Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

Omaha Institute. Hello and welcome to episode 276 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you,

learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

Who gets to be a founding father?

Founding father or founder status typically goes to men who help found the United States.

That means we're talking about the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, those

who led the Continental Army,

and the 39 delegates who signed the United States Constitution.

Of course, if you want to get technical about it,

there were six men who signed both the Declaration and the Constitution, but regardless, we're talking

about over 100 men. And yet, we don't really talk about more than 100 men when we talk about

the founders. If you think about it, we really just talk about the

likes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander

Hamilton. But there were many more individuals who helped found the United States

and who made important contributions to the new nation. Stephen Freed, an award-winning journalist

and a lecturer at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania

joins us to talk about one of those founders we don't normally talk about.

And that founder is Benjamin Rush.

Now during our conversation about Benjamin Rush, Stephen reveals who Benjamin Rush was and details about his political and civilian careers.

Benjamin Rush's contributions to both the political aspect of the American Revolution and the military aspect of the Revolution, and why we haven't heard a whole lot about Benjamin Rush until thoroughly recently.

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