In this episode, John explains how it is that the United States, less than 30 years after fighting Great Britain to become and independent country, wound up fighting the British once again. John begins by discussing James Madison as a presidential figure: how he became president, what he wanted to achieve and how he differed from the first three presidents. John also breaks down the issues that Madison had to deal with during his term that didn’t involve Great Britain and France messing with American shipping and trade, including the annexation of Florida, congressional and party factionalism and maintaining national unity in the face of growing sectionalism.

John then concentrates on the titanic struggle between Great Britain and France and how the United States found itself caught in the middle. He covers the ways that the U.S. tried to stand up for itself as a sovereign country, short of war, what was entailed in the so-called “restrictive regime”, and why it was so difficult for the American government to control its destiny in the early 1800s. Finally, John details how it was the U.S. came to declare war against Great Britain in the summer of 1812, despite the fact that the British really did not want war and attempted to placate the U.S. in a number of ways in the weeks and months before the declaration was issued.

In this episode, John stacks up the lives and careers of two of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. John goes into a lot of detail about the endeavors and accomplishments that make both men the legendary historical heavyweights that they are. He talks about their impact on American governance, American economics, American culture, American religion and the trajectory of American society from independence onward.

But John also deals with the many shortcomings and foibles of both men. John explains why he is more “Team Hamilton” than “Team Jefferson” because of they way that they each felt and wrote and talked about human nature, the purpose and operation of government and how they envisioned the future of the United States. John confesses why he sympathizes so much more with Hamilton than with Jefferson, despite both men being titans of American history who have a great many character flaws between them.

In this episode, John explores the mass religious movement in the United States referred to as The Second Great Awakening. John discusses the origin of this explosion of religious growth and diversification and why it was that it occurred in the aftermath of the American Revolution. John talks about how the movement defied expectations of the Founding Fathers, who anticipated a more secular society after the Revolution, and how it demonstrated another dichotomy between the elites and the “middling sort”, in much the same way the divergence between Federalists and Democratic Republicans did.

John also goes through some of the prominent leaders of the Second Great Awakening and how the leadership of this movement defied the typical leadership of religious sects up to this point. He covers the various ways in which the Second Great Awakening was a grassroots movement that eschewed the role of traditional clergy in the Congregationalist or Episcopalian denominations. Finally, John talks about the way that the Second Great Awakening reflected a larger movement for more democratic input in American institutions.