She graduated from Pomona College in 1984 and received both her MA (1993) and PhD (1998) in American History from University of Virginia; her doctoral advisor was Peter S. Onuf, a major scholar on U.S. President Thomas Jefferson.

Prior to graduate school, Freeman was a public historian, delivering lectures at a range of US history-centric institutions including the Smithsonian, South Street Seaport, Museum of American Finance and the Library of Congress over a span of seven years.

[citation needed] In addition to editing Alexander Hamilton: Writings for the Library of America in 2001, Freeman is the author of Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (2001).

Freeman posits that office-holders and office-seekers were particularly immersed in conflict: "Regional distrust, personal animosity, accusation, suspicion, implication, and denouncement—this was the tenor of national politics from the outset.” [6] A prominent focus of her research has been the practice of dueling, including those rules governing one of the most famous encounters in history between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

In 2002, she appeared in Founding Brothers with fellow historians Ron Chernow, Richard Brookhiser, David McCullough, and Carol Berkin on The History Channel; the two-part program and overview of five founders – George Washington, Hamilton, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson – was based on the Pulitzer Prize winning 2000 book of the same title by Joseph Ellis.