Tenure of Office: July 27, 1801-March 4, 1809 (as Secretary of the Navy); March 6, 1809-April 1, 1811 (as Secretary of State)
Propelled to national office by circumstance, Robert Smith's time in the Cabinet would be a tal…
Year(s) Discussed: 1810-1811
As President Madison struggled to fill various vacant positions in both the executive and judicial branches, the administration's enemies in Congress gathered their forces to take on an instit…
Tenure of Office: May 14, 1801 - February 8, 1814
After being forced out of his post as Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin spent the next few decades serving in numerous diplomatic postings abroad, writing essays on vari…
Tenure of Office: May 14, 1801 - February 8, 1814 A descendant of a leading Genevese family, Albert Gallatin made his way across the Atlantic and rose to prominence as a Democratic-Republican leader before being recruited by…
Year(s) Discussed: 1809-1811
As news of Macon's Bill No. 2 reached Europe, US Minister John Armstrong worked to take advantage of the increasingly precarious situation for the French in order to secure a deal with the gov…
Tenure of Office: May 2, 1801 - March 3, 1809
Picking up where we left off in Part One, join me and my special guest, Kenny Ryan from [Abridged] Presidential Histories, as we examine the remainder of James Madison's tenur…
How better to celebrate the upcoming holiday season than by getting together with some podcasting friends! I hope you'll take some time to check out this conversation that I had with Alycia from Civics & Coffee, Howard from …
Tenure of Office: May 2, 1801 - March 3, 1809
Regular listeners of the podcast may have heard of this guy a time or two thus far, but there's still so much more to know about the career of James Madison leading up to his …
Year(s) Discussed: 1810-1811
With the Spanish government on the Iberian peninsula in disarray, people in their colonial holdings in the Americas had to figure out what to do in the meantime. Some decided to stay the cours…
Tenure of Office: March 5, 1801 - March 3, 1805
For every figure in American history who is in the spotlight, there is someone who is behind the scenes making it happen. For Thomas Jefferson, one of those folks was Levi L…
Year(s) Discussed: c. 1764-1810
In the latter decades of the 18th and the first decade of the 19th century, native peoples in the old Northwest found themselves under threat from a westward push from Europeans wishing to …
Year(s) Discussed: 1809-1810
In the wake of the failed negotiations with British Minister to the US Francis James Jackson, the Madison administration and Congress had to determine next steps to address the tensions with b…
Tenure of Office: March 5, 1801 - March 4, 1809
Revolutionary War veteran, US Representative, Secretary of War, War of 1812 General, US Minister to Portugal - with that accumulation of offices, one would imagine that Henr…
Year(s) Discussed: 1795-1810
For fifteen years, one controversy popped up time and again to disrupt the public arena - the Yazoo Land Controversy. From newspaper essays to debates in Congress, this issue involved some of …
Year(s) Discussed: 1808-1810
Despite achieving a victory in the War of the Fifth Coalition, French Emperor Napoleon's hold on control over the European continent was looking increasingly shaky. This would make the recepti…
Year(s) Discussed: 1755-1835
As a follow-up episode focused more on John Marshall's lengthy tenure as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, I am joined by Ben Lovelace and Matthew Nichol of the John Marshall House for a dis…
Tenure of Office: June 13, 1800 - March 4, 1801
John Marshall is a name much better known for where his career led him after serving in the administration of John Adams, but there was still much to discuss with my special…
Year(s) Discussed: 1817-1858
James and Dolley Madison left Washington, DC in 1817 anticipating a peaceful retirement in Montpelier. Little did they know what life had in store for them or that Dolley would end up returnin…
Year(s) Discussed: 1768-1849
We continue our examination of the life and legacy of Dolley Madison with a discussion with Hilarie Hicks, Senior Research Historian at James Madison's Montpelier. In this episode, we talk abo…
Year(s) Discussed: 1768-1809
Born in a Southern log cabin, the woman who would go on to be the center of social life in the nation's capital developed her skills of charm and entertainment through formative years filled w…
Tenure of Office: June 12, 1800 - March 4, 1801 (as Secretary of War); January 1, 1801 - May 13, 1801 (as Secretary of the Treasury)
Samuel Dexter may have come into the Cabinet towards the end of John Adams's tenure as p…
Content Note: This episode mentions the topic of suicide.
Year(s) Discussed: 1807-1810
The Madison administration experienced numerous setbacks and embarrassments in the latter part of 1809. The President's private sec…
Year(s) Discussed: 1812-2016
We often examine the lives and legacies of those select few who win the US presidential elections every four years, but what about their opponents? What might we learn from their unsuccessful …
Tenure of Office: June 18, 1798 - March 31, 1801
A merchant and land speculator by trade, Benjamin Stoddert's path to becoming the first Secretary of the Navy was an unconventional one. However, did this unique background…
