The Great American Story: The New Nation
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the ratification of the Constitution before introducing Wilfred McClay.
Americans have overcome many challenges throughout our history, including the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the Cold War. Studying the great stories from our past inspires us to preserve the blessings of liberty in our day. Now you can study these stories with Hillsdale College.
Hillsdale’s free online course, “The Great American Story: A Land of Hope,” explores the history of America as a land of hope founded on high principles. In presenting the great triumphs and achievements of our nation’s past, as well as the shortcomings and failures, it offers a broad and unbiased study of the kind essential to the cultivation of intelligent patriotism.
After declaring independence from Great Britain, the Americans faced two monumental tasks. First, they had to defeat the mightiest military power in the world. Second, they had to establish a government capable of unifying the nation and securing their rights.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. |
| 0:11.1 | I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:12.4 | And I'm Juan Davalo. |
| 0:13.5 | We are back with the Great American Story, A Land of Hope. |
| 0:16.8 | Lecture number four, The New Nation. |
| 0:19.1 | What a fun lecture to have in the year of our 250th anniversary. |
| 0:23.1 | This is a story of how we declared independence, which is one thing that separates us from Britain, |
| 0:28.9 | to forming the Constitution, which is establishing the new nation, which is quite another thing. |
| 0:33.9 | And it's one of the most, at least for me, one of the most interesting periods of studying in the founding, because like we mentioned in a previous lecture, we tend to forget what happened before the revolutionary era leading up to the declaration. |
| 0:48.0 | But we also tend to forget what happened after, which may be even more difficult. |
| 0:52.4 | It kind of goes, Lexington, Declaration, Yorktown, |
| 0:57.6 | Constitution, and there's a few things that happen in between. Yeah, that's right. Forming the |
| 1:01.5 | Constitution was actually pretty difficult between 1776 when the declaration is signed |
| 1:08.3 | and 1789 when the Constitution is ratified. There's a big period of time where |
| 1:14.8 | Americans are once again trying to learn how they're going to live as a new nation now. |
| 1:21.3 | They actually had a different constitution. That's right. The Articles of Confederation, |
| 1:25.6 | which they tried for some time to live under those |
| 1:29.1 | articles of Confederation. It didn't really have an executive power that had any authority to execute |
| 1:34.3 | laws. There was no federal government. And they quickly found out that it wasn't working. |
| 1:39.4 | Yeah. We shouldn't be too hard on them. It was a war constitution. It was conceived of and ratified during |
| 1:44.5 | the Revolutionary War, and the war provided a lot of unity that peace did not. So the articles, |
| 1:50.5 | to their credit, got us through the war, or at least the men who were operating under the |
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