Tuesday, March 24, 2026
10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
NYU School of Law, Greenberg Lounge
40 Washington Square South
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” — Thomas Paine
As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, many will celebrate the men who drafted and signed the document. Others will highlight what the revolutionary generation failed to accomplish, emphasizing less their ideals and more their desire to protect the existing social order, including the continuation of slavery.
The historical truth is more complicated than either of these narratives suggest. It is also more interesting. As historian Jane Kamensky put it, “to believe in America, rooted in the American Revolution, is to believe in possibility. Everybody, on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, had the sense of possibility worth fighting for.”
The Cause of America, a daylong conference at NYU School of Law, will enrich our understanding of the American Revolution and its aftermath by introducing audiences to a more colorful, compelling, and complete version of the U.S. origin story. It will give due recognition to the many voices that contributed to the formation of our early democracy. The aspirations of these revolutionaries — both those who have dominated traditional accounts and those whose voices have only recently been rediscovered — have the potential to inspire us today.
Panel discussions will cover the following topics:
- Universalism: Showing that Americans from all walks of life — men and women, slave and free, settler and native — were drawn into a lively and deeply contentious debate over the kind of nation the United States would be.
- Representation and republicanism: Discussing the revolutionaries’ radically new concept of self-government.
- Nation state: Exploring the ways in which the founding generation began to build our new country.
Produced in partnership with the NYU Law Legal History Project