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Pensacola State College Professor Brian Rucker, Ph.D., gave a lunch-and-learn lecture on the events that led to the American Revolutionary War as part of the college’s 250 Years Proud Speakers Series on Tuesday, Feb. 24.
Brian Rucker, Ph.D., presented the 150-year lead-up to our nation’s War of Independence
During the first lunch-and-learn lecture of the 250 Years Proud Speakers Series on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at Pensacola State College, Professor Brian Rucker, Ph.D., gave a spirited talk about the sequence of events that led to the American Revolutionary War.
He also dressed the part, donning a Colonial-era hat and coat, along with a gorget similar to one worn by a young Col. George Washington, while commanding the Virginia Regiment, in the earliest known portrait of America’s first president. Rucker described his own gorget as a souvenir knockoff of the crescent-shaped gilded metal or copper plate typically worn around the neck to indicate a commissioned officer’s rank.
The classroom was full for Rucker’s hour-long talk, which covered a sequence of events starting 150 years before the Declaration of Independence was written and signed in 1776. He called this period “the childhood of America,” describing the relationship between England and the colonists during the lead-up to the war as being like that of a parent and her adolescent children who became more “self-reliant and independent and wanting to solve problems for themselves” the longer they were apart from their mother country.
“The English thought of the American colonists as inferior, second-class, British citizens,” said Rucker, sharing historical episodes that made this evident, all while the 13 colonies were evolving into a democratic republic seeking its liberty.
Rucker also spoke about how ideas from the intellectual and cultural Enlightenment movement influenced the American colonists’ attitudes about individualism and natural rights, forming an ideological framework ripe for revolutionary upheaval.
He spoke about the social makeup and attitudes of the Sons of Liberty, a coalition of colonists ranging from elite to working-class members who fueled grassroots political protests, including the Boston Tea Party in 1773, opposing taxation without representation.
Rucker also explained how George Washington, as the young commanding officer, learned from mistakes like building the ill-fated Fort Necessity in an open valley, which led to his surrender in 1754, but helped prepare him for leading America’s Colonial Patriots to victory in their fight for independence.
The next lunch-and-learn presentation in PSC’s 250 Years Proud Speakers Series will be “The Revolutionary War in the South” given by Assistant Professor Tom Barber, Ph.D., at 12 p.m. in Bldg. 4, Rm. 401, on the Pensacola campus. Lunch will be provided for all students and the first 12 faculty or staff to register by emailing the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at hss@pensacolstate.edu.