Uncover the hidden radicalism of the American Revolution: the massive expropriation of properties from Loyalists, redistributed by the revolutionary state to Patriots. Explore how this hidden history has been hiding in plain site at Philipse Manor Hall. Once stretching over 250,000 acres, almost all of the Philipse family’s land was confiscated by the new state of New York. Why? Who got that land? And what happened to the Philipses? It’s a story that demonstrates how the Revolution created democracy on the ground, in the most literal sense, while along the way generating opportunism, intrigue, exile, and, among some Patriots, even regret and remorse.
Daniel Hulsebosch is a legal and constitutional historian whose scholarship ranges from early modern England to the 19th-century United States. He teaches American and English Legal History, Property Law, and Constitutional Law, and he supervises the Legal History Colloquium. His first book Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (2005) examined the intersection of constitutionalism and imperial expansion in the British Empire and the early United States and the emergence of a new legal genre: constitutional law. He is now co-authoring a book with Professor David Golove entitled “A Civilized Nation”: War, Trade, and American Constitution-making, 1774-1816, which details the founding generation’s struggle to reconcile republican government with re-integration into the Atlantic World of trade and credit. Another project explores early American lawyers’ engagement with international sources of private law. Hulsebosch directs the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship Program at NYU School of Law, is a co-editor of the Legal History Series at Oxford University Press, and serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Legal History.
In-person tickets are free for everyone, courtesy the Friends of Philipse Manor Hall. To reserve your spot call 914-965-4027 or email philipsemanorhall@parks.ny.gov.
Virtual access is free and open to everyone. Access at the link below.
The Philipse Manor Hall History Lecture Series is sponsored by the Friends of Philipse Manor Hall. To support more programs like this one, become a Friend today!
