 1788, the roads into Richmond overflowed with horses and stagecoaches. From every county, specially elected representatives made their way to the capital city for the Virginia Ratification Convention. Together, these delegates-zealous advocates selected by Virginia's deadlocked citizens-would decide to accept or reject the highly controversial United States Constitution, thus determining the fate of the American Republic. The rest of the country kept an anxious vigil, keenly aware that without the endorsement of Virginia-its largest and most populous state-the Constitution was doomed. In The Fate of the Revolution, Lorri Glover explains why Virginia's wrangling over ratification led to such heated political debate. Beginning in 1787, when they first learned about the radical new government design, Virginians had argued about the proposed Constitution's meaning and merits. The convention delegates, who numbered among the most respected and experienced patriots in Revolutionary America, were roughly split in their opinions. Patrick Henry, for example, the greatest orator of the age, opposed James Madison, the intellectual force behind the Constitution. The two sides were so evenly matched that in the last days of the convention, the savviest political observers still could not confidently predict the outcome. Mining an incredible wealth of sources, including letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and transcripts, Glover brings these remarkable political discussions to life. She raises the provocative, momentous constitutional questions that consumed Virginians, echoed across American history, and still resonate today. This engaging book harnesses the uncertainty and excitement of the Constitutional debates to show readers the clear departure the Constitution marked, the powerful reasons people had to view it warily, and the persuasive claims that Madison and his allies finally made with success.

In May 1788, the roads into Richmond overflowed with horses and stagecoaches. From every county, specially elected representatives made their way to the capital city for the Virginia Ratification Convention. Together, these delegates-zealous advocates selected by Virginia's deadlocked citizens-would decide to accept or reject the highly controversial United States Constitution, thus determining the fate of the American Republic. The rest of the country kept an anxious vigil, keenly aware that without the endorsement of Virginia-its largest and most populous state-the Constitution was doomed. In The Fate of the Revolution, Lorri Glover explains why Virginia's wrangling over ratification led to such heated political debate. Beginning in 1787, when they first learned about the radical new government design, Virginians had argued about the proposed Constitution's meaning and merits. The convention delegates, who numbered among the most respected and experienced patriots in Revolutionary America, were roughly split in their opinions. Patrick Henry, for example, the greatest orator of the age, opposed James Madison, the intellectual force behind the Constitution. The two sides were so evenly matched that in the last days of the convention, the savviest political observers still could not confidently predict the outcome. Mining an incredible wealth of sources, including letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and transcripts, Glover brings these remarkable political discussions to life. She raises the provocative, momentous constitutional questions that consumed Virginians, echoed across American history, and still resonate today. This engaging book harnesses the uncertainty and excitement of the Constitutional debates to show readers the clear departure the Constitution marked, the powerful reasons people had to view it warily, and the persuasive claims that Madison and his allies finally made with success.

As the bold fathers of the American Revolution left behind their private lives to become public nation-builders, what happened to their families? Surprisingly, no previous book has ever explored how family life shaped the political careers of America’s great Founding Fathers—men like George Mason, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. In this original and intimate portrait, historian Lorri Glover brings to life the vexing, joyful, arduous, and sometimes tragic experiences of the architects of the American Republic who, while building a nation, were also raising families. The costs and consequences for the families of these Virginia leaders were great, Glover discovers: the Revolution remade family life no less than it reinvented political institutions. She describes the colonial households that nurtured future revolutionaries, follows the development of political and family values during the revolutionary years, and shines new light on the radically transformed world that was inherited by nineteenth-century descendants. Beautifully written and replete with fascinating detail, this groundbreaking book is the first to introduce us to the founders as fathers.

This primary source reader in the popular DISCOVERING series contains a six-part framework that guides you through the process of historical inquiry and explanation. The text emphasizes historical study as interpretation rather than memorization of data. Each chapter is organized within the same pedagogical framework: The Problem, Background, The Method, The Evidence, Questions to Consider, and Epilogue.

This primary source reader in the popular DISCOVERING series contains a six-part framework that guides you through the process of historical inquiry and explanation. The text emphasizes historical study as interpretation rather than memorization of data. Each chapter is organized within the same pedagogical framework: The Problem, Background, The Method, The Evidence, Questions to Consider, and Epilogue.

Between the generations of Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, the culture of white Southerners experienced significant changes, including the establishment of a normative male identity that exuded confidence, independence, and power. Southern Sons, the first work in masculinity studies to concentrate on the early South, explores how young men of the southern gentry came of age between the 1790s and the 1820s. Lorri Glover examines how standards for manhood came about, how young men experienced them in the early South, and how those values transformed many American sons into southern nationalists who ultimately would conspire to tear apart the republic they had been raised to lead. This was the first generation of boys raised to conceive of themselves as Americans, as well as the first cohort of self-defined southern men. They grew up believing that the fate of the American experiment in self-government depended on their ability to put away personal predispositions and perform prescribed roles. Because men faced demanding gender norms, boys had to pass exacting tests of manhood-in education, refinement, courting, careers, and slave mastery. Only then could they join the ranks of the elite and claim power in society. Revealing the complex interplay of nationalism and regionalism in the lives of southern men, Glover brings new insight to the question of what led the South toward sectionalism and civil war.

Between the generations of Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, the culture of white Southerners experienced significant changes, including the establishment of a normative male identity that exuded confidence, independence, and power. Southern Sons, the first work in masculinity studies to concentrate on the early South, explores how young men of the southern gentry came of age between the 1790s and the 1820s. Lorri Glover examines how standards for manhood came about, how young men experienced them in the early South, and how those values transformed many American sons into southern nationalists who ultimately would conspire to tear apart the republic they had been raised to lead. This was the first generation of boys raised to conceive of themselves as Americans, as well as the first cohort of self-defined southern men. They grew up believing that the fate of the American experiment in self-government depended on their ability to put away personal predispositions and perform prescribed roles. Because men faced demanding gender norms, boys had to pass exacting tests of manhood-in education, refinement, courting, careers, and slave mastery. Only then could they join the ranks of the elite and claim power in society. Revealing the complex interplay of nationalism and regionalism in the lives of southern men, Glover brings new insight to the question of what led the South toward sectionalism and civil war.