Bruce Ragsdale
Author
Bruce Ragsdale is the author of Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery, which won the George Washington Prize in 2022. He was a fellow at the Washington Library and the International Center for Jefferson Studies, and he was Mount Vernon’s inaugural fellow with the Georgian Papers Programme. Ragsdale formerly served as the director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
7
June 24, 2024
Resistance and Freedom
Ona Maria Judge was twenty years old when the young enslaved woman walked out the doors of the Presidential mansion and never returned. Judge's courageous act of self-emancipation launched a national search and tested Washington's commitment to gradual abolition on the national stage. In this episode of Inventing the Presidency, Dr. Bruce Ragsdale and Ramin Ganeshram discuss abolition, slavery, and the remarkable stories of Ona Judge and Hercules Posey.
1
March 11, 2024
The Making of a President
In the early days of June, 1787, in the thick of the Constitutional Convention, a debate unfolded that would test the fate of the young American nation. Four years after the end of the American Revolution, the United States still had no functioning Executive branch. The Convention sought a solution that would eventually create one of the most hallowed institutions of the United States government: the presidency. In this episode, join Rick Atkinson, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, Dr. Bruce Ragsdale, Dr. Patrick Spero, and Dr. Peter Kastor to explore the foundations of the American presidency and the first presidential election.
Guests: Tom Plott , Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky , Rick Atkinson , Patrick Spero , Bruce Ragsdale , Peter Kastor , Anne Fertig, PhD , Curt Dahl