Join us for a talk by Patrick Spero, director of the American Philosophical Society and prize-winning author, on Thursday, February 27, at 5:00 pm at the Hennage Auditorium in Colonial Williamsburg. The Hennage Auditorium is part of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg located at 301 S. Nassau Street, Williamsburg, Virginia. The lecture is FREE and open to all.

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“The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793”

André Michaux was one of the most accomplished scientific explorers of North America before Lewis and Clark. His work took him from the Bahamas to Hudson Bay, and it is likely that no contemporary of his had seen as much of the continent. But there is more to his story. During his decade-long American sojourn, Michaux found himself thrust into the middle of a vast international conspiracy. In 1793, the revolutionary French government conscripted him into its service as a secret agent and tasked him with organizing American frontiersmen to attack Spanish-controlled New Orleans, seize control of Louisiana, and establish an independent republic in the American West. An unexpected figure emerges at the center of the plot: Thomas Jefferson. Drawing on sources buried in the vault of the American Philosophical Society, Patrick Spero sheds new light on an incipient American political climate that fostered reckless diplomatic ventures under the guise of scientific exploration, revealing the air of uncertainty and opportunity that pervaded the early republic.

Patrick Spero is the chief executive officer of the American Philosophical Society and a scholar of early American history. Dr. Spero is the author of four books on the era of the American Revolution. They are Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (2016), which was named a staff pick by the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2017, Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (2018), winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum’s Literary Award and a finalist for the Journal of the American Revolution’s best book of the year, and the forthcoming The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Kentucky Conspiracy of 1793 (2024) and The Other Presidency: Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society (2024). He is also co-editor of The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century (2016), a book that one reviewer said “will surely secure a place in the historiographical pantheon.” In recognition of his scholarly and administrative accomplishments, he is an elected member of the Royal Historical Society (2023), the Academy of Arts in Science in Lyon France (2023), the American Philosophical Society (2023), and the American Antiquarian Society (2023).