November 17 MRSEAH Meeting with Kinder Institute Chair Jay Sexton

“When one steps back to take the long and broad view of American history, a paradox immediately jumps out. On the one hand, the political system of the United States has been remarkably stable. American politics continue to operate under the world’s oldest written constitution, whose 250th birthday is within reach. The durability of the U.S. constitutional system is unrivalled…But if the U.S. constitutional framework and national project has had unparalleled stamina, American history has been marked by great volatility and change—the kinds of changes that merit an historical R-rating for “revolutionary…”

For the second Fall 2017 meeting of the Missouri Regional Seminar on Early American History, participants discussed the introduction and chapter on “Disunion” from Kinder Institute Chair Jay Sexton’s current project, A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History, forthcoming in 2018 from Basic Books. The MRSEAH meeting, for which Ohio University Associate Professor and Chair of Social Sciences Brian Schoen served as interlocutor, was held on November 17 at Cafe Napoli in Clayton, MO..