Annual Program - Hamilton & Jefferson: Their Future & Our Past

Please note: Auditorium capacity is 250 and will be seated on a first come, first serve basis. Livestream overflow room will be available after the main auditorium is filled.

Join us for the ACHS Annual Program and the inaugural presentation in our VA250 Fighting for Freedom Program Series—commemorating 250 years since the Declaration of Independence by looking at its legacies and the many freedoms Americans have fought for since 1776.

Equally dedicated to the cause of American independence, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson envisioned the new nation’s future in radically different ways. Hamilton scholar Joanne Freeman and Peter Onuf, her Jeffersonian counterpart, will explore the life experiences and worldviews of these great rivals in order to illuminate the complex and contested national narrative that emerged from an era of regime change and revolutionary upheaval. Justifying the break with Britain, mobilizing patriots in the continental common cause, and constituting new republican governments for the states and for the nation posed daunting and unprecedented challenges.

Where, across generations and across a vast hinterland, would their epochal “experiment” in self-government take this self-declared American people? What were the limits—and costs—of their expansive aspirations? As Hamilton and Jefferson sought to answer these questions, they articulated distinctive versions of the unfolding American story and distinctive visions of America. The stories they told and the roles they played have in turn framed the way subsequent generations—responding to the existential crises of their own times—remember the nation’s past and envision its future.

This lively discussion of history and ideas will be moderated by Virginia Humanities Fellow and Faculty Director at the Summer Jefferson Symposium at UVA John Ragosta.

Light refreshments will be provided before the program, so join us at 5:00 p.m. for a reception!

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Host or Publisher Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society