“When the Declaration of Independence was News” focuses on the nine months between May 1776 and January 1777 when the Continental Congress’ Declaration of Independence was news. Proclaiming independence to the world was a messy and unpredictable process that has been overlooked in the historiography of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution more broadly. Once the Declaration was printed, the Continental Congress had little control over what people did with it or thought of it. The Declaration was celebrated, but the text was also translated, excerpted, and critiqued in ways that undermined the sovereignty of the United States. As news, the Declaration of Independence was obscured by and combined with other pieces of information and misinformation. The founding of the United States looks different when we consider the timing of the Declaration, as well as the time it took for the Declaration to circulate around the Atlantic. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 set up the local and international expectations for a declaration of independence from Great Britain by focusing on two resolutions dated May 15, 1776: one passed by the Continental Congress, recommending the establishment of new governments in every colony, the other passed by the Virginia Convention, instructing Virginia’s delegates in the Congress to declare independence. Richard Henry Lee formally presented these new instructions on June 7, and after a few days of debate, the Congress postponed a vote on independence for three weeks. Meanwhile, the news of the May 15 Resolution reached Europe, where it was treated as a declaration of independence. Chapter 4 examines the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Chapter 5 focuses on the broadsides printed by John Dunlap and the reception of the news in and around Philadelphia. Chapters 6 and 7 contrast the celebration of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Army in Manhattan with the disdainful reaction by the British forces assembling on Staten Island. Vice-Admiral Richard Howe, one of the King’s Commissioners for Restoring Peace, issued his own declaration which influenced the Congress’ decision to create a parchment copy of the Declaration for the delegates to sign. Chapter 8 focuses on Massachusetts, where the Declaration arrived in the middle of a window for legal smallpox inoculation in Boston and a treaty negotiation with Mi’kmaq and Maliseet representatives across the river in Watertown. Chapter 9 highlights the people who refused to read the Declaration of Independence publicly, including ministers and county sheriffs. Chapter 10 examines copies of the Declaration that were intercepted by British officials. Chapter 11 reveals how London printers manipulated the Declaration by self-censoring and excerpting the text and printing it alongside other pieces of news. Chapter 12 shows that European newspapers copied the London newspapers, to the dismay of Silas Deane, the Continental Congress’ agent in Paris. The Conclusion returns to the Continental Congress in January 1777, when they ordered a broadside of the Declaration with the names of the fifty-five men who had signed the parchment copy by that time. These broadsides marked the end of the period of time when the Declaration of Independence was news.

"Influencing Empire" examines the period of imperial crisis and community disruption which followed the passage of the Stamp Act by Parliament in 1765 to repeal in 1766. Amid fears of a rising national debt, the revenue measure imposed a small tax in the twenty-six British American colonies to defray the expense of postwar military installations in the mainland interior. In response, crowds violently threatened royal officials and their property prompting resignations and the removal of tax documents into protective custody. With the stamped papers removed from circulation by the legislated collection date, the protests largely prevented the payment of the tax. Without stamped documents the courts and customs houses could not legally operate, preventing critical business of the British Empire. This dissertation traces how and why colonists from Nova Scotia to St. Kitts engaged in a series of unprecedented street protests, examining the process of imperial coalition-building. To achieve their goal of repeal, colonists recognized the importance of convincing imperial powerbrokers to act. The design of protests and strategies of dissent appropriated British cultural traditions, contemporary politics, and economic pressure points. Described by past historians as the "prologue to Revolution" and "the first act on the road to independence," this dissertation explores the imperial political and cultural contexts, restores the diverse choices and actions of individuals and communities, and emphasizes contingency to understanding the "perplexing situation" following the Stamp Act. At the forefront of this effort were the activities of British subjects far beyond the thirteen mainland colonies. This dissertation refocuses our understanding of the Stamp Act crisis by restoring the imperial dimensions of the repeal efforts uniting historiography of crowd studies with scholarship on the Caribbean, the British Empire, the American Revolution and the African Diaspora. Countering the tendency to write towards American independence, this study explores contemporaneous sources to demonstrate the rapidly shifting strategies of imperial influence, as well as the variety of political and economic arguments emerging during this brief period. Broadening the study of protest to an imperial scale embeds the emergence of crowd action amid a broader campaign of influence involving communities in the West Indies, England, Scotland, and Ireland as well as the mainland colonies. Far from a break with empire, this dissertation demonstrates the diversity of opinions and experiences both within a crowd and across the British Empire suggesting new avenues for understanding colonial protest strategies and the contours of the subsequent revolutionary coalition. Protest was exceptional and controversial. Critically, the dissertation argues that protest cannot be understood without closely examining the actions and choices of the majority of the population in colonial ports. Free and enslaved people of color, dockside laborers, and itinerant sailors inhabited these port communities dramatically influencing and shaping imperial politics. This dissertation demonstrates how these populations participated in this moment of community disruption, shaping strategies of dissent and influence. Their presence on the streets occurred in a variety of ways both supporting and opposing street protest. The surviving evidence suggests how their actions were manipulated as part of an imperial debate on protest which reveal imperial discourses on class and race. The dissertation argues that these early actions on the streets in the colonial period demonstrate a long-term struggle to define the British body politic. At no point was repeal assured, and contingency plays a central role in this dissertation. This dissertation demonstrates how rapidly shifting political coalitions within England, pressure from colonial agents and interests, as well as members of the crowd all played central roles in the repeal effort. A sympathetic print media spread supportive accounts of crowd action, while royal officials and stamp officers reported a competing narrative of violent mobs. This work overlays these traditional accounts of protest with shipping logs, marine intelligence, government documents, imperial correspondence, and private diaries to shed new light on core dynamics of the protest movement. Using a variety of contemporaneous evidence, the work demonstrates the flow of knowledge and rumor which shaped individual and community decision-making. Ultimately, this archival research prompts a fresh look at the "Stamp Act Crisis" as a critical test of the structure and functioning of the British Empire, revealing how a small tax enabled a period of panic, negotiation, innovation, and creativity.

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The Fixation Thesis and its biproduct originalism claim that constitutional meaning is fixed when each provision is framed and ratified. The current conservative Supreme Court’s “fixation fixation” dominates its rulings, recently overturning long held precedents enshrining women’s health care rights and affirmative action initiatives that help ensure diversity on college campuses. Do Americans want eighteenth-century reasoning to govern their bodies, their admissions policies, their lives? What was the mindset or intent of those “original” writers? How do those motivations affect today’s Court. And can originalism, which is now clearly ascendant as a constitutional interpretive framework, be used as an effective strategy for progress and change rather than only for a curtailing of rights? This master’s thesis portfolio examines these questions by exploring the historical figure John Marshall as America’s premier original constitutional expounder, and through historical evidence of “progressive originalism.” The first part is a digital “Scalar” book entitled, Reassessing John Marshall: The Great Chief Capitalist, which examines Marshall’s intent and mindset through his private property, recorded at the time of his death, and through a variety of his public opinions, rulings that codified into law the rules of empire and white possessive logics. The second part of this portfolio is a paper entitled, “Original Dissent: Forbidden Fruit for Living Constitutionalists.” It offers an analysis of “progressive originalism” throughout history showing how it has been deployed to turn institutionalized logic against self as a strategy for incremental progress.

“The Divine Act of Creation” contains two essays that focus on two different historical time periods, connected by items that serve as the lynchpin of each unique historical narrative. This portfolio argues that it is these items, regardless of who created them, that serve as the conduit for historical change. The material is as complex and impactful as the intellectual or cerebral. The first essay, ““Sunrise, Parabellum”: An Examination of Jesuit Relations with the Illinois Peoples and the Creation of the Gravier Dictionary, 1630-1710” examines the making of Gravier’s Illinois Dictionary. This dictionary, meant to bridge the language barrier between French Jesuits and the Illinois people during missionary activity, worked insofar as to only increase understanding of the other between the two groups. However, when this veil fell, both cultural groups began to understand that they could not co-exist, nor were the Jesuits successful in their missionary activities in Illinois country. The culmination of the creation of Gravier’s dictionary, then, was violence, leading to Gravier’s own dearth. A far cry from the evangelization that Gravier had hoped for when studying the Illinois peoples. The second essay, ““Un Jour Je Serai Près de Toi”: Girlhood Embroidery and the Early American Republic, 1800-1870” seeks to understand the process of creation that early American girls and women went through to create their stunning samplers and needlework that adorned many upper-class early American homes. This piece argues that there was much more to the creation of these pieces than what their male counterparts imposed on them and was instead a realm in which girls not only ensured that they would be desirable in society, but also remined uniquely themselves through small changes made to their pieces. This essay also serves to blend the lines between history and modernity, as the writing shifts between historical analysis of the pieces and personal writings, to embrace the legacy that both these girls and the author herself are a part of.

To center the intellectual and spiritual traditions of the Black Atlantic, specifically Black America, is to disrupt our perceptions surrounding Black environmental thought, or the lack thereof, in relation to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. While historians have been re-examining and reimagining the movement of enslaved plants and people for decades, few historians have expanded their environmental lens beyond food crops to examine the deeper ecological implications surrounding their enslavement. The distinct, intimate identities and ecologies of enslaved people, who were also land stewards, herbalists, rootworkers, and gardeners, have not been critically examined by scholars and remain on the margins of many methodologies. My thesis attempts to challenge the existing frameworks that contextualize our, often fragmented, understanding of the continued and emerging environmental thoughts Black folks held about the land they lost, lived, and labored on in relation to their bondage and emancipatory actions during the era of slavery.