Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Joanne Freeman 20240713

Trace the arc of our nations history. From 1783 to 1861, the political history of our nation. Wow, i will use the word hate. Back is a little daunting. Trace the art. Im to do the historian thing and speak generally. I guess it would save your looking an american in politics, from the beginning straight through, we could even go past the civil war, youre talking about paradoxes and conflict and prop. The period that i tend to focus on is the early part of the arc, and its the improvisational nature of the the really fascinates more than anything else. The nation was founded in a world of monarchy. The United States was a republic. What the means was was not clear at the moment and people knew the they were trying to do something the wasnt act. Were not going to be creating monetary and the president isnt going to be a king but beyond the there was open ground. Theres a lot of improv in those early decades about with the nation is and how it functions, the tone of the government, how the station is going to stand up amongst nations of the worlds and other kinds of nations. We mean to be a republican world of monarchy. How is this nation going to get any degree of respect, and equally if not more, what kind of nation is going to be. That is true on every level you can imagine being true. Theres a broad kind of ideological level. There is a groundlevel, how democratic a nation will be, who is going to open the land and how is the land going to literally rest from other people. What kind of rice will some people have and what kinds of rights will other people not have it all. A lot of questions that we are grappling with now, are questions of acuity and equality and race in the lets go back to the beginning of the republic and beyond. As a historian, living in the moment that we are living in now and thinking in the blog, arcing weight, we deal with these pig questions and these pig legacies of undecided things. We are still dealing with them. The goal of the way back. Where we inherently democratic. Student no. [laughter] we were to monetary. Americans had a very strong sense or certainly elite white male americans in a very strong sense of their white. They felt the they were creating a more democratic regime than what had been around before. They were thinking very much about life. Theres a reason why there is a bill of rights attached to the constitution. So in essence, they were very right minded but by no means was a country founded with people thinking everyone will have rights and there will be equality. There were different i dont want to call them parties but certainly two different points of views. Hamilton the republics and jefferson is over simple fight. Because of the two camps. They had a different view and each side how democratic the nation should be. Federalist wanted it to be somewhat los democratic and the republicans more. Even so, pretty limited view of democratics. When i teach about this period, and tell my students there are all kinds of weird you have to think about and meanings of. Democracy is a pig one. You see the word in the founding. It is not mean what it means now. You have to rethink and recalculate what you are talking about when youre looking at the founding people. Now this political buzz. How many points of views where there back then. And since today we are divided democrats and republicans and independents. Was that the case back then . I would say it was more complex than the. They werent thinking in the way that we think about party. We think a party, its an institution right is a structure is an organization and you feel it yourself with one in being yourself back to the mindset of the foundings they were assuming the a National Party like the idea the the nation could get something the over arching the the many people would buy into amongst all of these diverse states the was beyond the, they didnt think the a National Party could seeing the public met lots of viewpoints banging up against each other ultimately some decision or compromise of the the was the. Of the National Center of how the banging of opinions would initially they werent assuming the there should be two or three viewpoints. There were federalist and they were parent publicans but even under i like to call them umbrellas of political thought even under those umbrellas were vast differences. Federalist in massachusetts federalist in South Carolina. The could mean something really different. In more of a spectrum, i would say than categories. In the founding. What were some of the privatizations the did not succeed as amended. Really fun to teach about our for political culture improv. In other words, some of the wonderful things about studying and riding about the founding is they put all of kinds of things in riding that we dont expect them to put in riding. John adams riding to a friend and saying how should an american politician rest. I want to look those sort of british or french european aristocrats. The clothing i have has a lot of lace on it, it it is it too much lace. Could i strip some of the lace away. How many horses with the carriage would seem appropriate in american versus how many in another place. It sounds really goofy in this part of whites abridgment to teach. On the other hand, they are seriously thinking about the back. The stylistic decision on really going to shape the tone and character of the government and the nation and let everything set a precedence. The kind of improv can have a pig impact. On one hand, its almost comical because it seems trivial on the other hand, it really isnt trivial and the in itself is really interesting. We had several hundred white male elites forming this country with their buyin from the three or 4 Million People who live here the time. On the one hand there is a small group of people who have power. On the other hand revolution is a popular revolution and not conducted by a few guys in a room. Its important to remember the whatever is going on in this time. Although the elite have power and are very rude about maintaining power a lot happening around them and part of the challenge for the what i want to call it, maybe the difficulties or challenges of tension of the. Is the American People figuring out how to voice what they want and how to demand what they wa want, how does the system work forum and if it doesnt, at what can they do to make it work forum better. They had the power. The American People understood in a broad kind of a sense the they had rights in some ways and different kinds of peoples had a different understanding with what rights but there was a broader sense of whatever the experiment was going on in this nation, the rights were something the were still being worked out and determined and they could potentially extend it more widely than some of what had come before in europe. What was awake and what did he believe. Joanne im going to talk about moving ahead in time about the wakes. About your earlier question about parties and categories. Particularly now, people like to go back in time and draw state lines between the parties of the present and the parties of the cast. If youre republican, it goes all the way back to jefferson. There are no Straight Lines in history. There are certainly no Straight Lines when it comes to political parties. So parties bounce back and forth in the name change all of the time. So with parties for a while you had the democratic party, which is going thing. And you had what was known more than anything else is the anti jacksonians, it wasnt really a party but it was people who really arent the. [laughter] we dont like jackson and we do like and what they represent. The becomes the whig party and become in the mid 19th century with essentially for a while, two main parties in one of them is jackson and democratics supposedly popular supposedly the common man or the common white man on the one side and then on the other side you have the whigs which are more centralized and more sort of pig National Government. Represent in a way sort of two threads that we can see. Really represented a different. Of view. If you were governor of massachusetts or president of the United States at the time, who held more political power. Joanne at the time, whenever i wanted to be. Okay yes, if you all of the way back, to the real founding moments, thats a good question. There were people like housing in the federalists who assumed that the bulk of the power was with the state. Not with the National Government which was new and who knew what it encompassed beyond the very skeletal constitution. Our constitution is really brief for what it does. The governor of massachusetts probably on paper might say the president has a lot of power, the fact of the matter is the for the people, their loyalties and their sense of belongingness and their understanding of powers is pretty much going to be grounded in their state. Over time the shifts but in the 19th century, certainly, the first half if you were to pick up a newspaper, are met. Congress would be getting a lot more attention than the president at the. Again we assume now that the president is allpowerful and the president is at the center of the news and thats not an early american way of really thinking about it. Reading your books, and i dont know if this is purposeful or if i missed it, the president doesnt play the large rule that the present place today in our world. Joanne right. I would say thats partly deliberate and partly reflects my interest. But it is true the throughout this. Although clearly the americans understood that the president was significant, in the early founding. They were trying to figure out what the means. Congress as the peoples understand that the congress is really where the nation is being worked out in a groundlevel and white and people felt the they had a direct connection with their member of congress and when members of congress set up and spoke, particularly when the you get into the 1840s and 50s, they assumed they were speaking to their can stick stitch with spin the in the press was creating the conversation back and forth. Congress matter tremendously. Nowadays were more focused on congress for Different Reasons but i think the 20th century we can focus on president and the was not necessarily the case much in the 19 hundreds. When we recognize Congress Today as it was back then in the early republic. One in the early republic. Joanne i dont think so. Maybe supposedly in some ways. It might be what we seem like it would look like. Somewhat tamer. It is a group of men, white men in the room, above and beyond the, there are debating and making decisions and passing legislation than those of things we see in congress. Over time the United States becomes a lot more violent and congress is a representative body. They become a lot more violent and in the case it begins to look like maybe not necessarily the. Tobacco use of, yes there were soaring yes the reunions shaking decisions being made underneath the speechifying and politicking, was a spit and spatter drug and Antebellum Congress had its admirable moments but it wasnt an assembly of demigods it was a Human Institution, with very human failing. Joanne the was an important. For me to make in the early part of my book. My function the what most people think particularly about congress in the side. , clay and webster and sort of reach man is congress was a bunch of people in boxes the were being waspy. Lofty. Its very important for me right off the cuff to say no. This is a really Human Institution number one and number two it is a unruly institution. Its a different world than you assumed. The book really is about this union Human Institution and how it functioned and shaped not just the nations politics but americans understanding of the nation. What is an affair of honor. Joanne thats another fundamental thing in the early part of my book that i talk about. People think about an allencompassing term, a dual, people assume the thats all there was to men on a field and shooting each other. Part of the. That i make in the first book, is an affair of honor was bigger than the. The. Of an affair of honor or even a dual is very counterintuitive read if you have to come in on a field and face each other and to someone. Youre going to kill someone. One of my early points is an affair of honor or a dual is to prove the you are willing to die for your honor. It means it is a long sort of ritualized series of whether exchanges and negotiations very often can take place in two men can redeem their names and honor and you dont even have to make it out to a dueling ground. An affair of honor includes all of the ritualized dual. Even at the. , the. Is the performance of it. If you think about it, this terrifying thing to stand out of the ground and pay someone with a cap gun. Instead there to allow someone to shoot at you. Thats the. Of it is to prove the you are the kind of man and thus leader who is willing to die for your name and reputation. It makes no sense to us now but clearly made so much sense to them the time. Hundreds and hundreds of people ended up working through those customers. Why are we taught at the beginning of us history about the bert hamilton duel of 1804. Joanne army because sometimes histories about good stories the seem to sum things up. You jefferson versus hamilton, the dual, the paintings, dramatic stories, the people sort of moved to encapsulate the thoughts of things. I think people teach the. The teacher first of all as one and only instance. Is a sign of this great unity of these two men and it somehow is typical of the period. Inmates were so fierce. Dramatic characters, it does a lot of storytelling work but not until recently has the been taught as a way of getting deeper and kind of understanding something about the guts of politics. How they really work in the time. What happened in 1804 and why did it happen. Joanne Vernon Hamilton certainly have been opponents for a long time. Hamilton was largely the fuel behind much of the opposition. He really deceptive or any thought of him as something of a demigod. Because he was somebody who came from the equivalent of royalty, his family was an opportunity this, early on in a relationship of sort. Back in 1792, pretty much a direct quote, i consider it my religious duty to oppose his career. Thats some serious opposition the you have going there. So he is pretty bound and determined to squash birds career and the goes on for quite some time. In the election of 1800, when it ends up being a tie between two candidates from the same party, jefferson and hamilton steps forward and doesnt eat everything he can do to squash his chances. This does not make her happy. It got moved over four years later, brett is running for governor of new york hamilton once again steps forward to do everything he can do to stop the from happening. As luck would have it, someone stepped forward after the and said have you seen there is a report of what hamilton said about you and a dinner party and hamza stupor. And brent this. Needs to prove the he is a man and a leader and he keeps contest after contest. He needs to redeem his name and honor. He acts on the and it happens to be hamiltons words. So you end up with bert being handed something the in his mind is dual worthy and so he commences an affair of honor with hamilton. The exchange these ritualized letters. Neither one, doesnt go swimmingly. Persons a letter, its kind of normal things in the letters. I heard you said this about me is it true or false. Validate or deny this. I deserve this Immediate Response as a man of honor. If you got a letter like this, you knew you were in trouble. You had to think very hard about how you responded. Hamiltons response is not a deal. He uses a very lengthy response in which he talks about he supposedly called something more despicable. Flaming despicable and hamilton gives this rather grammar lesson when shes talking about what is the meaning of despicable. Is the a bad word. [laughter] if youre a person at the end of the letter, to show the he is not afraid. Hamilton then said by the way, i always stand behind all of my words. Not an exception to the now. I am willing to fight for any words that i enter. Thats a not a strategically smart thing to send the kind of letter. Its offensive in two ways. My guess is the and is offended. Basically forms by saying, you are not behaving like a gentleman. This is not a gentlemanly thing to do. Now they are both offended. You can kind of see how things spiral to avoid the a trip to the dueling ground is the outcome. Dueling is not legal. State had its anti dueling regulations. A challenge might be against the law the dueling in self might be against the law, the punishment was different. In massachusetts you could be publicly humiliated in some way. Some places have a fine. If you in massachusetts anywhere prefer to go to another place, you could pay a fine a lot los daunting. But it was legal but it was largely the lawmakers. The people making the law were the people breaking the law which the lead in this. In how they do this. Duly spent too much much time talking about the actual duels and the set up to this rather than or does it a microcosm of what is going on in the country the time. The one people tend to focus on the story. There was a lot of dueling. The practice of dueling is worth looking at because it does tell you a lot about elite politics. Being a politician or political approach or at the time. I can tell you a lot about the emotional guts of some of the politics of the. But the pre shouldnt and its just dramatic. The Vice President of the United States killed the former secretary of the treasury and its a pretty dramatic story. If youre going to focus on one dual, it makes sense but if for too long it stood in for a lot of other things and hard with studying as well. We should note the he did not get elected at new york. Very effective to help smash various aspects of her career. I dont think burke wanted to kill hamilton. I dont think the was his purpose. First almost duels unless maybe youre Andrew Jackson, most dont go to a dueling ground where you are wanting to kill. I dont think burke did. Sometime before the dual is asked about a dr. , what doctor emer says something along the lines of you dont need dodgers, lets just get it over with. I think he assumed it would be in a typical dual. You shoot at each other you prove youre a man of honor at the nearly. But tragically, it has become the sort of villain of American History for killing hamilton. I dont think the was his aim. There are to be fun words in the english language. I dont think the was his purpose in going to the dueling ground. What was his life like after the. Joanne not easy. He flayed because at the the. Although dueling is common enough, all of his enemies essentially gang up after his killing of hamilton. He is vulnerable. People didnt try to kill people duels, you become vulnerable or having murdered someone which what happened to him. Various politics joining together and try to squash him. He is friends and his newspaper editor who run across to the dueling grounds please new york. He had self in South Carolina where he hides out for a while. I was a good place to be. He ultimately is Vice President and he goes back to washington, he finishes his vice presidency. He was a bad Vice President. He finishes his vice presidency and he is clearly not going to stick around for the second term though he ends up kind of going out west and its unclear what he is doing out west, he appears to be marching around with young man with guns. I think he thought something was going to happen in the vicinity of mexico and he was there with men the somehow or other he could see the west is literally a frontier where he might be able to have a different kind of power. Were still not entirely sure what he is doing but he did get tried for treason. Hes equated red but now is pretty much, what frontier is lyft for her. He is pretty much local and national politics. He ends up basically enrolling himself in europe. Ray hangs out with William Godwin and mary ann has is very interesting exile bizarre kind of life in europe hanging out with intellectuals. Then he comes back, to new york. These kind of a tourist attraction. People like to go back there for entertainment. He would go back to the law office. He kind of attempted to get snubbed in the streets. Its kind of a fad ending or sad ending. He does not have an easy time of it. Actually, there are lots of accounts of members of congress who seen him. He comes back to finish the vice presidency and what they say about him as you can see the fatigue and the anxiety of dealing with what he is dealing with the you can see it about him. Probably he doesnt have an easy end of life. Older years, difficult years for him. His one on only two politicians in this. I have seen ever describe politics using the word fun. He actually says the president engage in politics for fun and honor and profit. Which is pretty blunt. [laughter] is pretty direct when he acknowledges the. He acknowledges the. You get the from him but he is enjoying the game. He is just more honest about the fact the he is enjoying it. I think at some place in his later years, they are not some fun. Was the other one. Joanne charles from South Carolina who considers politics fun. There might be others floating around about there. I dont think ive come across it more than those two times. Professor freeman you are a hamiltonian. Joanne i guess it means that i am someone who finds him and ive always found him fascinating. So hamiltonian in the sense that i really have spent a lot of time and energy really trying to understand him and why he did what he did and what he did. I have been telling and scholar because i really think the many scholars find question or the person of problem the sort of grabs them. And there are many the grammy. But he is someone who grammy at an early. So in hamilton curious scholar. Besides a 10dollar bill and a relatively wellknown mystical, what is his legacy. Joanne one of the things the he was known for, and makes legacy, he was someone in really early early. Who firmly believed that the National Government need to be strengthened. And the was at a. It really wasnt strong. That refers to a document i found at the New York Historical society about the doctor turning his back so we can have deniability and when that line appeared, might i turned to my friend and i said thats my document. I know that document, thats my document so when i got to lynn manwell miranda, i said is that based on that topic . Of course it is. I get to have my document sung in what i hit Broadway Musical so that was a mind blowing experience how accurate is the musical . For sure, its a piece of musical theater so it did a lot of work to make people aware of people and a period that a lot of people werent aware of and it does things that as a historian i think are wonderful things to do. It reminds people about the contingency of that moment. People look at the founding and they see it as a series of courses but of course we won the revolution and of course constitution, blah blah and there are no courses when youre in that moment, there are no recourses and thats how the republic defined that period so the play reminds people about that contingency and also talks people maybe who hadnt thought about it before that these were real people and thats an important thing, what youre looking at are real people going through a process, not a bunch of rattle rousersmaking great decisions about great things. That said there are many things that are historically inaccurate about what is presented in the play. There are many things that are not discussed in the play in any major way like the institution of slavery, its mentioned, its not really discussed. To me going to see a piece of musical theater, my response was more theres a lot of history in there, more than i would expect there to be. Its got a lot thats wrong in it, to me, that has made this the profoundly wonderful moment because i think so many people and particularly young people become interested in the time period and as a teacher, we can grab hold of that and you can say i know youre interested in that, let me teach you about what really happened in that time period, let me take teach you the reality about everything that happened around this or that happened in ways that arent shown in the play so in a sense by being wrong in some ways its created a great teaching opportunity. In a tweet that you sent out a couple days ago, you do tweet a lot. I do tweet a lot. Its interesting in my hamilton and jefferson, are i asked how many had seen hamilton or knew the music, to judge hamilton mania, feels like it. Then i read applications for the course majority mention the musical, maybe adding but its had an impact. I did thats what happened. First i want to say all my code tweeters, look what they can do. Its on tv but it is true, i had my first meeting of my seminar and i do tend to ask what brought people to the class. And in this case i actually explicitly said im judging hamilton mania and i said i think its adding and they nodded, were not crazy about it anymore they, the classroom limited in size so even the ones who already preregistered, im curious what brings you to the course , a lot of people said well, almost sheepishly, i really liked the hamilton musical and it led me to want to know more. Thats a wonderful thing and the course, its great. First of all, i guess its not really advertising but its a course i love to teach about the age of hamilton and jefferson, except for the first two weeks you read the biographies, after the first two its all taught with papers and writing, theres no other history books that brought in and we look at for the first about what america was, look at revolution, look at them as Party Politics but its all primary courses and its very explicitly doesnt take sides and doesnt say that one is right and what is wrong but hand the raw evidence to the students and we grapple with it and whats fun for me in teaching it is different every time i teach it because it depends entirely on what the students find and focus on in those letters teaching since the 22nd or 23rd yearteaching this course, its different every time. Its fun and i learned things , i clearly have read those letters times but you can always learn things depending on the questions we bring when you look at them so its a fun class. On that same day, in response to a former student you tweeted out that about David Mcculloughs john adams book. Yes, mcculloughs john adams biography was the same thing that sends more people into my seminars and anythingelse. For years. And you know, i give students full permission to say whatever they want. I very explicitly i said this time, why are you in the course and the answer isnt because republicanism has always been meaningful to me, i dont want a gale answer. It was an old asset street that i was serious about or my dad loves this stuff and now im curious about it or i will a movie or i read a book or i just never study early america but i give them full permission to say whatever they want and for a while, it was well, theres this john adamsbiography that David Mccullough wrote or i read part of it. And im curious now. Was the thing, then the hbo miniseries, sometimes people say this miniseries i was curious about, now i want to know about the time period. Thats the part that became the musical for a time but this time i asked because it wasnt necessarily something that initially in conversation s were bringing up. Sometimes someone said on twitter maybe its a point because younger people are interested in the musical that the older students dont want to be, saying they love the musical but there back in public because the younger people are more focused on it, i dont know but the fact of the matter is that about 30 people trying to get into the course and a lot of those are selfinterest and in one way or another, one person said i didnt like the musical and im here because i want to learn more aboutthe time it is great. Its an excellent reason and thats excellent teaching, love it, hate it, ask questions about it. Once a month we invite an author to talk about his or her body of work. This month is yale professor historian and author joanne friedman. She is the author of a affairs of honor which came out in 2001. Alexander hamilton writing, she has edited thatthe essential hamilton i should say is what she has edited. And the field of blood is her most recent book, came out last Year Congress and the road to civil war. Shell be with usfor another hour and a half. Its your chance to take time, to take a question, giveher a question. Theres the numbers, were going to put those on the screen. Participate in our conversation this afternoon, 202 is the area code, 7428400 for human time zones, 488201. If you live in the mountain and this time zones, we can also take your comments via social media, were going to scroll through our different only addresses. Facebook, twitter, etc. Remember book tv is the essential part of that if you want to get a comment to us. How did you get interested in this mark. Probably the bicentennial. Partly the bicentennial. It was everywhere. If youre old enough to remember the bicentennial, this time, it was very everywhere. Bicentennial minutes, bicentennial tv commercials, was a every day in the local reporter dispatch of your Yorktown Heights at a bicentennial moment and i was cutting out all the newspaper articles. I was just absorbed. Also, the musical 1776. At that time it grabbed me as well and i think all that came together to make that time to me. I think in some ways it was what hamilton has done is its given to me, it was real. These are real people. It didnt seem like a boring bunch of statues, debating great ideas, it seemed like people on the ground trying to figure things out which grabbed me and i was 13 or 14, maybe 14 years old but i started reading biographies and i actually think i sort of just went, i went to reading really early. A biography of john irons, i think i read those who love i think, maybe even which is not a biography per se but its historical, i started reading and i started with a and at some point i got to hamilton at a very early point and i stopped because he was praying in comparison with the other people ive been reading about. Not a lot of people had written about him. He had this weird beginning of his life, was born relatively poor and legitimate in the caribbean, he died of a dual, both of those things were intriguing to me. I know that as a young person you want, was great things and i think on some level i probably identified the young person but wanted to go on to have an exciting life so i read a biography, im not going to tell you which one it was because i didnt like it and i didnt believe it and i wish i could reconstruct what in my 14yearold lorraine read a biography. And i said that doesnt sound convincing but somehow i did so i went to the library and i asked the librarian what this writer had read that gave him the right to say what he said in the book. And she pointed me to the 27 volumes of the hamiltonpapers. And i pulled down the volume and looked at them and rented , it was not always the easiest thing to read but to me, that was the real stuff that wasnt someone telling me about history. That was the history, that was someone putting on paper what they were thinking so to me, that was the most exciting thing ever. It was like, i want someone to tell me what they think, i want to read the stuff so i started reading hamilton papers, starting with volume 1 and i went through and started again and i did that for years and years and i didnt know that there, i never occurred to me, i didnt know there was a secession called historian and i had no outcome in mind. It was just the thing i like to do and so it was like decade later that i realized i had an interesting database in my head. Ive gotten to know hamilton in a way that has not been told. When you put together writings, how did you compile that and what did you compile in them . Thats an interesting story. It was when i was a grad student at uva and i was a teaching assistant with my wonderful graduate advisor. He was doing a course basically at jefferson hamilton course and it was nominally the age of jefferson, he made it jefferson in honor of my being but it was a library of america, wonderful body of jeffersons writings and there was no equivalent. And this is only going to be believable because of what i just said. In a weekend i pulled together a ruler at kinkos or whatever the place was, we photocopied the letters and put them together and it was a glossary of names and things to go along with the library of america volume but it was like well, this is this. And we used it in the course. It was a huge mass of this thing that fell apart because it was so big that works wonderfully, was made to go along with the jefferson volumes and a fewyears later , it occurred to me that i had already edited what could have been a library of america addition of hamiltons writings though at that point i went to the library of america and said id created a volume which i would like to do with you guys and the library of america on their board is a wonderful Nonprofit Organization just about putting american writing or letters in print and keeping it in print forever. So its near and dear to my heart because its what i love and if the actual stuff of history so they created that volume based on this thing i pulled together as a grad student. Its a collection, its not, it includes i guess what you would call who would report on manufacturers on public credit but it includes a lot of personal letters that i selected sometime because they showed something about hamilton as a person, sometimes because they expose something about his politics, sometimes because they showed something negative about him as a person or a politician. Its meant to be a spectrum of writings that show you about his thinking and who he is as a person. I included memos in there, things he neverintended anybody to see sometimes thats the most revealing kind of stuff. Soa favorite one i like to teach with , he wrote a few days within a week of the Constitutional Convention, very loyal thinker, released the Constitutional Convention, he sits down and on a piece ofpaper he says what is going to happen next . Let me think about this. Okay, constitution is going to be ratified, probably washington will be chosen president , that will be good. People trust washington and because they trust washington theyre going to trust people who he appoints the office so all of that bodes well. However, maybe you want to be made president somehow. Maybe that wont happen. Maybe other countries will sleep in and try and take over states. Maybe the states will turn against each other, maybe there will be separate federations and he draws this image of chaos. The downfall, the government collapsing, foreign nations sleeping in. Its fascinating to read. The kicker of this, and this is gods been pushing for this Constitutional Convention and a stronger government forever. I havent has beencreated and at the end ofthis memo he says having created this apocalyptic account of everything falling apart, he says thats not likely whats going to happen. At fascinating. He had grateful , but hes perfectly willing to assume that at that point kind assuming the experiments probably notgoing to work. Probably was not going to function the way. It would function, americans will be willing in his mind to invest in this new government for its work well and its probably all goingto collapse. At fascinating and its great to see because it in capsules all the other courses but his guidance is that convention and you leave basically, i dont think its going to work. Its not what you would expect that moment and certainly not what you expect of his life. Joanne friedman, before we get into calls around the library 14 being hamilton. Were your parents rebuffs . They were not. My grandfather, i dont think i knew that. He was a civil war buff. And i know he had these civil war books that use to read, but i didnt really know anybody who was really interested in history so i was lost on my own planet doing my own thing and i thought it was a weird thing to do. I never talked to anybody about it. I had the books under my bed because i was kind of embarrassed. Sometimes dad would make fun of me for reading these books and so other people had comic books under their bed and i had volumes of the hamilton papers. So no, i was off in dreamland doing whatever i was doing. It was decades later that i discovered what i had been doing. Where you raise and what didyour folks to . I was born in queens, raised in Westchester County new york. My mom initially was a kindergarten teacher, went on to do some work in interior design. My dad was a marketresearcher. Worked for foods and went on to do marketing in the industry and it was a really early person applying Market Market Research techniques so i grew up like sitting, watching focusgroups talk about movies or sorting questionnaires. You give my brothers a dollar and its interesting, i grew up watching research sorting through this Creative Process to come up with something that finds a way to appeal to the public in some way so in some way or another you might not have been reminded but he was research minded so maybe some of that runoff in some way. Lets hear from our colors, begin with david, youre on with historian joanne friedman. Caller you. I want to say to professor friedman and i love affairs of other and i briefly want to jump out and say you are the greatest, youd be the greatest teacher. Ive seen you on cspan many times and what i love about it is you get the excitement and the love and the interest going and i wish all teachers , i school, college had the same enthusiasm and thrill to get their students as you do. Thats very nice of you to say. What was it about the affairs of honor that caught you . I first heard about it when i saw professor friedman possibly on brian lambs show and it just, the idea of it. I have some friends that are on the conservative side and i said i belong to a History Group and i said theres this book that talks about the Early Congress and all these Congress Allegations are trying to kill each other. They all thought this was a most wonderful idea. Baby that wasnt initially what i had in mind. Quickly may i ask some questions. You got into hamiltons head better than anybody else in thecountry today. Hamilton is the founding father. He was ambitious and the first four president s of this country were Founding Fathers and hamilton goes in the Constitutional Convention and he knows that the rule is because hes foreignborn, he cant be president. You think he would have liked to be president and what did power really mean to him, thank you very much. Thank you for the nice things he said. Part answer. First of all there is an exemption clause in the constitution that if you were an american citizen at the time the constitution was ratified you were, you would have been able to be president so he wasnt exempt. He could have been elected president but the second half of my answer is i dont think he ever really knew that. He knew very well it was not very popular. There are various points in which he was very blunt in stepping forward and saying i will be problematic. For a while washington considers tending to england and ultimately john day is sent in to negotiate, hamilton steps forward and says dont do that. Im not popular. That will create problems for you though i dont think he assumed he would be president ever. I think he understood that and ill go even beyond that and say he kind of liked the idea that he was unpopular because i think in his mind it meant he was being very virtuous and promoting ideas not because it would get popular appeal because he thought they were the right things to promote so honest seems for someone who understood power, was interested in empowering this new National Government i dont think you wanted that or assume it would have that kind of power for himself. Rochelle is calling infrom the bronx. Thank you for taking my call. Quick comment, as a retired right librarian im so please to hear your kudos to the library and i have two quick questions. You referred to the fact that the earlier Republican Party and so forth were not the same as they are today and todays republicans constantly refer to them as the party themselves as the party of lincoln. Is this accurate and number two, i went to a presentation at the New York Historical society year ago. A professor, i dont remember his name in oklahoma is writing a book pursuing the thesis hamilton was jewish. Any credibility to this . Very much. So the first question ive already forgotten, the Republican Party. A problem with drawing that kind of a Straight Line is if you look, and there are wonderful 20thcentury lyrical historians have done this track work is that if you look at what the parties represent, what they stand for, what their policies are, a change dramatically over time you can track the use of the word like republican but you cant consistently say what the party stood for in the 1850s or 1870s compared to what the party stands for now. Politicians have all kinds of reasons to want to draw the kind of Straight Lines in the past as a political historian, i think of any historian, the first thing you think is all the ways in which thats not true so rhetorically speaking that has influence but that usually doesnt reflect a reality. As far as the book thats going to be coming out, im not sure when, i think its through University Press on hamilton being jewish, i havent seen the manuscript. Ive heard about it. Ive spoken with some about it so i cant judge the credibility of it or not. I know that the scholars have been working on it, its done a lot of research. Im intrigued to see it. I dont think you can rule anything out until youve seen the evidence and gotten a sense of what leads to the conclusions so im certainly not going to say its not possible. The interesting thing, hamilton is an interesting founder for this reason. There are a lot of records from his youth and you have to do some Research Like a few others have done as well to find things out about his youth because of that, there are a lot of blank spaces regarding hamiltons youth and people like to project different things. For a while people talk about him in him how or other illegitimate son of Port Washington and all kinds of other stories and things people have applied to hamilton. Some ofthem might be true but the fact is you need to get to this , the evidence so im looking forward to seeing that book because i want to see that the stuff that filled the argument, it will be fascinating if its true. What do we know abouthis life on the island of nevis and why was he born there . smother was named rachel percent. Her parents were supposedly french cannot who were on leave done research on regis, at some point this is the ultimate vacation. Ill see what i can find in a way and this is the perfect vacation so it was in the Morning Hours i was researching the archives and in the afternoon i would lie on the beach and that was nirvana for me but his mother was there and his father was the fourth son of a scotsman of somewhat noble birth, but the first one inherits everything, the fourth one doesnt inherit much so he went out into the world and he thought he would get rich quick in the caribbean which is one of the things people try to do their area hes born legitimately to james hamilton, his father at a certain point they moved to the island ofst. Croix. His father leaves the family at some point, doesnt come back. His mother runs a general store and theyre not particularly lost, he dies when hes at a relatively young age so hes not well off, doesnt have much money, doesnt have any connections and on thisisland , he gets off the island and ultimately ends up in north america and feeds into what becomes the American Revolution cause hes so clearly gifted, hes a great writer and people put together a Charitable Fund so he can get an education and thats how you he ends up ultimately in new york. How would you in a short way described his relationship with George Washington . A very short way would be conflicted. Thats a crucial relationship for him and a very important way, he of course knows during the revolution that George Washington is going to end up being the president and how important he is but by looking with him at that early point, he puts himself in his close relationship with the nations first man as he calls in at the time. He puts himself in the nations first man. He is an icon. By the time he becomes president there is a wonderful diary by pennsylvania senator that refers to washington as the first man, kind of awestruck. That is what hamilton means in the memo, if washington becomes president we might be okay, people did respect and admire and in some ways love washington. Is one of very few americans who had a worldwide reputation. That is crucial that hamilton is in contact with him and trusted by him and given power by him. In a sense that makes hamiltons career added to the fact that hamilton is a strong thinker who never doubts what he has to say, shoving himself into situations, putting his thoughts in front of people. The washington relationship is key. Without it is interesting to imagine where he would have gone without it. He has the kind of influence he wanted to have. It is conflicted because he is not good with Authority Figures and kind of chased a little bit, washington makes clear hamilton is the favorite. Hamilton doesnt want to be anybodys favorite. He wants to be appreciated for his merit. He doesnt like the fact that people see him as a favorite. He and washington have a kind of a stack, they are both clearly fatigued. He was up washing with working with washington, and either listening to washington tell him what to write or they were clearly at a late point in the war tired and hamilton working with washington runs down a staircase to deliver a letter is stopped by the marquis do lafayette who had a way of grabbing hold of your lapels and talking with you and an engaged manner. Hamilton looks up with washington glaring down and says something along the lines of colonel hamilton, you have kept me waiting these 10 minutes, you treat me with disrespect, sarah and hamilton who is tired of being unable would much rather be on the battlefield says im not aware that but if you believe that then departed, then storms off and surrenders his position, washington send someone out to apologize to his aid but he refuses to take that apology, wait until he can be replaced and leaves and rights wonderful two letters, one to his fatherinlaw in which he says Something Like i need to tell you what happened but theres a reason why it happened and please understand, dont think as badly of me as you might and then write another letter to his friends, a fellow aid and says something, this is pretty close to being a direct quote, the great man and i have come to an open rupture and he says this is not the first time he has behave this way but it will be the last time i am going to take it. He sums himself is put upon. That tells you about their relationship and hamiltons kind of almost resentment that he needed them so much in that way and the fact that he is impulsive doesnt necessarily contain himself in ways that would have been useful a lot of the time and so washington is patient with hamilton and comes back in again and again and allows him back into his circle. Next call from Mark Barrette in fayetteville, arkansas. Please go ahead. Hello and thank you. I have a comment and the question. My understanding is james somerset. An american slave working for his american master in england sued for his freedom in 1772 and wons case, freeing himself and about 15,000 other slaves in england. The case was widely reported and followed in the american colonies and there was widespread concern among the slave masters that they might soon lose their socalled property, their slaves on which their wealth was based. A very good book on this subject is slave nation from 2005 by alfred bloomrosen, two professors at rutgers. I believe that the somerset case in england in 1772 was one of the real causes of the American Revolution. Mostly it is not acknowledged as such but my question then is what are your thoughts on this and thank you so very much. Thank you. What you are touching on there is a point throughout this period and beyond, several points, number one, that in england there was some antislavery activity going on at a stronger pitch initially than what was going on in the colonies in the early United States. That had an impact on what was going on in the colonies in the United States but also the institution of slavery was a longstanding kind of third rail particularly if you were a southerner. It affected your political decisions, affected your understanding of what kind of power you had. So certainly you could save the institution of slavery in and of itself even before the constitution but throughout colonial and early america plays a major major role in pretty much shaping everything. As you put it, people who owned property of that kind put that front and foremost and what they considered they needed to be protecting and institutions of government are about another things property rights. That is part of the mix of things constantly front and center in American History throughout its existence. Hasnt always been that way in the way people tell that story and some of what we are seeing in recent decades of people really being aggressive about restoring that central part of the story to how we understand who we are as a nation. Next call comes from tom in chicago. Thank you very much. Several years ago when the movie lincoln came out, like a lot of people i became fascinated with Thaddeus Stevens, Tommy Lee Jones played them so brilliantly in the movie and he seemed like a very interesting character and probably an admirable one as well. The violence on the floor of congress that you write about, given how easily provoked so many of these congressmen were especially the ones in the other party and given how provocative stevens was in a brutally rhetorical way did anyone ever pulled a knife on him . Was he challenged to a duel . Was he on the receiving end of any of this violence . That is stevens, fervent antislavery politician and a real character was really biting, dry kind of which, a really fun study. Im not aware of anyone explicitly what was wonderful about stevens is this will not be surprising given everything you said but he was really effective at speaking up and smacking as any southerner who made any gesture in that direction. For example, in the later years of the civil war when southerners are trying to find their way back into the union, louisiana, Thaddeus Stevens among others, when southerners threatened violence stands up and says Something Like not a lot of you were sheer back in the 1850s, i was. You remember these guys, do we really want to let them back in. I dont know, what do you think. He would step forward and say that. Interesting that people theres one moment in which someone threatens him and afterwords he referred to it as a momentary breeze, he said there was a momentary breeze. It wasnt a momentary breeze, it was someone threatening him. He is and at the receiving end but hes never afraid to speak his mind in the midst of it. There is a moment when theres discussion or voting on what becomes the fugitive slave act. A lot of congressmen go and basically hide in the Congressional Library so they dont have to vote on the issue and when the voting is done stevens says out loud in the congressional record you can send someone to the library and tell everybody to come back, its safe, were done with that vote. He steps forward and says that but as far as i know isnt physically really attacked. Let me go to may 22, 1856. A name that is relatively lost to history. It wasnt until i reread field of blood, preston hooks. The caning of Charles Sumner. Took me a long time to write it, 17 years at christmas. One thing i will say about that chunk of time. When i said to people im writing up about physical violence in the u. S. Congress most people even if they didnt know names would Say Something along the lines of there was that guy. Charles sumner. People have a sense that there was one violent incident in congress, Charles Sumner is the massachusetts Abolitionist Center contains to the ground sitting at his desk in the senate by Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina. Comes across the senate. Sumner stood up and made a very aggressive antislavery speech and in it he had insulted according to brooks South Carolina and the kinsman of brooks. So brooks comes into the senate and says to sumner who was seated at his desk, you have insulted my part of the union, my state, my kinsman and threatened to punish him forward and violently cames him. Sumner innocence is trapped at the desk. Ultimately, in his anxiety to get away from the caneing wrenches the desk from the ground but brooks continues until the cane breaks. What is interesting. There are a number of interesting things. One of them is although there was a lot of violence in congress which i write about in this book, deliberate attacks like that are supposed to take place in the streets. Violence erupts all the time particularly in the house but if youre going to stage an attack in that way it is supposed to happen in the streets and brooks for two days try to catch sumner outside on Capitol Grounds because that is the proper way to beat a congressman, why . You can see why because what happens when he confronts them in the Senate Chambers. A senator confronting a northerner, and abolitionist in the Senate Chamber and beating him to the ground becomes the south beating the north into submission in a deeply symbolic kind of way that has national repercussions. There would have been repercussions if it happens outside, but the power of that happening in the senate takes off the charts. Somebody else, a cohort of brooks protecting or making sure people didnt come to his health. Correct. Another South Carolina and keeping anyone who tried to keep anyone from interfering away. The fact of the matter is people were yelling dont kill him. Here is the interesting thing about congressional violence. It is counterintuitive. There was a lot of violence in this period, fighting was kind of a given if it seemed fair. By that i mean there were of fighting. If you were supposed to insult someone it was only a few was present so he could defend himself. If you attack someone you were only supposed to attack if you were attacking an unarmed man you yourself were supposed to be unarmed. Fairness was considered important. An example of that is an account from the late 1850s, a letter from a congressman, he looks up and sees a menacing looking stranger standing in front of one of his colleagues with his fists clenched and says that doesnt look good, i think theres going to be a fight but looks at the stranger and his colleague and his colleague is a bigger man and says whatever happens it will be fine. But when he spots a weapon he thinks the stranger is holding a weapon he stands up and positions himself behind that stranger in case he pools a weapon so he lets the fight happen. If it is fair he let that happen. The stranger reached for a weapon he would have stopped at sosa what is happening in the case of sumner is certainly that seems like an unfair fight in many ways. In the investigation of that, a huge congressional report about it, brooks is asked did you at least warn sumner you were going to do this . That would have made it fair . And brooks clearly did not warn sumner he is reprimanded for not warning him him by congress. What you did was bad but also you should have warned him. This tells you about the culture of congress that somehow that would have made it better, redeemed that somehow. Was Preston Brooks reelected . Preston brooks was celebrated in the south, since celebratory canes, he is reelected by northerners providentially get some kind of Throat Infection and suffocates and dies very suddenly. What is interesting about the fighters i write about in my book and most of the aggressive fighters in much of the period i write about people in the period when you look at an Incoming Congress tended to try to break ranks down into fighting men and noncombatants, who were the fighters and noncombatants . Fighting tended to get them reelected because they henry wise of virginia is a fighting man for sure. At one point he is reprimanded. Shame on you for what you do, you caused 12 fights already this session you should be sent home and he says do it. They are going to reelect me and put me here because im elected to do this. I am fighting for their rights and he is right. To some degree for period of time, people who fight in that way, southerners who were willing to fight in that way, 10 of a given house wouldve been considered fighting men, were put there because the assumption is they will use that edge to fight to protect their interests including the institution of slavery. Host next offer robert in atlanta. Caller your delightful, thank you. My question is about the conflicted relationship between hamilton and washington and you pretty much answered everything so if i may i will ask something else. What do you think were the prospect of hamilton had the dual not occurred and had he been just, i guess tech cast adrift in new york as an attorney. Would he have lived out his life that way or would he have tried to get back onto the National Stage . Thats a good question and we have a little evidence what he was thinking. By the time the dual happened hamiltons political career is not doing really well. He wrote even without the dual a number of pamphlets he thought were very logical but did not do him any favors. He defend himself against charges of using treasury funds for an adulterous affair, did not do his reputation any favors, many writes a pamphlet attacking his own partys president ial candidate john adams in the election of 1800, that really didnt do him favors. People were supporters at that point of backing away from him as an indiscreet politician, that he did not have discretion or control over himself and was a liability. So his career is already suffering. The federalists, his party, as a whole, are staying away, the nation moving in a more democratic direction. On that level too he has much less power so in one way or another i dont think he was going to gain political power again. Of the dual hadnt happened what would he have done . He left behind one or 2 little clues about that. He might have become a political commentator. He clearly was pondering another collection of essays on the lines of the federalists which he was initiator of the federalist essays that he wrote with James Madison and john j and in later years he was thinking of doing that again. He approached one friend and colleague and said would you be willing to write for Something Like that, i think he would have been commenting on American Government but he saw some self as someone who would weigh in and be critical but might have been a commentator of that kind of thing. That said, the final statement he wrote before the dual, he explained he feels compelled to fight the dual, the last paragraph is fascinating. He says something along the lines of some of you it is addressed if he dies in the dual, may be wondering why he ended up fighting this duel, i dont support doing, i should have just not done this but heres the thing. At some point in our future, in the case of crazies in our Public Affairs which seem likely to happen he wants to be able to step forward during those crazies and be useful and to be useful he felt he needed to protect and redeem his reputation so that he could be a public figure if needed again. This is on the lines of the memo i mentioned a while back about things not working and everything collapsing, he pretty consistently thought the american experiment might not last and if it didnt he saw himself as someone who would literally and figuratively ride into the mess, ride into the problem and in some way or other save the day. He never comes out and says i think there will be warfare but might there be conflict, a warlike nature between americans . He might have said yes and in that case he wanted to be prepared to fight and in some ways he meant that literally, fight as a soldier and part of why he thought that dual was to protect and redeem his reputation for the period when that might come. Host i read the federalist papers like a dissenting opinion from the Supreme Court. Is that the right way to do it . People tend to use the federalists as an objective commentary on the constitution and the fact of the matter is, this is an exaggeration but it is what i tell my students. It is kind of a commercial advertisement for the constitution. The purpose of the federalist essays is here is why you should like them. The idea behind it was hamilton and madison and jay, thinking of all the ways americans were going to distrust, what might they not like, what might be bad about it and they step forward and say lets explain why this isnt such a bad thing and if we dont do this, this might happen and that is worse. It really isnt intended to be objective. It was an objective statement that the constitution is but it is a document with a purpose, a series of newspaper essays written to defend and promote this new constitution so people will trusted and the states will ideally ratify it. Host next call from jane in california. Please go ahead. Caller thank you for being there. I am in the midst of a dilemma. Im almost finished with biography of John Marshall called without precedent and in the book he goes into great detail on how terrible, devious, jefferson was in dollars close to treason. I am having difficulty trying to come to peace with this because he wrote the declaration of independence and other papers but his behavior, lack of integrity and all the terrible things he did is overwhelming. How do you deal with this . There is a tendency to take sides particularly when looking at hamilton and jefferson and nowadays given hamilton it is interesting. When you look under the long haul, when hamiltons reputation is doing well and jefferson applicants, it is true beyond them. I would say when you read a book that appears to be very 1sided in that way the best thing to do is go out and read another book that comes at it from another point of view. Clearly this book has a strong opinion about marshall and jefferson and marshall did not see eye to eye and jefferson really detested marshall, they had different political views. I would encourage you to go out and read a biography of jefferson that takes a different point of view. One of the things i do with my students in my class. Its very hard, students generally come into a class in ways they havent even understood, have taken aside. One of the best things you can do is read the things these people have written. I am a person who loves to read that kind of primary evidence but if you read a jefferson biography that is favorable favorable to jefferson you can then begin to evaluate what you think, pit books against each other. This is going to be a broad statement. I almost wouldnt trust a book, any book that is that 1sided without reading another book with a different point of view so that you as a leader can evaluate and decide what you think. Personally when i deal with jefferson i dont see good guy hamilton and get to visit the bad guy hamilton and good guy jefferson. I dont think it is ever that clear. I think the important thing about their existence and others in this period is that no one was absolutely right and most people were not absolutely wrong and the fact of the matter is the banging up of different ideas against each other ends up leading to something that is functional. That is a way to think about the period. There are aspects of jefferson im not particularly fond of, there are aspects of hamilton im not particularly fond of either but what is interesting is the blend of ideas and what happens because of that blend of ideas and what doesnt happen and the ways in which overtime other politicians and public figures of the populace find ways to build on and improve on what has come before. We are going to go back to your twitter feed. Why do you use 1755 . Your twitter handle . We dont absolutely know when hamilton was born. For a long time it was 1755 or 1757. There is a piece of paper that suggest hamilton was born in 1755. Hamilton himself appears to have been 1757. I went with 1755 because it is a document and i dont im not invested in 55 or 57 but that is where that comes from. Your 1755 or. With great disdain, your 55 or. People feel very strongly about these things. I dont have quite that amount of personal investment in it. This is a tweet from 2018 and we know that for a fact. Im going to throw an idea into the twittersphere and see what happens. What if there was a giant history rally, a teach in of sorts with teachers, historians of all kinds getting together to discuss was we could learn from American History, to help us in the present. What was the reaction you got to that . That was really interesting. That, i was very honest, im throwing this into the twittersphere. It was an idea i thought would be useful and have some real power to make people think about history, American History in all its complexity and not take a glossy look at the past and be helpful to wrestle with the present by looking at ways in which we wrestle with things of the past. I threw that out not knowing what would happen and got really big response. Sometimes from teachers, sometimes from historians. I got a lot of email on it. A lot of organizations and public figures of various sorts contacted me about it. All of them saying yes, lets do this. This is something i have spoken with a number of colleagues about the best way to move forward. This is something im eager to pursue and do. Ideally in the late spring early summer of next year. I think it would be a wonderful thing to have a day when we can talk about it wrestle with and argue about American History and all its complexity, not celebrate things, not tell a glossy sort of mythologized view of things but really talk about the ways in which we have struggled in the past and how we pushed through those struggles. At this point it is fake. I just begun conversations with people but i was so encouraged by the response, the widespread response that i threw it out into the twittersphere expecting nothing and now i think wouldnt it be a wonderful thing to have a day and not just in washington in the National Center, people at a local level get together to talk about history in a targeted way, come back to me in a couple months and i will have a better idea. I am a historian. I engage with scholars. I write scholarly history. I also fervently want to communicate with the public. I think historian scholars should be among the people who are aggressively dealing with the public. Some of us do, some of us dont. What a great thing to create a public conversation about. Host so the cspan cameras could be at this event. Marilyn in leavenworth, kansas. High. Caller hi, how are you. I wanted to ask. I didnt coming at the beginning of this talk so perhaps i missed this but always seem to be hamiltons greatest contribution was his economic ideas, that he was for banks, that he was for the assumption of the states that when so many of the other Founding Fathers distrusted banks, jefferson thought we should all be farmers and it just seemed to me that paying our debts from the very beginning made such a huge difference in this country and in our success. Would you talk about that . What do you do in leavenworth, kansas . Im retired. I worked in business insurance. And what is your level of interest in history . Ive always liked history. Ive always been interested in history. I think the way things are now when you go back and read history to see the long haul. That is a good question. Grab a slug of water here. I think you are absolutely right that hamiltons financial plan. I spoke earlier about hamilton being a powerful nationalist and that being part of his legacy and youre absolutely right that a vital part of his legacy and the fundamental thing he did was to step in as the first secretary of the treasury and there really wasnt a National Structure for financing anyway and to really create that kind of a structure. He was in some ways the perfect person for that job. Hes a guy who thought in terms of plans. When i write about him as a person i talk about the fact that he was plan minded in his personal life, plan minded as a politician so he was a perfect person to step in and say i will solve this problem, revolutionary war debt. Individual states with their own systems of dealing or not dealing with debt and now im going to take on this National Position and you are right, he has a 3part plan where he wents the National Government to reduce the debt, where he wants to create a national bank, where he wants the National Government to promote manufacturing and those are crucial for the precise reason that you say and he says our debt is the price of liberty. You need to step forward to prove our credit as a nation and he means credit in the broadest way possible, to prove that we are a nation with credit, that we have reputation, the we are trustworthy and have financial credit we need to tend to our debt. He says in his first report on public credit, credit is an entire thing. By that he means its not just financial. It is who we are as a nation. Are absolutely right, a concrete thing he did in his public life, stepping forward and creating the 3part plan and pushing it through and standing behind it at a point there were many people. The jeffersonians were more complex but you are absolutely right that there was an agrarian ideal, and more urban idea on the other side. Hamilton is stepping forward and doing that work on a groundlevel. It is tempting to look at people like hamilton and jefferson and think about them as ideologists, people thinking on a broad level. One of the things about hamilton is how good he is with groundlevel. He takes office, he doesnt know much at all on the National Level about the nations finances. He does things like creates a sort of questionnaire he sends out to customers masters around the country asking them to check boxes, tell me about trade, tell me about customs, tell me about so he can collect information and Getting National view of finance in some ways so hes wonderful in a variety of ways and his plan is a crucial part of what he does. Nina is responding via twitter to your history teachin or get together. History begins before the colonists arrived, next years history symposium is held, must include native American History and preface. Absolutely. This is the challenge. As soon as i say yes, lets talk about history the question becomes how broadly and chronologically but youre absolutely right, particularly given the long arc of American History is about fighting for rights and having right speed taken away in one way or another, you have to deal with all sides of that equation, deal with people who were violated and how these people are fighting for their rights. That has to be at the center of the story among other things. I had two conversations so far about this so i havent progressed beyond something i want to do and now i want to figure out how to do it but i am with you. Before we run out of time weve got to talk about Benjamin Brown fringe, a name lost to history. Wherever you are Benjamin Brown fringe, i thank you. When i was writing my most recent book, a story about physical violence in congress i found roughly 70 physically violent incidents in the house and senate, each one could be a chapter so part of my challenge in writing the book was how to tell the story and investigate the violence and figure out what it means an early on in the process i found this minor congressional cleric named Benjamin Brown fringe, many people used them before when writing about lincoln because hes important in the Lincoln White house but he that behind an 11 volume diary, he had a newspaper column, had an extensive he is a poet, he is amazing and what is wonderful about what he left behind is he is in the circle of congress from 1833 until 1870 when he died and what he allows me to do is act as a guide in my book, looks through his eyes when confronting the violence in congress and you see it through his eyes and is wonderful about him as he arrives from a town in New Hampshire is made a minor clerk, his eyes are this big, the nations capital, he writes this down but when he comes to congress, everyone likes him, he is collegial, people of all parties like him, would have been called a dell faced democrat meaning a northern democrat trying to appease southerners on slavery, that guy doing anything it takes to silence the slavery issue and appease southerners to accept the union. By the time of the civil war in 1860, he talks about this in his diary, he goes out to buy a gun to carry at all times in case he needs to shoot southerners who seem threatening. My thought in writing the book, if i explain how the person who enters washington wanted to appease southerners by the gun and is ready to shoot them, i call it the emotional logic, how emotionally did that make sense to him and others . That is an interesting thread to add to the way we understand the coming of the civil war. Benjamin brown fringe allowed me to do that. I lived with Benjamin Brown fringe for at least a decade if not more and what is fascinating about him is he is the forest gump of the period i write about meaning when i was making a footnotes for the book, lots of footnote say over and over, no, really, he was there. Of something significant happens somehow Benjamin Brown fringe is right there watching it happen. Someone tries to assassinate Andrew Jackson french is right there seeing it happen. John quincy adams has a stroke, not long after theres fringe holding his hand. The gettysburg address Abraham Lincoln gives the gettysburg address, who is up on the platform standing beside him . Benjamin brown fringe. The assassination, who is at the bedside kick you standing beside his corpse at the white house after he died, Benjamin Brown fringe is there for everything. This incredible eyewitness who is very generous in the way he puts his thoughts and feelings down on paper so he really ends up showing what it felt like to be in that kind of extreme polarized climate and how americans learned to turn on each other to the degree that they did. Where did you find his papers . Guest there is a published, very abridged edition of his papers that came out from the library of congress. People who write about lincoln tends to know about him because he adored lincoln and has these great anecdotes. One of my favorite ones being someone gave him a pair of socks to give to lincoln that had a Confederate Flag on each foot which lincoln finds very funny and i love that attitude or a better anecdote he is in a room with lincoln in the white house and lincoln says out loud it is a room full of people, anyone in here know how to spell the word missile . French writes in his diary what kind of a man is that . What kind of president is willing to admit he doesnt know how to spell that and ask a room full of people with no shame and he loves lincoln. People hadnt done as much work with 11 volumes of his diary and all his other writing, his newspaper columns are full of poetry. When i was finishing the book and got to the epilogue and am trying to figure out 17 im in the last 10 pages and cant figure out how to end it . Come on, french, give me something i was shuffling through papers and agonizing and what do i discover . The year before he died he wrote a poem about what congressman and to him. It was like he smiled down from clerk heaven and said i am sitting in my office, the capital, my home for all these years. He was the remarkably generous in the way he gave me everything. The book wouldnt have been possible without him. Host next call is from joseph in new york. That that is a Westchester County. Thank you very much, professor, for correcting him on the correct spelling of the correct pronunciation, thank you very much. I want to commend you on your earlier comments but also being an openminded historian and my question is this. What words of wisdom would you give to todays congress, what not to do and things to do to strengthen this nation of ours right now which is divided and im interested in your comments and i love the idea that you want to create a whole new cultural thinking. Really appreciate that and i will wait for your comments. Guest i wonder what i will say in response to that question. I wish i think people often look at historians to come up with solutions to the present and that is something i cant do. What i can say, the times in which our government has functions best have been moments when people listen to each other in some way or another. The idea the government is grounded on debate and compromise. Sometimes debate is nasty and people scream at each other and we have had extreme polarization many times before, sometimes extreme extreme polarization but there needs to be willingness to debate, however fears the bait can be. That is something we are in such a polarized moment where people are othering each other to such a degree it is not helping us at all. It is easy for me to say that sitting here in a very pleasant studio talking to you. I dont have a solution for how to change that because obviously congress is reflective of a larger popular will, congress being representative it is a cycle. Congress influences the public and we are in the middle of that. I have no brilliant solution. I wish i did. On how to promote that kind of atmosphere but othering and you are an american and im american is not a useful way for us to find our way out of the moment we are in. How we get beyond that i am not able to offer you that answer. Email from stephen was i wonder if she found readers, her students believe the Political Violence she described ended at the civil war because in his research in 1908, a fight between a tennessee senator and a constituents, political opponent in the state capital. It doesnt end with the civil war so that is a good point. It doesnt happen on the floor of congress the way it did before. You can see that one some louisiana members try to get back into congress, get louisiana back in the union and there are two violent incidents that happened in the capital not long after louisiana tries to get back into the union but unlike before the war you have northerners like Thaddeus Stevens step forward and say we want to let them back in . You remember what this was like . The power dynamic has shifted. As you are suggestion, that doesnt mean the violence stops. You could say southerners are no longer is effective in deploying violence in congress they are very effective at deploying it in the south in the reconstruction era and violence continues among politicians in a variety of ways. It is important that the question allowed me to make it, the violence doesnt stop. It just shifts and reconfigures itself and is tempered in some way that shift ground in other ways. American politics has been violent in a lot of ways for a long time. The broader question is what do we do or what have we done to contain that violence. That is another question i wish i could offer you a solution that i do not have but it is an important point to make. It is not as though violence suddenly ended the at any given point. Glenn in new jersey. Caller thanks for another Wonderful Program and to professor freeman for all your wonderful research and work. I did see you in 2004. You gave a presentation at the 200th anniversary of the dual. My question for you is this. Your field of blood text. Had you considered david broaddrick, david terry duell in california particularly given broderick was a us senator from california and terry was a Supreme Court justice from california they fought a duel outside san francisco, broderick was killed and given the context of it being california, slavery splits within democratic party, was that something in your book . I realize as you mentioned earlier there are literally dozens but have you thought about that specific one . Host are you an amateur historian or just part of your profession . I am a professor at john jakes college and broaddrick was a volunteer fire officer who moved to california and im very involved locally with history and your viewers should know that the Visitor Center ctr. Hamilton and patterson, will be opening a couple years so im very interested as an amateur historian. Host thanks, i did not expect that answer. Caller guest the dual you are describing, the famous one, dramatic one. Because he is you are suggesting, once you start broadening beyond washington the field for violence even between people in Congress Becomes enormous. Incidents that took place in washington in the capital or on the streets of washington when congress is in session because i was interested in how the violence was shaping what congress was doing and what americans thought about congress and the state of the nation so i had to stop myself from getting beyond that. There are any number of incidents and that is a major when i could have been pursuing. I would probably on the 57th part of this book had i kept going that way. What i was interested in was the knicks of people in congress and washington who dealt with violence in different ways, different understandings of justice and how that works in different political viewpoints, desires and interests. What happens when you put people together in the house and senate and force them to deal with contentious issues . That was one of the initial questions, what happens when you have those populations in this public venue with a National Audience of nation making or breaking possibilities in their decisions . What happens in that climate when there is that kind of violence . John is right here in washington dc. Go ahead. I am a big fan of american nations by colin woodward. He is an unflattering episode in the story of Alexander Hamilton. During the revolutionary war soldiers from western pennsylvania, there was no money to pay them. The Continental Congress gave them ious, gave them scripts and they were able to use that to pay their taxes to the state of pennsylvania and then this guy comes along, Robert Morris and he is described as a protege of Alexander Hamilton, a protege of Robert Morris. Robert morris engineers that people can no longer pay their state taxes with congressional scripts, these ious and because of that they are forced to sell this script for 2, 5, 10, 15 of face value. Friends of Robert Morris, he says, wind up owning 50 of the outstanding script and shortly after that, Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris come up with this idea that the Us Government is going to pay all of this script in fool with 6 interest paid in gold or silver and they are going to tax the very people, veterans who were forced to pay, forced to sell in order to get that currency. There is the whiskey rebellion, they rebel but it is unsavory. Host we are going to leave it there and hear from professor freeman. Guest that is an excellent point and it becomes a controversy in the early part of his time as secretary of the treasury because he explicitly says there are people who come forward who say there should be a way of discriminating between speculators who brought up these ious, hoping down the road they would be paid in full but buying them up from minimal amounts of money, there should be ways of discriminating between speculators and veterans and hamilton does indeed step forward, and there is no way to track how each iou has gone but more than that hamiltons idea is the iou has become a form of currency that are worth what the value is. His argument is if they are practical as a form of currency their stated value to be what they were. That is inherently unfair to people given those ious, that is a valid thing to say, you can see hamilton at logic and many ways in which the logic is unfair to many people and at the time not just in later years people said that and it was not the only thing people stepped forward and said. And it is going to benefit these money men you seem so you to please and impress. This is unseemly in many ways. There is a logic to that. You can see that. He had at his logic, we can debate whether he uses it or not but that would be his counterargument. Host tom in denver, youre on the air. Caller thank you for taking my call. I once i you debate clay jenkinson. He played Thomas Jefferson and you defended Alexander Hamilton. That was a long time ago. I hope i didnt have too much coffee. Is the funny thing about that. Clay jenkinson has gone on to do other things but for a time, i dont know what to call him. A jefferson reenactor, well known for doing that. He had the jefferson our radio show, did a lot of Public Programs in jefferson but the quirky thing about that is he was my senior thesis advisor at college and he was becoming interested in jefferson my senior year in college and i was already interested in hamilton and i remember going into his office in my senior year, he was building a model of monticello and i made some snide remark about jefferson and he looked at me, he had no idea i was interested in hamilton and i know he was interested in jefferson that i was getting him. Moment, he was beginning his jefferson. I was into my hamilton career which i lost touch with him for a long time and then we crossed paths later when he was doing his jefferson work, we cross paths again and i think was the National Endowment for the humanities that decided we would have this debate. I cant member now what state it was in but we did, we had a debate in which i represented hamilton, clay represented jefferson. It was a public debate. I remember it was filmed. And i remember he made a snide comment about hamilton, he said Something Like it has taken me a lifetime to get to know jefferson but i could do hamilton in a weekend and he got to and i remember he was very upset at the audience. I was kind of shocked. It meant somehow or other i mustve put in my 0. 02 for hamilton enough that they stood up for him at that one little moment. But i have no idea what your memory of that event was but it was wonderful fun and what an honor to do that to a former teacher of mine and the weirdness of having him end up where he ended up and he was teaching english. I was an english major and colleague. We had nothing to do with history at all. It was wonderful debate. Somehow that has to be on vhs videotape which means i cant play it at all but it was a wonderful event. Maybe you can reenactor on your podcast. Or maybe not. My podcast is back story. American history podcast, four of us historians cohosted and we basically do a deep dive back into history, something having to do with the current moment but we look at the deeper past of it. There was recently a show of reparations, a show about black face. We recently with labor day did a show about the history of labor in america. We did all kinds of shows, cultural shows about collecting things in america. Whats wonderful about it is it is very conversational, the four of us are all people with a strong sense of humor so it is fun to listen to. Who are the 4 . Brian balla, Nathan Comley and myself. This is selfpromotional but it is a fun listen but historical lesson as well. It is called back story. I want to close with affairs of honor in which you write a note on method. This book approaches politics in an unusual way. It does not examine political events or personalities in isolation or reduce them to the level of historical anecdote. Nor does attack also brought a theme is to lose sight of the participants perspective aiming at a big point between broad cultural history and Detailed Analysis under political narrative, it uses the Vantage Point of an f no historian. Which is what cute you ira that partly because when you are writing about the founders people think about them as great men and my point is what if you just think about an elite population of men in a particular environment and look at what they do. The mens i look at behavior of a particular population in a particular place. What happens when you look at the founders in that way . How can you understand them differently so i dont want people to think about the founders as great men but as individuals in a particular climate doing smart and not smart things and how do we make sense of them. Host Joann Freeman has been our guest for the past three hours, thank you for your time. Guest thank you for having me. You are watching booktv. The what programs are available every weekend, watch top nonfiction authors and books with coverage of events, fares and festivals, policy, technology and more plus our signature programs, in depth and after words. Enjoyed booktv this week and every weekend on cspan2. And today and tomorrow well be live from nashville for the southern festival of books with author discussions on immigration, race and identity. War and military history and much more. Also this weekend former Obama Administration National Security adviser and u. N. Ambassador susan rice will reflect on her life and career. Sunday candidated columnist Jackie Gingrich cushman will share her thoughts on how to reduce polarization, and on monday a full slate of author programs including talks by