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Embarking on the Dissertation Process: An Intellectual History of the American Right to Keep and Bear Arms

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           Embarking on the journey to earn a PhD. Includes the daunting capstone requirement to complete the dissertation process. One of the first requirement of this process is to select a suitable topic that will not only satisfy ones personal interests in order to keep one engaged, but which will contribute to filling a gap in the historiography , or at least being able to explain its existence. My chosen topic for the pursuit of this goal revolves around the research, writing, and defense of an intellectual history of the American right to keep and bear arms as embodied and enumerated in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States. While the idea of a uniquely American interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms is represented by the Second Amendment, it can also be seen in other period writings from the colonial period through the early republic. The foundational research questions supporting this endeavor are: what did the founding
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Economic Theories of the Great Depression

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      On September 30th, 1929, the Dow Jones industrial average reached a historic high of 381. Just shy of two months later, October 24th would become known as Black Thursday during which over 13 million shares would be exchanged but most losses would be recovered by the end of the day. The following Tuesday would earn the appellation “Black Tuesday" as the average dropped from 261 to 230. This initiated what came to be known as the Great Depression and there are many theories and models covering both the factors that led to it, contributed to its international nature and led to its unusual persistence.      Most state that there is a lack of sufficient data to fully account for all relevant factors resulting in a large variety of models. Some, like Ben S. Bernanke in his articles “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach,” and “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression” take a very technical approach to expla
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John Moses Browning, Economic Influencer.

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     When John Moses Browning died November 26, 1926 at the Fabrique Nationale plant in Liège, Belgium attended to by the Company physician and his son, Val, it is arguable that he had been the most successful firearms designer in history and certainly during the first quarter of the twentieth-century. John had traveled to Belgium with his wife Rachel in the Autumn of 1926 to work on his Superposed Shotgun design, having been to Liège on numerous occasions but it was Rachel’s first time accompanying her husband. She would return to the United States with his remains which had had lain in state at the FN Boardroom on December 7th and he would be laid to rest on December 17th in Ogden Utah but having set the stage, let us turn to the beginning.      John Moses Browning was born January 23rd, 1855 in Ogden, Utah to Mormon parents Jonathan and Elizabeth Browning. Jonathan Browning was originally from Tennessee but had moved to Nauvoo, Illinois and opened a successful gun-repair shop. It wa
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Postbellum American Entrepreneurs and the Settling of the American West.

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    I was born in the 1960s in Dekalb, IL. One may wonder what connection my birth would have with postbellum American entrepreneurs, but being born and spending portions of my youth in Dekalb, during that period, one learned two important facts about Dekalb. Dekalb is known for two things, the foremost being corn, and the second being an invention in 1873 by the man pictured above, Joseph Glidden. The portrait of Joseph Glidden was downloaded from the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian and was taken in 1858 by an unknown artist, the details of which can be found here.: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.98.88    This blog is not simply about Joseph Glidden however, but rather how the work in one year, 1873, of entrepreneurs from two distinctly different endeavors and how their combined ingenuity changed the American West. The first of these was of course Joseph Glidden, who designed two strand barbed wire, frequently referred to as the first modern barbed wire and applied for
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Isaac Wolfe Bernheim and the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest

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       If you drive around the I-65 Corridor from the Ohio River South to at least the Cave City area of Kentucky, you are likely to notice numerous yard signs decrying the need to “SAVE BERNHEIM.” The “Bernheim” in question is more properly known as the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest which is made up of over 16,000 acres of land, in excess of three million trees, contains a 600-acre arboretum and is home to over 2,100 wildlife species. The save Bernheim slogan refers to an effort to protect the forest and its waterways from a proposed Louisville Gas and Electric natural gas pipeline that would break the conservation easement and cut through the Cedar Creek Wildlife Corridor.       Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest contains an area known as Guerilla Hollow, a location which served as a base of operations for Magruder's Confederate Guerrilla Command during the Civil War. Magruder had served at the Battle of Fort Donelson and was captured there by the Union forces led by
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Christian Character of the American Revolution: John Witherspoon

It is an undeniable fact that to view America as a “Christian Country" or refer to a “Christian founding" will stir all manner of denouncements and frequently result in great scorn heaped upon the author. These critics often cite the First Amendment protections from the Congressional establishment of a State religion, or Thomas Jefferson's reference to a “separation of Church and State.” It is, however, equally undeniable that there was a Christian “character" to the American Revolution, and this, largely Protestant on the part of the Colonists. Yes, there were Catholic colonists and enclaves, and the French who assisted the rebellion undoubtedly had a large contingent of Catholics as well, but the Colonies themselves were largely Protestant and frequently voiced a distrust of those they considered “papists.” One of the preeminent ministers in America and President of the College of New-Jersey (modern day Princeton) at the outbreak of hostilities between the Crown an
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