John Ragosta
John Ragosta (Col ’08 CM)
John Ragosta (Law ’84, Grad ’08) has published his fourth book, For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry’s Final Political Battle (UVA Press). In 1799, at the behest of President George Washington, Patrick Henry came out of retirement to thwart Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and the radical states’ rights agenda of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Washington and Henry believed that their opponents were putting party over country and threatening the still fragile union. Rebuking Jefferson and Madison, Henry insisted that in a democracy change must occur “in a constitutional way” or monarchy threatened.
For the People, For the Country tells the remarkable story of how the most eloquent public speaker of the American Revolutionary era and the leading antifederalist during debates over ratification of the Constitution reemerged from retirement to defend the Constitution that he had opposed, but that had been adopted by his co-citizens. Much more than a fire-breathing demagogue, the Patrick Henry we encounter here comes to life as a principled leader of the young nation who believed above all in working with a government elected by the people, advocating for political change in “a constitutional way”—at the ballot box.
John Ragosta (Col ’08 CM)
John Ragosta (Col ’08 CM) has published his third book, Patrick Henry: Proclaiming a Revolution (Routledge Historical Americans, August 2016). Mr. Ragosta is a visiting assistant professor of history at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
John Ragosta (Col ’08 CM)
John Ragosta (Col ’08 CM) appeared at the Virginia Festival of the Book March 21, 2013, to discuss his new book, Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed. He also appeared at Colonial Williamsburg April 27, 2013, as part of their religion month, to discuss his first book, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty. Mr. Ragosta is currently a visiting assistant professor of history at Hamilton College in upstate New York.
John Ragosta (Col ’08 CM)
John Ragosta (Law ’84, Grad ’08 L/M) received the Gilder Lehrman Junior Research Fellowship for the 2010-11 academic year at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, where he will be working on a second book. His first book, Wellspring of Liberty, was published in the Spring of 2010 by Oxford University Press.