ISU History Professor Gives Talk at Museum of the American Revolution

Dr. Marie Stango, Associate Professor of History at ISU, recently presented a paper at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia as part of an international celebration of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Museum of the American Revolution created The Declaration’s Journey, a landmark exhibition that traces the evolution and global impact of this founding document since 1776. The exhibition features artifacts, documents, and works of art related to the declarations of independence issued by France, Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Korea, and more. To further explore the international impact of the Declaration, the Museum hosted a two-day convening on Friday, Sept. 25, and Saturday, Sept. 26.

Stango was invited to discuss her research, focused on Liberia, West Africa. She explained how Thomas Jefferson's original rough draft of the Declaration condemned the transatlantic slave trade, but this section was removed by Congress in the days before July 4, 1776. She argued that the founding of Liberia, in part as a home for “recaptured Africans” freed from slave ships, was related to this effort to end the transatlantic slave trade. The talk explored the relationship between the rhetoric of Jefferson’s Declaration and its eventual implementation by Liberians in the mid-nineteenth century, who explicitly founded their nation with the goal of ending “that curse of curses, the slave trade,” as described in the 1847 Liberian Declaration of Independence. Through an examination of Liberian diplomacy, Stango examined how Liberian sovereignty in the decades following independence often rested on the ability to enforce anti-slave trade legislation. The paper connected Jefferson’s earlier vision for the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade with the enaction of slave trade suppression in Liberia. The audience for the convening included scholars, museum-goers, and the public. 

The ISU History Club met on campus in Pocatello to watch Stango's talk as it was broadcast live. Her presentation was recorded and will air on C-SPAN in the coming weeks.