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Cassandra Good

@cgoodhistorian.bsky.social

Historian, writer, and teacher of early American gender, culture, & politics; Assoc. Prof; Public Historian; Author of FIRST FAMILY (Hanover Square) & FOUNDING FRIENDSHIPS(OUP) cassandragoodhistorian.com | same handle on insta & Mastodon

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Jay Rosen@jayrosen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Here's something I post from time to time. My answer to a reader who asked me: what could journalists do NOW to break with some of their more corrosive habits.

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Seth Rockman@sethrockman.bsky.social · 3w ago

Scholarly folks who have ever received federal funding: today is the deadline for public comment on proposed revisions that will decimate our national research capacity and replace expertise with political whim. Please consider throwing in your 2¢. See below for some useful links and encouragement.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 3w ago

Rescinding a prize - if indeed that is what happened - is a big deal and I think the discipline deserves an explanation. Especially at a moment when the integrity of humanistic scholarship is being unfairly & wrongly attacked & cases like Greenidge will be used as ammunition by the center-right. 🗃️

Noah Shusterman@ncshusterman.bsky.social · 3w ago

The AHA, AKA @historians.org, doesn't list the people who choose the winner of the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize. They awarded it to Greenidge, now they seem to have taken it away. Anyone - but especially historians - need to say why they did so. www.historians.org/award-grant/...

National Council on Public History@ncph.bsky.social · 4w ago

The National Council on Public History unequivocally rejects the findings of the White House's report on the National Museum of American History. Read the reasons why at ncph.org/news/ncph-st....

NCPH Statement in Response to White House “Saving America’s Story” Report | National Council on Public History

NCPH Statement in Response to the White House “Saving America’s Story” Report and in Support of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History Published July 9, 2026 The National Council on Publi...

ncph.org

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · last mo.

Today we celebrate the PDFing of "Declaration FINAL v3 USE THIS ONE - SIGNED.docx" (Jefferson's draft was heavily edited by the Committee, then again by Congress, and he was big mad about it.)

📂 Version 1.0 — June 20, 1776 File Name: Declaration_Draft_TJ_DO_NOT_EDIT.docx Author: t_jefferson_33 Commit Message: "Initial copy-paste from my Mason_VA_Rights_Notes.txt and VA_Constitution_V2.docx scratchpads. Confine your review to grammar and typos, and do not redline, only leave comments." Tracked Changes & Notes: Line 14: "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable..." Comment from t_jefferson_33: "Certified banger." 📂 Version 1.1 — June 24, 1776 File Name: Declaration_Draft_TJ_comments_JA_BF.docx Editors: b_franklin_GrittyOG and JA_redsoxfan (obo Committee, w/ Sherman and Livingston) Commit Message: "First pass by the Committee of Five. Modest style changes." Tracked Changes & Notes: 47 revisions (redlined), three full new paragraphs Deleted: "sacred & undeniable" * Inserted: "self-evident" Comment from b_franklin_GrittyOG: "250 years from now, people will think you wrote that banger. You’re welcome." 📂 Version 2.0 — June 28, 1776 File Name: Declaration_Committee_Review_FINAL.docx Author: t_jefferson_33 Commit Message: "Incorporated Ben and John's very minor edits of my excellent first draft into a clean copy. Ready for the Continental Congress to approve verbatim." 📂 Version 2.1 to 2.8 — July 2 – July 4, 1776 File Name: Declaration_CONGRESS_REVISED2_redline_NEW_v4_approved..docx Editors: Continental_Congress Group Chat (50+ active users) Commit Message: "Line-by-line review by committee. Light trimming, a mere 20% of the original text. Optimizing for colonial unity." Tracked Changes & Notes: ❌ CRITICAL DELETION: 300 word imprudent diatribe against KG III for transatlantic slave trade (“waging cruel war against human nature”). Comment from dunkin_delegate: “Jefferson wrote that? He always struck me as a smug hypocrite. #IYKYK” Comment from SC_delegation_delegate: "I thought we agreed this issue was off the table for now. It can be amicably settled later." ❌ DELETION: Large sections complaining about the ordinary British public being "deaf to the voice of justice." Comment from NY_delegation_hub: "Guys, let's keep the finger pointed strictly at King George. If we trash the British citizens, we ruin any chance of future trade partnerships or alliances. Keep it professional." ➕ INSERTION: Added "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world" and "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence" to the closing paragraph. Comment from Middlesex_Conservative: "Marketing requested more religious claptrap to ensure maximum buy-in from the zealots." System Notification: User t_jefferson_33 reacted 👎(39 instances). 📂 Version 3.0 (Production) — July 4, 1776 (Late Morning) File Name: Declaration_of_Independence_FINAL_v3_USE_THIS_ONE_SIGNED.docx Editors: john_hancock_big_font Commit Message: "Approved. Shipped to the printers. John Hancock didn't realize his zoom level was at 200% when he signed. Committee unable to find the one intern who can resize images, shipping anyway." System Notification: User t_jefferson_33 has left the chat. The draft of the Declaration was revised first by Adams and Franklin, and then by the full committee. A total of 47 alterations, including the insertion of three complete paragraphs, were made to the text before it was presented to Congress on June 28. After voting for independence on July 2, Congress continued to refine the document, making 39 additional revisions to the committee draft before its final adoption on the morning of July 4. The draft shows the multiplicity of corrections, additions and deletions that were made at each step. Although most of the alterations are in Jefferson's handwriting (Jefferson later indicated which changes he believed were made by Adams and Franklin), he felt slighted by the way Congress rewrote the manuscript. In a consoling letter of July 21, 1776, the state's senior delegate, Richard Henry Lee, wrote to Jefferson that he wished that "the manuscript had not been mangled as it is." In an 1823 letter to Madison, Jefferson wrote that, at the time, "during the debate, I was sitting by Dr. Franklin and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms" of Congress. In fact, as Congress neared completion of the document by altering nearly all of his last paragraph, Jefferson could only write in the margin "a different phraseology inserted." Jefferson remained bitter about the changes made to the Declaration of Independence right up to his death. His autobiography was a major effort to set the record straight on its writing.
Stephen West@stephenwest.bsky.social · last mo.

Abe Lincoln vs. the "heritage American" crowd, 1858: It doesn't matter where your ancestors were in 1776. Americans who read the Declaration and affirm its creed "have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote [it] ...and so they are."

We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, (loud and long continued applause) and so they are.
Cassandra Good@cgoodhistorian.bsky.social · last mo.

This scene with indigenous people sounds as bad or worse than the (super problematic & apocryphal) "Indian Prophecy" story that GW's step-grandson George Washington Parke Custis popularized in the 19th c /1 🗃️

William Bibbiani@williambibbiani.bsky.social · last mo.

When YOUNG WASHINGTON is blasting away evil Frenchmen in slo-mo and doing sick horseback stunts while sick with dysentery, it’s almost fun enough to be camp. Then the indigenous peoples of America tell George Washington he was chosen by the gods to save their country. My review is at @thewrap.com.

Cassandra Good@cgoodhistorian.bsky.social · last mo.

This scene with indigenous people sounds as bad or worse than the (super problematic & apocryphal) "Indian Prophecy" story that GW's step-grandson George Washington Parke Custis popularized in the 19th c /1 🗃️

William Bibbiani@williambibbiani.bsky.social · last mo.

When YOUNG WASHINGTON is blasting away evil Frenchmen in slo-mo and doing sick horseback stunts while sick with dysentery, it’s almost fun enough to be camp. Then the indigenous peoples of America tell George Washington he was chosen by the gods to save their country. My review is at @thewrap.com.

Angus Johnston@angus.bsky.social · last mo.

Justice Jackson: "Justice Thomas's telling elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery."

Larry Glickman@larryglickman.bsky.social · last mo.

Just a reminder that undoing the Second Founding has been on the right's agenda for a very long time. bsky.app/profile/larr...

Larry Glickman@larryglickman.bsky.social · 3y ago

David Lawrence, editor of U.S. News and World Report, in 1957: "A mistaken belief that there is a valid article in the Constitution known as the "Fourteenth Amendment" is responsible for the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and the ensuing controversy over desegregation in the public schools."

Cassandra Good@cgoodhistorian.bsky.social · last mo.

New article alert--my piece on using visual and material culture to understand antebellum women's political participation is now published in the journal American Art! /1 doi.org/10.1086/740791

Remembering the Ladies in George Caleb Bingham’s Election Series | American Art: Vol 40, No 1-2

Vibrant, lively, and raucous, the three paintings in George Caleb Bingham’s election series offer a colorful vision of Jacksonian democracy. While scholars often use these images as emblems of antebel...

doi.org

Cassandra Good@cgoodhistorian.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Check out this fun conversation between @sarageorgini.bsky.social, me, and the Boston sisters on John & Abigail Adams, friendship, and women's political power 🗃️ www.michonbostongroup.com/bostonsister...

Ep. 92 | JOHN ADAMS - Abigail Adams and Revolutionary Friendships — Michon Boston Group Ltd

The Boston Sisters spotlight the HBO miniseries JOHN ADAMS , based on David McCullough's biography of the 2nd U.S. President. Historians Cassandra Good ( Founding Friendships ) and Sara Georgi...

michonbostongroup.com

Andy Craig@andycraig.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is terrible, and on the eve of the 250th. What a loss. His contributions to our understanding of the Revolution are incalculable. And he was an amazing writer, too.

Jack Rakove@jrakove.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I just received the terribly distressing news that Gordon Wood was hit by a car and killed yesterday. We were together with other Founding era scholars at the 2nd Judicial Circuit conference last week at Lake George, and he was as usual in fine fettle and as always enjoyable to talk to.

Laura R. Prieto@laurarprieto.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“how long must women wait for liberty?” was on the signs suffragists brought to protest in front of the White House in 1917. Spoiler alert: they were also the last words Ines Milholland uttered publicly… Rest in Power, Ines. America’s suffrage martyr. #hatm #suffs

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