The Home Front Archives - The Founding Project

Abigail, The First Feminist

April 14, 2024 Clay Blanche 0

Abigail Adams – First Lady and First Feminist Abigail was born Abigail Smith in Weymouth, Ma on Nov. 11, 1744 to Elizabeth Quincy Smith and William Smith. Young Abigail Smith was romantic, energetic and intelligent, at the same time shy and very determined, a mix that seemed to always lead to her being in trouble and causing mischief. Young Abigail She was educated at home, only young men were given formal training but, she overcame this minor setback by the use of her maternal grandfather’s extensive library. Miss Smith excelled in academics with a preference for math, philosophy, and government. With no formal education, she was very self-conscious about her inability to spell and punctuate […]

The Revolutionary Love Story: The Adams Family

February 14, 2024 Maggie Dine 0

Love, Freedom and a Revolution: The Story of John and Abigail Once upon a time, a boy met a girl. Their love story unfolded amidst the backdrop of a revolution and the founding of a new nation… They met when Abigail was only 15 years old and John was a young man (reports vary as to whether he was 23 or 24) and neither was at all impressed with the other. Abigail was a lithe girl, when society only found women of more weight to be attractive, and John was noted to be a bit round in the middle and already showed the promise of baldness. John noted in a diary that he didn’t particularly […]

The Edenton Tea Rebellion

August 13, 2023 Margo Louis 0

The Edenton Tea Rebellion boldly railed against the King of England and made all of the Western world gasp. But, too few know about this courageous act or its impact. The Boston Tea Party is far more reported, but it wasn’t the only act of brazen pushback against the King of England. The Edenton Tea Rebellion had significant impact in America and England. Historically, it also marked the first political activism undertaken by American women. It demonstrated the power women had, even in the 1770’s, and was a courageous act of treason against the Crown. How It Began The American Revolution came about after years of heavy-handed pressure from the King of England. America’s […]

Sergeant Major Fleetwood, Civil War Hero

July 21, 2023 Peter Crowell Anderson 0

The battlefield recount of Christian Fleetwood and his heroic actions which led to his Medal of Honor. For perspective, history notes 180,000 black men fought for their freedom in the Civil War. Of those 180,000, roughly 40,000 gave their lives. And, among them, there were 25 who received the Medal of Honor. Twenty-five Black Men Received the Medal of Honor During the Civil War, Fleetwood is One of Those 25 Christian Abraham Fleetwood is one of those men and this is his story… Christian Abraham Fleetwood was born July 21, 1840 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Charles and Anna Marie Fleetwood, both free persons of color. He received an excellent early education thanks to the efforts of a […]

The Mayflower Compact

June 17, 2023 Margo Louis 0

The Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of Plymouth Colony Following several brutal months at sea, the area now known as Cape Cod was finally seen on the horizon by those aboard the ship, the Mayflower, which embarked on September 16, 1620. Most, who arrived on Plymouth Rock, were sick from intense sea sickness or other illnesses. Their original destination was intended to be Northern Virginia and the Hudson River, which is New York, today. After months of battling storms, high winds and horrible waves, the 102 people on board didn’t care they had missed their destination by many miles. “True Pilgrims” The voyagers included “True Pilgrims” (religious separatists fleeing religious persecution by the Church […]

The Responsibility of Freedom

June 16, 2023 Tony Wyman 0

Responsibility: Freedoms carry with them the consequences of our choices “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.” – Bob Dylan (1941 – ), American Singer-Songwriter, Musician, and Poet Every 4th of July, Americans gather together to do what we do best: drink beer, eat too much and blow stuff up. We do this on this particular day to celebrate our nation’s birth, the day we declared our liberation from the rule of the distant King of England…and embraced responsibility. But, even though the 4th of July is the day we became a free nation, we don’t call that holiday “Freedom Day.” We, instead, call […]

Right to Property and Pursuit of Happiness: Work

May 22, 2023 Tony Wyman 0

The Happiness Factor of Work A Civilizing Force Maybe the greatest civilizing force in society today is that most of us have to get up five days a week, take a shower, put on something presentable, if not exactly fashionable, and go to a job where, for a minimum of eight hours, we are expected to be better people than we really are in exchange for a paycheck and a dose of self-respect…or we work. We all complain, of course, about having to go to work, about the cruelly inverse nature of the ratio of weekdays to weekends, about racing rats and climbing over bodies to get to the top of the corporate heap, […]

Articles of Confederation, Part 2: Confederacy Lessons Learned

May 1, 2023 Shannon D. Hanson 0

The Articles of Confederation, Part 2 The Articles of Confederation formed the first government of America, but it did not last long. The idea of a weak central government and strong state governments appealed to colonists who had come to fear any type of strong central government. Their prior experiences with England warranted this. A confederacy appealed to the colonists, because of that fear. In Shannon D. Hanson’s first article about the Articles of Confederation, he explained the basics about that document. His follow-up article explains the difficulties that came with having a central government that was too weak. Links to Hanson’s first article about the Articles of Confederation and also the full text of […]

Ben Never Said It ~ Beer and Our Founders

April 16, 2023 Maggie Dine 2

Beer and Benjamin Franklin and Our Founders No, he did NOT say it. Ben Franklin never said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” What Ben Actually Said What Ben did say was in a letter to his wife, where he marveled of the gifts from God and specifically noted that the rain falls on the earth to water the grape plant, which is then turned to a lovely fruit that becomes wine, adding that this must be proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Yes, They Did But, that does not mean that Ben didn’t have his own love of beer. In fact, Ben […]

The Originally Proposed Bill of Rights

March 21, 2023 thefpAdmin 0

Bill of Rights: The Original Proposed Transcript and the Original Final Ratified Document The transcription included here is the recorded original of the Joint Resolution of Congress PROPOSING the Bill of Rights. These proposed amendments and the final accepted and ratified Bill of Rights document is on permanent display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. The punctuation and spelling for both is the same as the original documents. History: On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution. The 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress proposed the amendments now on display in the Rotunda in the National Archives Museum. Ten of the proposed 12 amendments were […]