By Nancy Spannaus Jan. 4, 2020—Many authors of American history have acknowledged the role of Swiss lawyer-philosopher Emer de Vattel (1714-1767) in the deliberations surrounding the establishment of the U.S. Constitutional system. Vattel’s Law of Nations, published in French in 1758, arrived in English translation in the American colonies during […]
Alexander Hamilton’s Public Administration Richard T. Green University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa 2019, 258 pp. A Review by Nancy Spannaus Sept. 13, 2019—The title of Richard Green’s book Alexander Hamilton’s Public Administration, while accurate, by no means captures the critical content of this excellent book. For, unlike many other […]
By Nancy Spannaus June 19, 2019—The seminal role of Mathew Carey (1760-1839) in promoting and advancing the American System of political economy is a long and important story, mostly obscured in the United States. In this post, I concentrate on re-introducing him, with emphasis on one crucial aspect which is […]
By Nancy Spannaus Oct. 19, 2018—Today we patriots of the United States properly celebrate the decisive victory of American forces over the British at Yorktown, a victory which “turned the world upside” with the British surrender on Oct. 19, 1781. Although the war continued for another year and a half, […]
By Nancy Spannaus April 5, 2021—I was very happy to see the recent article by Oren Cass of the American Compass, entitled “We’re Just Speculating Here…, The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment.” In a lengthy footnoted piece, replete with informative graphics, Cass documents the ways […]
By Nancy Spannaus March 22, 2021—Over the last two days, two prominent advocates for Alexander Hamilton have come forward to defend Hamilton’s legacy as a visionary statesman, including against the charges that he was an “enslaver.” These important initiatives came from Douglas Hamilton, Hamilton’s fifth-great-grandson, who directly took on the […]
Why Did American Slavery Persist?
By Nancy Spannaus January 10, 2021—In a Zoom presentation to a discussion group on Sunday Jan. 3, I began to tackle the question of why, despite enormous activity in favor of abolition in the early period of our Republic, the institution of slavery persisted until the Civil War. My hour-long […]