The first event in the series is a conversation with Joseph Ellis, a leading scholar of the history of the USA. He wrote American Sphinx, a biography of Thomas Jefferson, which won the National Book Award. He also appeared in the recent PBS documentary The American Revolution.
On Wednesday, January 28, Ellis will sit down for a free virtual lecture and conversation with University of Kentucky history professor Dr. Amy Murrell Taylor. The two of them will discuss the nation’s early history and how the ideas of liberty and natural rights became beacons - even when the United States itself fell short of ensuring them to all its people.
The Celebrating 1776 series is hosted by Dr. Anastasia Curwood. Curwood and Murrell Taylor offer a preview of the event and discuss why it's important to understand the often contradictory legacies of 1776.
Interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Clay Wallace, WUKY
We just finished celebrating Lexington’s 250th anniversary in 2025 and this year brings us another big one - we’ve got the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. Dr. Taylor, what makes that moment the one we honor as the USA’s beginning?
Dr. Amy Murrell Taylor, T. Marshall Hahn Jr. Professor
1776 is generally considered the birth of this nation. As with so many things, we like to celebrate these milestones. The nation has now persisted for 250 years, the great experiment that was started in 1776.
Look where we are today. It's a chance for Americans to stop and take stock of who we are and where we came from and to think about the founding principles of this nation and how we are living them today, and also to learn about this history that so many people know in a general sort of way - maybe a vague sort of way - but anniversaries like this get them asking new questions and wanting to know more.
An anniversary like this is a really wonderful opportunity for history educators to step in and provide some of that context, provide some of that history.
Clay
You use the word “experiment.” What made the founding of the United States experimental? What was new?
Amy
Well, new-ish.
The United States was being founded as a republic. They had just overthrown a monarchy, and so they're building, now, a constitutional republic - government by the people, for the people.
For the people living in this generation, that was new. Sure, there were ancient republics like Ancient Rome, but this was, at the time, a very bold, new experiment in governance.
Dr. Anastasia Curwood, Thomas D. Clark Chair in American History, Professor and Chair, Department of History
I think we as Americans - especially those folks who don't go around thinking about history all day, like those of us in the Department of History - I think that we don't always recognize how bold it was and how inspiring that moment was and to not just Americans, but around the world. It really made us a beacon of ideas, and it has informed our discussions about who we are as a nation for the past 250 years. It's a big birthday and that's a long time.
Clay
Dr. Curwood, when we talk about that solidification of big ideas - that people had had ideas about democracy and self-governance before, but they come to be in practice in a new way with the founding of the United States. Can you talk a bit about how this was a moment that was built upon ideas that came before it?
Anastasia
What you're asking about are these ideas of natural rights. It’s important to think about the American Revolution as being part of an age of revolutions. People in France and in Haiti were thinking about these natural rights that accrue to people, no matter who you are.
So, the United States was one of a few who founded a new nation on these ideas. We wrote the Declaration of Independence, but then we wrote a Constitution that enshrined these rights. The Preamble to the Constitution gives us a further clarification from the Declaration: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We are inspiring. We are leading the way. Other nations have come behind us and created these democracies.
Amy
In a sense, it’s not just an anniversary for the United States, as you’re saying, but an anniversary for the world. It’s going to be interesting to see how our commemoration reverberates even beyond the United States and what sort of larger global conversation starts to take place.
Clay
So, the University of Kentucky Department of History is bringing the scholar Joseph Ellis onto campus, where you, Dr. Taylor, will be holding a conversation with him. Tell us a little more about Dr. Ellis’ work.
Amy
We decided to launch this lecture series in 2026, and one of the first names that came to mind was Joseph Ellis. He is considered one of the deans of the study of the Revolution and of the founding generation. His work is incredibly smart and distinguished. He's written a Pulitzer Prize winning book, Founding Brothers, about the relationship among the founders and how that affected the founding of this nation. He wrote American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award, a biography of Thomas Jefferson. This is somebody who has immersed himself for decades in the study of this moment, so we couldn't think of anybody better to kick off our lecture series than Joseph Ellis.
On January 28th, we're going to talk with him, and I'm really looking forward to asking him about his perspective on what this anniversary means and what we should learn from it today.
His most current book is The Great Contradiction, and that is something we'll delve into a bit more. In this book, he focuses on the glaring tension of this moment, the one that many Americans are uncomfortable thinking and talking about, but it's there and it happened and we need to talk about it. And that is: how did this nation founded on liberty manage to not end slavery and continue to deprive so many Americans of their liberty? How did this happen?
Clay
So, we’re presented with this founding contradiction, which then continues to hold this tension. Where do we see that tension tried, and where do we see it resolve? Even if it hasn’t yet completely resolved?
Anastasia
One of the wonderful things about this founding era is that it does inspire so many in the new United States.
Americans inside the United States who see themselves reflected in the idea of natural rights, but who are not fully given access to those natural rights, begin to demand it. It actually comes from Americans themselves.
This is what is so exciting and capacious about the ideas of liberty. Yes, we have a few people claiming liberty and denying liberty to others, but humanity, the mass of Americans who do not see themselves included, say, "Wait a minute. We would like to be included also. In fact, we deserve to be included."
They start just enacting those rights. They claim citizenship. They claim these rights. Enslaved people never leave the question of those rights alone. Women never leave the question of those rights alone. Native people, indigenous folks who were here before Europeans, never leave the question of those rights alone. The pressure comes from inside the building. What's been so remarkable about this American experiment is how it has expanded, how it has been capacious in order to say, “Yes, that's right, liberty does belong to all Americans.”
Amy
These ideals were so powerful, they could not be fully constrained and limited by any laws or constitutions. We have taken them in directions they never imagined.
Clay
It’s remarkable to me that people who were living in a country that subjugated them and denied their natural rights - that they still saw in those documents something that spoke to them, something they could point to and say “No, this is for us, too.”
Anastasia
Absolutely.
Amy
There’s some great stories of this happening right after the Revolution,
A woman named Elizabeth Freeman, she was enslaved in Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Constitution is formed after the Revolution. It reflects many of the same principles that would be in the federal constitution, that were in the Declaration. She reads it and basically decides, “Well, this suggests that I’m free, the way it’s worded.”
So, she sues for her freedom and she wins. The Massachusetts courts basically say she’s right. The Constitution does see her as a free citizen, and this helps get the ball rolling to abolish slavery in Massachusetts.
Anastasia
Joseph Ellis’ work on Thomas Jefferson has reckoned with the contradiction of an enslaver providing a document that enslaved people can take and say, “Look, this applies to me.”
I think that is one of the most wonderful parts of his scholarship, that he can hold these contradictions. He gives us a way to think about them. We see these unintended consequences when Massachusetts and other Northern states, immediately in the aftermath of the Revolution, decide to abolish slavery.
Clay
All at once? As a direct reaction to the Declaration?
Amy
They do it in different ways, but they all, in their state Constitutions, abolish slavery. It’s all a reflection of this belief that slavery was inconsistent with founding ideals.
It does unleash this wave of abolishing slavery, but it’s a wave that ends and does not continue to flow. And, then, the story of what happens in the rest of those former-colonies now-states is a very different, very difficult story.
Clay
So, you have the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States upon these principles. And you have people within the United States - born into it, come into it, brought into it - who see this promise of rights from the inside and take it as their own. But you also mention a “global conversation"...?
Amy
The world was watching. France, especially, was watching, and the French Revolution would follow not too far afterwards, built on some of the same Republican ideals and thought as the United States.
Haiti, of course, connected to the French Revolution, is another great example where the enslaved people of Haiti would overthrow their colonizers and establish an independent republic there.
We do begin to see the momentum building throughout the rest of the world. Some of the American founders were traveling the world and talking with people in other places. While we might want to think that, at this time, the United States was living in its own bubble because they didn’t have today’s communications technology, but, in fact, ideas and people and actions are transcending boundaries and moving all around the world.
Clay
The kickoff event for the 1776 series is the Conversation with Joseph Ellis on January 28th. What’s coming up after that?
Anastasia
We have Patrick Spero coming to lecture from the American Philosophical Society. He’s actually written a new book on the Revolutionary era in Kentucky. We’ll be screening a selection of clips from the American Revolution film, recently broadcast on PBS. We are also offering courses. Our colleague, Dr. Mark Summers, is teaching a course on the American Revolution right now, and next semester he will be teaching on the early Republic era.
There’s something for everybody. All our events are open to the public, first-come, first-served.
This series came about because we in the Department of History looked at each other and said we want to make sure Americans have an opportunity to learn about this era - our students, and our surrounding community in Lexington and beyond. We have so much to offer. We have expertise, people who think about these things all the time, and we are here for you. We want you to be able to come and learn from us from whatever stage of life you’re in, and so we welcome everybody to come to these events.