Virginia Museum of History & Culture

André Michaux was one of the most accomplished scientific explorers of North America before Lewis and Clark.  But there is more to his story. During his decade-long American sojourn, Michaux found himself thrust into the middle of a vast international conspiracy. In his new book, Patrick Spero sheds new light on an incipient American political ...

In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown newspaper that claimed that a full fourteen months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars, and a fanatical frontier preacher in a remote corner of North Carolina had become the first Americans to ...