A few idealists claimed the American republic stood for the equal rights of all humankind. So did a few Revolutionary propagandists, among them the author of the Declaration of Independence.

The truth was otherwise. White men claimed the lion’s share of all that America offered, with little left over for the rest of humanity.

People of color fared the worst. Native Americans received nothing but broken pledges. The new nations promised only bondage to the vast majority of its black residents. By the time of the Revolution, slaves made up 20% of the colonial population. Jefferson and Washington each enslaved hundreds of Black people; even Franklin owned several servants. Nor did any of these great men “remember the ladies” when laying the nation’s foundations, as Abigail Adams famously urged her husband John to do.

But women and Black people knew America was very young and growing fast, a country of the future. From the beginning they claimed larger shares of American promises than their white male masters had ever dreamed of offering them.

This series of lectures will explore how the Revolutionary generation—Noah Webster’s generation—defined the purposes and prospects of their new nation. Noah will make occasional appearances; he played a considerable part in creating a distinctive national culture. But the talks won’t foreground him, nor will they bask in nostalgia for a simpler, more hopeful age. Studies of the past inevitably reflect the present; they can also illuminate paths into the future. While focusing on Revolutionary Americans’ thinking about the promise of the United States in its childhood, we will consider as well how much of their vision has survived, how much ought to be preserved, and why.