Profs and Pints DC presents: “Presidents Before Washington,” on the first version of the United States and the men who led it, with Mark Croatti, a political science instructor at George Washington University and teacher of early American history at the U.S. Naval Academy.
In a year when we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it’s worth keeping in mind that our nation’s political system did not always exist in its current form. In fact, from 1776 until the 1789 ratification of the U.S. Constitution people here lived under an economic and military alliance of states in many ways more closely resembling today’s European Union.
Learn about this fascinating period of our nation’s history, and how we might learn from it lessons that could help us deal with some of today’s challenges, with Mark Croatti, who teaches courses on American government and history at several local universities and is consistently rated by his students as someone they’d love to take classes from again.
We’ll go on a scholarly journey back in time to examine life in the United States under the Articles of Confederation, which called for the nation to be governed by an appointed, unicameral Congress led by men who held the title of “President” and were sometimes addressed as “His Excellency.”
You’ll become familiar with the men who were recognized as U.S. presidents before George Washington took office. You’ll learn about the nation’s first peacetime capital and how our nation’s Founders first envisioned its government functioning.
We’ll examine how the lack of a Congress with unilateral power to raise taxes left our early alliance of states unable to pay off its immense Revolutionary War debt, creating the need to come up with a new political system that could raise the money.
It’s a talk that will leave you with a much richer understanding of our nation’s history and how governments restructure from within. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: From a John Singleton Copley portrait of John Hancock, who served as president of the Continental Congress when the Declaration of Independence was signed.