WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Caleb Franz: How the 250th Anniversary Will Decide Our True Story – and Our Future

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

With America’s 250th birthday looming, Caleb Franz, the Program Manager at Young Voices, a scholar with the Bluegrass Institute, and the author of The Conductor: The Story of Rev. John Rankin, Abolitionism’s Essential Founding Father, joins WRFH to talk about an America that now finds itself at a volatile crossroads as the “history wars” shift from academic debate to national flashpoint.From 10/03/25.

You're listening to Sophia Mant, interview Caleb France, the program manager at Young Voices on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. And Caleb France is a scholar with the Bluegrass Institute and the author of The Conductor, The Story of Reverend John Rankin, abolitionism's essential founding father. And he also has had his work featured in various outlets, including Real Clear History, the Washington Examiner, the Independent Religion and Liberty Online, and the Lewisville Courier's, journal, among others. And in this interview, we will discuss an article Franz wrote titled, America 250, the history roars are raging, jeopardizing America's future. So my first question is, could you explain to me the overall argument of your piece? Certainly. Well, thank you, Sophia, for this opportunity. Essentially, you know, especially since President Trump has gone into office for his second term, but really for decades prior to this, there has been this back and forth

between the right in America and the left in America, between about what it means to be an American, what our shared heritage is, what our common ancestry means, and in this common background, this common ethos that America has. Is America a country that was founded on the principles as outlined in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, these principles of liberty and inequality and justice, or is this a nation that was founded on oppression and founded on, I found it by hypocritical men who didn't actually believe in the words that they were writing. And the truth is often in the middle for a lot of these types of discussions, but I do think that there is an important through line here

that when the president and his administration is trying to course correct and trying to really hype up a lot of the positive aspects of the United States, even to the extent that possibly kind of overlooking some of the negative aspects of America's past and history. That's not in a vacuum. This is after decades and decades in higher academia that's been seeping through, from universities to young people throughout the country, after decades and decades in the media of this kind of anti-Western thought and this anti-American thought.

And now we see it kind of coming to heads where this, on the right, you see this very reactionary, this very reactionary process taking place where it's almost going a little bit too far in the other direction of trying to scrub any references to slavery or any references to any of the horrible things that happened throughout our period rather than looking at that as yes there were really terrible things that happened and it was because of people of courage and people of faith and people who knew what the founding meant for this country and we and we were was pointing the rest of their countrymen in the right direction.

That is an inspiring story that I think. And it's one that wasn't perfect, but it also is one that isn't irredeemable. And that's the essence of this piece that I wrote. Wonderful. So I guess that my next question is, were there any particular or specific events, you know, cultural, historical, social, that inspired you to write it? Anything specific? Sure. Well, of course, you know, America's 250th anniversary is coming up next year. And

what we've seen since President Trump has been inaugurated has been, he, I think he is taking that very seriously, the fact that he is going to be the president during America's 250th year. And obviously, you know, there's there's a lot of people who put a lot of interpretation into his actions. I think a lot of his actions in this department has really little to do. with anything race-related or anything trying to whitewash any part of history or sanitize any part of history. And what it really has to do is that Trump is someone who likes the apparatus and the appearance of strength and slavery. It is certainly something that makes America look weak. And he wants to focus on the positive and the bright spots. I don't necessarily think that

focusing on the positives of America's past is a bad thing. But I do think that he has gone about it. Him and his administration has gone about it somewhat recklessly and sloppily in a way that really gives more ammunition to his opposition and to his enemies than is what is necessary. And of course, this is not the first time that these back and forth battles have been happening on the history warfront. Of course, in 2019 during the 400th anniversary of the 1619 ships, slave ships coming over into North America. The New York Times started the 1619 project, which I would not say that that is what started the history. Wars, but it certainly kind of helped tie it into a neat bow as far as what it is exactly that we're looking at. So this has been going back and forth for years now. And I think at America's

250th, now is really the time that we need to get right with what it is that we're talking about, because oftentimes when we talk about these issues, we're talking past each other. And our understanding of our history and our understanding of our shared heritage is something that it defines the values that we instill in our children. It defines the type of education that we provide. It defines our voting patterns. It defines so much about our day-to-day lives that we don't even think about. So I really think that this is going to be something that Americans need to have sort of a reckoning with and a conversation about, um,

uh, hopefully without going to blows over it. Yes. Thank you. Um, so further asking more about the Trump administration, in your opinion, do you think some of their grievances,

such as going against the Smithsonian Institute for, um, what they show of history are, would you say some of those are legitimate? Like it's kind of like a mixed bag type of a, um, situation? Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think it's somewhat legitimate to have some of these concerns. But as the president tweeted out, he said that the Smithsonian is out of control,

where they discuss how horrible our country is and how bad slavery was. I think that line in particular really ruffled a lot of feathers about how bad slavery was, as if, you know, kind of implying that it wasn't as bad as it seems. I don't necessarily know, you know, it's, I don't think that anyone can really walk into Trump's mind and accurately demonstrate exactly what it is that he's thinking anytime that he's tweeting something.

But I do think that there is legitimate grievances that people on the right do have toward institutions of higher learning. But looking away from issues like slavery and trying to downplay that aspect of Americans' history is not the way to go about it. The way to go about it is to confront it head on

and acknowledge that, yes, this is something that has been, there's this attitude in higher academia that is anti-American, and that is very negative. And that does put a very binary perspective of either the oppressed or the oppressors, and you have to be in one of those two camps. And that's, I think, incorrect. And I think that the way that for decades that has been prevalent throughout all of these institutions, that is the reason why we're having this reactionary

response from the administration. But if the administration was really going to get down to the bottom of this, I think that he needs to tackle the issue of slavery head on and look at the inspiring figures that came out of those dark periods. I wrote a biography about one of those figures, Reverend John Rankin, a lot of times the darkest episodes of America's history produce some of the brightest lights throughout that history. And I think that's going to be the solution to a lot of these back and forths that we're having with one another, speaking past one another, is looking for those heroes and looking for the commonalities that kind of unite people as Americans. Thank you. You're listening to Sophia Mant interview Caleb France on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So my next question is then, what are some advantages that you think may come from having a more balanced view of America's past? Well, I think that there's a real opportunity right now for historians and authors and people who are communicating in the realm of

so to speak, in higher academia to really look and dig deep into our heritage and looking into some local figures, some local heroes, some untapped stories, things that you're not going to have necessarily a knee-jerk reaction one way or the other by digging into this. A lot of those stories is where the rubber meets the road throughout our heritage. Obviously, so much of history is taught from the perspective of Philadelphia and Boston and Washington, D.C. and New York City. And all of those are important places and incredible things happened there. But that's not the only places where those things happened. If we want to really feel connected to these founding ideas and to the vision that the founders have, we have to look at the people who made those ideas in

turn them into a reality for the country. So people like John Rankin is one example, but these are scattered all throughout out America and most people are sleeping on them. I think that would be a really good way, a really good first step to kind of correcting the course. Thank you. So then I guess I also want to get back to on the other end of the political spectrum from Trump, could you explain the side or kind of the background story behind Nicole Hannah-Jones' 1619 project? Yeah, so Nicole Hannah-Jones and various others at the New York Times, they put together this project that was supposed to reorient our understanding of the founding of America and shifted away

from 1776 and toward 1619 when the first slave ships arrived in North America. and while I think that it's important to have a full and robust understanding of our history with slavery, clearly, I think that Nicole Hannah-Jones really went a completely wrong way about it in a way that puts slavery at the center of everything, especially in the during the American Revolution and in those kind of early colonial period. It puts slavery at the center as the root cause of what drove the founders to do all the things that they did. And that is really just simply bad history. I mean, whenever you look, especially whenever you consider the fact that in 1776, there were zero free states or free colonies, as it were, that turned into states by the end of the summer. And then by the end of the American Revolution, there were nearly half of the colonies had implemented some kind of plan to abolish either immediately or gradually, either through the courts or through the legislature.

But they were using the principles that were outlined in the founding. This took into effect immediately. And of course, there's various other examples that I can point to, the abolitionists, themselves, while they didn't always agree on everything and even about this issue in particular, the successful ones, especially in the days and weeks and years leading up to the Civil War, went back to the founding and used the words and used the arguments of the founding fathers as part of their reason and part of the arguments that they were using in favor of abolition. So this is something that really can't be ignored.

And I think that Nicole Hannah-Jones really, at best, over-exaggerates the emphasis that slavery played on America's founding itself. Of course, it was present. And it was something that the founders wrestle with and not all the founders agreed on either what to do with it or even if something should be done with it. But the idea that America was founded solely to preserve slavery is frankly absurd. Thank you. So you mentioned in the piece your book titled The Conductor, the story of Reverend John Rankin, Abolitionism's Essential Founding Father. And I was wondering, first, if you could provide an overall summary of the book and how the work

provides maybe more of a balanced perspective on historical event or narrative. Yes, so Reverend John Rankin was a figure throughout 19th century America, early 19th century America. He really laid the groundwork for the abolition movement. Most people have heard of obviously William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, but Rankin was the forerunner to all of them. Garrison himself considered Rankin to be his anti-slavery father. he kind of came into the abolitionist movement in large part due to Rankin's influence.

He was an early proponent of what's known as immediate abolition, the idea that if a slave has a right to freedom, then that slave has a right to freedom today and not in, you know, 20 years or in another generation as some gradual proponents made. and because of that laying of the groundwork, Rankin, he was just a small-time preacher in Ripley, Ohio, but yet he had this dramatic impact on the course of the country. And what really surprised me was the fact that there was really no biography, no popular biography that was written about John Rankin whenever I took on this project, not since he was alive. So there was a real gap in our understanding of the history of abolition.

And part of that was because, you know, there was for John Rankin, he was someone who very much believed in the founding and the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And instead of shunning those, he embraced them and he utilized them as Frederick Douglass called the Constitution a glorious liberty document. He utilized those principles also in scripture as well to take the fight forward in favor of abolition. Thank you. So another question I have, as you mentioned in your piece, a recent Gallup poll released over the summer highlighted a statistic which said that patriotism among U.S. adults is at a record low and only just a bit over half of the population consider, as you mentioned, themselves. extremely or very proud to be American. Could you maybe speak more on the implications behind this poll? I think that this is, it's not shocking, but it is disheartening and concerning. Not so much so that it's hopeless. I do think that Americans do have good reason to be helpful.

But this is a result of these decades of anti-American, anti-Western thought being prevalent throughout academia and throughout our culture. And I think that without a sober-minded approach and a sober-minded understanding of what that heritage is, it's going to continue to dip. the fact that this is happening just on the eve of America's 250th anniversary should make a lot of people concerned. And it should activate a lot of people who do believe in the principles of the United States and who do believe that America is a fundamental force for good in the world that the fight is only really just beginning. And we have a long way to go before any kind of headway can be made.

Thank you. My next question then is, do you think the 250th anniversary may highlight political tensions? You know, I hope in some ways that it does from a historical perspective because there is kind of a hopeful message in that we can get through this. We have faced political tensions in the past. Obviously, we faced a civil war, but even before and after that, there have been times where violence was on the rise, where people were at each other's throats over politics and mobs would form and assassination attempts were made. obviously that was happening throughout the 60s that was happening all throughout John Rankin's wife and the stories that that he had throughout the early to mid-19th century. But this is something that we can get through. And it's not something that's insurpassable.

It's going to require, though, a certain moral fortitude from those who believe in these principles and in this country to be able to step up and be. move forward. Thank you. And then are you planning to celebrate America's 250th anniversary? I certainly am, yes. There's several things that I have going on over next year, either through writing. There's a lot of stories to tell that have been left under rocks. So through that, through events and celebrations. So we'll see where the year ends up. Wonderful. Thank you. You have been listening to Sophia Mant

interview Caleb France, the program manager at Young Voices, on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.