America’s 250th: Experts available on Revolutionary War, Civil War and modern era

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America's 250th: Experts available on Revolutionary War, Civil War and modern era

'Americans have been fighting about the Revolution's meaning ever since the Revolution itself,' historian says

EVANSTON, Ill. - America's Semiquincentennial, the year-long commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, officially begins July 4. Historians from Northwestern University are available to speak with media on the history of the U.S. from the Revolutionary War to the modern era.

Journalists may request an interview by emailing the expert directly or by contacting Stephanie Kulke at [email protected] or [email protected].

Available historians:

Daniel Immerwahr is the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and an expert on U.S. foreign relations, global history and environmental history. His books include "How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States." He is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, which published his essay "The Shot Heard Round the World?" about the American Revolution. He can be reached at [email protected].

Professor Immerwahr on taking a global view of America's revolution:

"People from the United States have long assumed that their revolution was of monumental global importance. It was 'the most significant event in human history since the birth of Christ,' the documentarian Ken Burns has insisted. But recent historians have been less convinced of that. It no longer seems, as it did to U.S. historians at the time of the Bicentennial, that the American Revolution inspired the French one. We now tend to see the American Revolution as just one among many. That's a little deflating, but it might be a useful kind of deflating, helping people in the United States give up this notion that they're the main characters of world history."

Caitlin Fitz is an associate professor of history at Northwestern and an expert on early American history, U.S. relations with Latin America and Sports history. She can be reached at [email protected].

Professor Fitz on the Revolution's multitude of meanings:

"Americans have been fighting about the Revolution's meaning ever since the Revolution itself. After all, the Revolution is our national origin story; to define it is to define the United States. Did the revolutionary era prioritize liberty or equality? Freedom or slavery? Anticolonialism or neoimperialism? How far does the right to resistance extend? And how did the spirit of '76, embodied in the Declaration, differ from the spirit of 1787, embodied in the Constitution? Even today, the Revolution remains a proxy for contemporary debates about taxes, immigration, guns, federal power and the role of religion in public life. While I doubt Americans will ever agree on one interpretation, I hope we can use the 250th anniversary to grapple openly and honestly with the era's contradictions and complexity. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, the Revolution is large, and it contains multitudes."

Kate Masur is the John D. MacArthur Professor of History at Northwestern and an expert on the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the history of the "American paradox" of freedom and slavery. Her books include "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction," a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She can be reached at [email protected].

The "American paradox" is the contradiction between America's foundational claims to liberty and its deep, enduring history of slavery and racial inequality. Masur's book, "Until Justice Be Done," chronicles the decades long attempts by Black and white Americans to overturn the "Black laws" in the early days of the Republic that prevented Blacks from voting, accessing public education, serving on juries or even entering a town without registering.