Jimmy Callahan on the Man Your History Class Is Missing

In this episode, our guest (an AP U.S. History teacher) and our host (an AP Government teacher) delve into the worthy American most likely missing from your U.S. history or government class.
Orestes Brownson was a nineteenth-century political thinker who wrote about the American project through his unique lens as a post-Civil War American-Catholic. He was well known in his time but is often only featured in the footnotes for the Election of 1840, the Transcendental Movement, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Brownson’s essays, though, belong in the classroom. They seek to answer with optimism and insightful reflection: what is this country all about? For what did our sons die in this great Civil War?
Chapters:
4:20 Why read Brownson?
10:11 A religious and political wanderer
14:01 Arrives at the Catholic Church
17:00 Magnus opus: The American Republic
21:57 “Territorial democracy”
27:44 History as human experience
28:51 Territorial democracy and American Union
32:31 Missteps of democracy
36:54 Brownson’s vision: “Freedom of each with advantage to the other”
37:41 Yet history repeats itself
41:47 America’s role in the story of history
44:55 “Unwritten constitution”
49:36 The task of the modern teacher
54:24 One’s development of ideas over time