Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. James Madison became known as the Father of the Constitution. But the man who gave the Constitution much of its final language, including the famous words “We the People of the United States,” is largely forgotten. His name was Gouverneur Morris.

Dennis C. Rasmussen, author of The Constitution's Penman and a Jack Miller Center Fellow, shares the extraordinary story of the Founding Father who spoke more often than anyone else at the Constitutional Convention, helped shape the document's final form, and delivered one of its fiercest attacks on slavery.
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On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court, he was wrestling with a question that would define his career: What is a judge supposed to do when the law produces a result he doesn't personally like? Scalia's answer was that judges should follow the law rather than their own preferences, an idea that helped shape his growing commitment to textualism and originalism.

James Rosen, author of Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986, continues Scalia's story through his years as a lawyer, professor, government official, and federal judge. He also shares the story of Scalia's marriage to Maureen, his friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the ideas about law that would make him a distinctive figure on the bench.
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On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia became the first Italian American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, he was "Nino," the only child of an Italian American family growing up in Queens. His father had arrived from Sicily as a teenager, speaking no English, and worked his way through school to become a professor of Romance languages. His mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, became a schoolteacher. Together, they filled their son's childhood with books, high expectations, family, and a deeply rooted Catholic faith.

James Rosen, author of Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986, shares how that upbringing helped shape the future justice.
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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1630, John Winthrop and hundreds of Puritan settlers crossed the Atlantic hoping to build a new community in New England. Before they arrived, Winthrop delivered a warning. Their success or failure would not go unnoticed. Drawing on the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, he told his fellow settlers, “We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Robert J. Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America, shares how a biblical image carried across the Atlantic became one of the most enduring phrases in American life.
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On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Constitutional Convention opened in 1787, the United States was less than a decade old and already struggling. The Articles of Confederation had created a loose union of states with a Congress that lacked the power to tax, enforce laws, or stabilize the economy. By 1787, many leaders believed the country could not continue as it was.

The men who met in Philadelphia were not unanimous in their views, but they shared a belief that reform was necessary. What began as a plan to amend the existing system became an effort to draft an entirely new Constitution. As part of our ongoing Story of Us—Story of America series, Bill McClay, the author of Land of Hope, shares the riveting story of the start of the Constitutional Convention and how the men there set out to create a document meant to last
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