February 5, 2026

On Saturday, January 31st, 2026, I attended the funeral of a longtime friend and colleague, Nancy Bradeen Spannaus. (See obituary below). The service was filled with hundreds of people who were touched by the life of Nancy. She lived her mortal existence the way all of us should: to do good for the human race. She affected many people from different sectors of society. She left an indelible mark on humanity during her life on earth. In her retirement years, she wrote and published three books, which educated Americans among others, on the better principles that the United States of America was founded on and stood for. She discussed in detail the history of Alexander Hamilton’s American System of Political Economy. She wrote a groundbreaking history of the fight in the United States against slavery, which the vast majority of Americans and non-Americans alike, are completely ignorant of. She also discussed how British subjects, American colonists, became citizens of this Republic after defeating British imperialism.

I knew Nancy for almost fifty-seven years. I first met Nancy and her husband Ed, following my freshman year in college in 1969. She and I had various forms of political collaboration over the succeeding decades. Nancy had a significant impact on my life even though I never discussed it with her until the occasion of her eighty-second birthday in December 2025. Nancy influenced who I am today. She contributed more than anyone else in helping me to become a writer. For that, I will be thankful for the remainder of my life.

Over the long period of time that I knew Nancy, I realized she was a person of strong intellect. Her writings on Hamilton and the American System of Political Economy were invaluable to me. Her work in this extended field of American history provided me with an in-depth education and motivated me to read and re-read many of the original works of Alexander Hamilton and his students, among others; Henry Carey, Fredrich List, Peshine Smith, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D Roosevelt. However, even though I knew her as a strong political figure, historian, and author, it was not until many years later that I realized the quality of her inner strength. This was amplified in the way she conducted her life in the remaining months after she was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of cancer.

To help educate my circle of colleagues around the world, I would buy Nancy’s books and gift them to political allies, relatives and friends across the United States, Africa, and China. This practice continues today, in an effort to educate people on the true principles upon which the United States of America was founded. Among some African circles, this stimulated a discussion on how Alexander Hamilton and the American System of Political Economy could affect economic progress in African nations today. I will continue my efforts of distributing Nancy’s books to expand people’s knowledge of the profound history of the United States. Nancy once told me that I was her best customer.

Alexander Hamilton was an economic genius. He created a National Bank by converting outstanding debts from the Revolutionary War into credit. He allowed holders of U.S. debt to use their relatively worthless paper claims, to purchase shares (stock) in this new bank. This created new capital for lending (issuing credit) for investments in farming, manufacturing, and internal improvements (infrastructure). For decades I have advocated for a Hamiltonian approach to address Africa’s huge infrastructure deficits. Years ago, I collaborated with a group of Africans to establish an African Infrastructure Development Bank, modeled on Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States (1791). This approach remains valid for Africa today, especially when there is no competent policy to provide the trillions of dollars of credit required to build vital categories of infrastructure necessary to industrialize the nations of Africa.

Like Nancy, I too am guided by a mission in my life: to make the world better. To improve the quality of the thinking of as many people that I can reach with my limited resources. It has been my particular mission for over thirty-five years to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa. Introducing Africans to Hamilton’s scientific economic principles has been an important feature of that mission. With Nancy as a model, I hope in my brief mortal existence I can have the same uplifting impact on society that Nancy has exhibited throughout her life.

After all, our mortal existence should mean more than just simply seeking pleasure and satisfying our biological needs. We should all govern our mortal existence by what kind of indelible contributions we have made to the future of civilization after our mortal existence expires. Let the way Nancy Bradeen Spannaus conducted her life be an inspiration and exemplar for all of us to emulate. I consider myself to be very fortunate to have met Nancy during my lifetime.

Nancy Bradeen Spannaus, author and historian 1943-2026

February 4, 2026

Nancy Bradeen Spannaus of Lovettsville, VA,  author and public historian, died on January 16, 2026 at Inova Loudoun Hospital. Nancy had been fighting cancer over a span of eleven years, and was battling a rare and particularly virulent form of the disease for the past two years. 

Nancy had been studying U.S. history, with an emphasis on the country’s economic development in general, and Alexander Hamilton in particular, since the 1970s, and in 1977 she co-authored a book of writings on the Political Economy of the American Revolution.  In 2017, upon retirement from a career in journalism, she established the blog https://americansystemnow.com, which contains more than 600 articles on the history and principles of the American System of Economics. 

In 2019, she published the book Hamilton Versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics. In 2023 she published Defeating Slavery: Hamilton’s American System Showed the Way. 

In early 2025, with an eye to the upcoming 250^th anniversary of the American Revolution, she published a collection of essays from the blog in a volume entitled From Subject to Citizen: What Americans Need to Know about Their Revolution. 

In recent years, she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (Ketoctin Chapter), the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society, the Lincoln Group of D.C., the Loudoun 250 Committee, and the American Friends of Lafayette. 

Nancy spoke on Alexander Hamilton and related topics at many local events, including history groups and the public libraries. She was also a volunteer for the Western Loudoun Food Pantry (acting as its manager in recent years), and the Lovettsville Historical Society. She taught in Lifelong Learning programs, often as an Adjunct Professor, at Shepherd University, Long Island University, Johns Hopkins University, and Frederick Community College.

Nancy was born in Portland, Maine, of parents Donald and Mary Lou Towle Bradeen, in 1943, and spent her younger years in Washington, Pennsylvania and Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College (B.A., 1965), and Columbia University School of Social Work (M.S., 1967).  As a journalist, she was for many years the editor-in-chief of several national publications affiliated with the Lyndon LaRouche organizations, and she also ran for statewide office in Virginia in the 1990s.

She is survived by her husband of 57 years, Edward; her second son Andrew, a journalist based in Milan, Italy; and grandson Christopher Ziboni Spannaus of Italy. She was predeceased by her first son Michael (1970-1990). She is also survived by four younger brothers and sisters: Robert Bradeen and wife Ellen, of Haughton, Louisiana; Judy Bradeen, of Lebanon, New Hampshire; David Bradeen and husband NJ, of Camden, Maine and Indian Wells, California; and Susan Bradeen Haimes and husband David, of Seneca Falls, New York.

In her own words:

In 2018, Nancy wrote a biographical essay for the DAR, which she adapted just this last November for a website on influential women. Here are a few excerpts, beginning where she was discussing her mother’s side of the family as “decidedly a matriarchy.”

My father represented a clear countervailing, and broadening influence. As a Classics professor and twice a fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, he was a rigorous scholar and very demanding of me, his oldest child. He had an in-depth historical view (“Everything after the 5^th Century B.C. was current events,” he said.) He never gave any indication that my gender should interfere with the highest level of intellectual achievement—and pushed me to go to a top woman’s college, Bryn Mawr, in order to get the best education possible. Bryn Mawr had a strong Classics tradition, including school songs in Classical Greek and a de facto patron goddess, Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom (and war). I majored in philosophy . . . .

My own concentration of study on the American Revolution, which began in the mid-1970s, did not focus on the role of women, but on the ideas which the leading Founders, such as Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, developed in order to create the new nation. And while these heroes of mine were by no means concentrated on advancing the role of women per se, their political ideas were equally applicable to liberating the minds of men and women.

For as long as I can remember, I always felt an obligation to act to improve society. By the time I finished my formal education, this concept had broadened considerably beyond just working in a local community, to encompassing the world as a whole. When I had my children in the early 1970s, my determination to play that larger role in the world, specifically through politics, became even stronger. I owed it to my children, as well as those of others, to create a world where they could thrive. My husband shared this view . . . .  

I have retired, but will actually never really retire. It is still my obligation to use what knowledge I have acquired to educate, and if possible, inspire, my fellow human beings to improve this world—indeed, to bring it out of crisis. My activities, including starting a blog and joining DAR, have been embarked on with this intent. That is my role as a privileged human being . . . .  

For Nancy, the history of the American Revolution was a living project.  She was passionate about the good the American Revolution had brought to the world, and she was determined to help people understand it so that the visions and ideas of Alexander Hamilton and the American founders could shape our future.  Nancy breathed life into the figures of the past in a way that forges a direction for now, and for the times to come.  To this end, she continued to write and think about more speaking events — right up through the very last weeks of her time on Earth.  

Read below my previous posts on Alexander Hamilton:

Hamilton versus Wall Street: Relevance to Ethiopia & Africa

Nations Must Study Alexander Hamilton’s Principles of Political Economy

Alexander Hamilton’s Credit System Is Necessary for Africa’s Development

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica