“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” From its founding, the United States embodied a profound paradox: a nation dedicated to liberty, equality, and natural rights continued to sanction human slavery. This week-long seminar examines how that contradiction shaped the new nation and generated political, constitutional, and moral conflicts that ultimately threatened the Union itself.
Beginning with the Revolutionary era, participants will consider how slavery complicated the creation of a republic founded on natural rights. The seminar will examine debates over slavery at the Constitutional Convention, the compromises necessary to secure the new Constitution, the emergence of sectional divisions, and early controversies over the federal government’s authority to restrict slavery.
Particular attention will be given to the emergence of abolition societies, many rooted in Quaker opposition to slavery. Organizations such as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society transformed private moral objections into organized public action.
From these early disputes through the Missouri Crisis, westward expansion, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the sectional conflicts of the 1850s, slavery repeatedly tested the nation’s political institutions and founding principles.
Alongside these political debates, the seminar places the experiences and agency of slaves at the center of the story, examining how they resisted bondage, preserved families and communities, escaped slavery, and contributed to the growing abolitionist movement.
The Underground Railroad provides an important lens for understanding this pursuit of liberty. During a field study at Philadelphia’s historic Johnson House, teachers will examine networks of freedom seekers, free Black communities, and abolitionists who challenged slavery directly.
Concluding with the Civil War, emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment, the seminar asks how the struggle over slavery forced Americans to confront and ultimately redefine the meaning of American liberty.
Richard Bell, PhD
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, specializing in early American history, particularly the American Revolution, slavery, abolition, and the social and cultural transformations of the early republic. He earned his BA from the University of Cambridge and his PhD from Harvard University.
Bell is the recipient of the 2026 George Washington Prize, one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for historical scholarship, for The American Revolution and the Fate of the World. Awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and Washington College, the prize recognizes outstanding scholarship on America’s founding era. Bell’s book reinterprets the Revolution as a global conflict with far-reaching international consequences.
His acclaimed Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home examines the Reverse Underground Railroad and was a finalist for both the George Washington Prize and Harriet Tubman Prize. His earlier publications include We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States and the co-edited Buried Lives: Incarcerated in Early America.
Bell’s scholarly distinctions include an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. He has held research fellowships at Cambridge University, Yale University, the Huntington Library, and the Library of Congress. An accomplished educator, Bell has received more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Matthew Pinsker, PhD
Professor Matthew Pinsker is a distinguished historian of nineteenth-century America whose scholarship focuses on Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, slavery, abolition, and resistance to slavery. He holds the Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History at Dickinson College, where he also directs the House Divided Project, an innovative digital history initiative devoted to advancing scholarship and education about the Civil War era.
A graduate of Harvard University, Pinsker earned his DPhil in Modern History from the University of Oxford. His books include Lincoln’s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home and his most recent work, Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln, published by W. W. Norton in 2026. His scholarship examines Lincoln’s political leadership, the relationship between partisanship and emancipation, and the constitutional challenges confronting the nation during the Civil War.
Pinsker has also contributed significantly to the history of American slavery and abolition. His scholarly essay, “After 1850: Reassessing the Impact of the Fugitive Slave Law,” explores the enforcement of federal fugitive slave legislation and resistance to slavery. His research on the Underground Railroad includes directing the Slave Stampedes on the Southern Borderlands initiative, developed in partnership with the National Park Service.
A former visiting fellow at the National Constitution Center, New America, and the US Army War College, Pinsker is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. He has also led numerous professional development programs for teachers through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Typically scheduled from Sunday through Friday in the summer, Founding Forward’s week-long teacher seminars are hosted at Union League Liberty Hill, a 300+ acre private conference center and golf course in suburban Philadelphia. Each seminar has a single theme and consists of content-focused talks by highly regarded scholars (morning and afternoon) interspersed each day with activation sessions featuring either lesson demonstrations from master teachers and presentation from resource providers like Retro Report or Periodic Presidents. Finally, each seminar includes an out-of-classroom field study to historic sites, archives, and museums.
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