actually adore. i adore their work. i adore their public engagement and joanne freeman is no exception to that. i i first we were talking about it. we first met back and i think it was 2015. i had been following her work for a long time, but we actually met in 2015 through a podcast that she was doing at the time backstory some of you may be familiar with that. it used to be called backstory with the american history guys and they decided to not be sexist and add women. but it was a nationally syndicated podcast. that was extraordinary and joanne was a part of that. so the director is really an ongoing conversation about the importance of legacies of our history, right? i mean that's underlying here what we're talking about and and for example, you know for those of you who may not be totally familiar the mission of the jamestown yorktown foundation is to explore the convergence of cultures among native americans europeans and central west africans and the legacy bequeath to the nation. and those legacies and that's that's the mission for over 25 years now, but we haven't really talked about legacy as much we haven't talked about the importance of how this history plays out over time and how we as the public consume that history. so that's part of the reason why our very first one was with dr. jason herbert and exploring how popular culture through movies shapes our understanding of the past right or wrong. it's a reality as a matter of fact the recently the i think was the american historians association published a piece and partnership that talked about 68% of americans get their understanding of history from film and tv. only three to five percent actually get it from the books that people like joanne wright. about 36% get it from museums. so with those kinds of stats, we've got some work to do. right to help people really understand and put these things in perspective. so without further ado. just wanted to like i said give you a little background. so let me tell you about the remarkable person. you're getting ready to meet and that i'm going to be chatting with for a while. dr. joanne b. freeman is professor of history and she specializes in politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods of american history. she earned her phd at the university of virginia her fields of interest again are revolutionary and early national american history with special interest in politics and culture. she is a fellow of the society of american historians and freeman has won fellowships from among others the american council of learned societies the coleman center for scholars and writers the dirksen congressional research center the american historical association in the library of congress. she is a distinguished lecture for the organization of american historians and was rated. one of the nation's top young historians in 2005 her articles have appeared in a wide range of academic publications. ranging from the william and mary quarterly the journal of the early republic etc. she's been published and does a featured essays and things of that sort for major newspaper publications around the country. you may have seen some more recently and in addition to just being a brilliant scholar two of her books that we have available if you want to purchase it on your way out we can certainly arrange that for you. lots there's lots to say about her but and she also this is one of the things that that really made me appreciate her is the fact that she does a lot of work in the public history sphere not just the academic so she's worked on documentaries providing consultation services and things of that sort. she has a new podcast that she's been doing for a while with a dear friend of hers, dr. heather cox richardson who some of you may be following as well their podcast comes out every tuesday and it's called then and now again this this legacy's part. and she's also like i said, she she just everywhere. you name the documentary. she's probably in it. the for example the feel of blood this is this was one of my favorites field of blood talking about the violence in congress and the road to the civil war. among the praise for that john meacham wrote for readers who think things in the first decades of the 21st century have never been worse freeman's portrait of a temptuous and tumultuous us congress offers a sobering and illuminating corrective. on her work on dueling affairs of honor national politics in the new republic one of the praises for that work comes from kirkus. it says quote sex ten scandals political mudslinging sectarian division tabloid expose bill clinton may have had a bad time but the founding fathers had it worse. good reading especially for students of political culture and early american history gentleman and ladies. please join me in welcoming dr. joanne freeman. okay, since we started with hamilton we have to keep going a little bit before we jump off into the other stuff. and and i know you've been studying him for 40 years. why i mean, what what was it about him that that really picture interest? well, i would say it changed over time. so 40 maybe a little more than 40 years ago. let's say i was an early a teenager person when i discovered him. yeah. yeah time it was near the bicentennial. mm-hmm. right? so the founders were all over the place. i got interested in reading history. i started reading biographies and there are a lot of biographies of you know, john adams thomas jefferson, and have to hamilton and there wasn't a lot about him. and then when i looked into him and i saw wow, he was born illegitimate and died in the duel. initially, i thought this is really interesting and then he's this young guy who's ambitious and wanted to achieve great things. so i think i bought into that too. but over the years what came to really interest me is he's so self-destructive, right? he's he's at the center of all of the politics. so if you're studying politics, he's there. but he's so self-destructive in the process of doing it that i wanted to figure out why in the world would he do certain things and that taught me a lot about early america? and that ultimately led me to research dueling because i needed to understand why he fought a duel and that sort of led me off. into history okay. well, you know i all i really understood about him. i knew he was at yorktown which was important right and he was you know, george washington's guy. i knew that he was on my $10 bill and i thought he was pretty handsome when i was growing up. but i like i said, i mean i i like a lot of america have been able to rediscover him. not only through your work but through this really interesting and really powerful and very exciting piece of pop culture, right? so i have to say i have to make this clear because it's the most bizarre thing in the last four or five years. i mean given that i've been studying this guy forever. normally, i would give lectures or i would write about him and what i would have to say is there's this guy you've never heard of named alexander hamilton and let me explain to you why he's important now. i spend all of my time saying he's not so great. calm down. it's a little strange right? i'm curious how many of you by our show of hands that i got a little glare here. so forgive me, but i show of hands how many of you've actually seen the show or at least heard the soundtrack. oh, that's fabulous. okay. okay, so if you have you know, one of the things that i i can kind of that i thought was really interesting and i'd really love you to delve into this a little bit the comment that you just made about he's really not a great guy, right? i mean he's you know in the show lynn kind of teases at this idea that he's he's arrogant. he's brash. he's you know, you know combative. he's all of these things so historically how does that play? in terms of as you've discovered all of these other little things about him and and you know, so talk to me about that. well, yeah, so all of those things are true, right? he's he's arrogant. he's impulsive. he doesn't delegate responsibility really? well, he doesn't take advice from anybody. he doesn't ask advice of anybody in a sense. he's not a guy you would think would be a really great politician and although he's really effective at wheeling and dealing he's not a great politician because for all of these reasons, right he tends to i mean, for example, one of the things i found when i was researching dueling and hamilton over the course of his life, he came up close near to fighting a duel 10 times. wow. okay now that that probably is a record for these sort of elite founder folk. so 10 times. and almost all of this these cases is true. he said something stupid. and someone said really? are you gonna stand behind that and then they had to send these letters to each other and negotiate and he managed to negotiate his way out of all of these. affairs except one except yeah, except one that he didn't that didn't work. so well, okay. okay. so what do you think? let's start with what did they get right and then we can go down the list of what they got wrong. okay. so the first thing i have to say only because the first time i saw it and i saw it off broadway first, and i'm all i knew is that some crazy person had made a musical about alexander hamilton and probably in my life. this would not happen again, so i needed to go see it and you know, i sat in the audience and thought they're singing george washington's farewell address. like how is that possible they're singing the farewell address and then they managed to show you hamilton writing it and then washington speaking it right so they're actually is of hamilton's own language and words in it being a historian and seeing that play. i would be like, oh, that's from the 1792 letter. oh, that's from the 1801 letter so they're actually is a lot of hamilton's way of phrasing things. he actually is a really good writer in the play. you know, i would say the play. not some of his character right? i wrote at some point. i wrote an article in one of the things i argued is there's not really a lot of politics in the play. i also wouldn't expect that in musical theater and that said, you know they sing about they have several cabinet meetings which again you wouldn't expect there are lots of things that are shortened in time. so for example, the election of 1800 doesn't cause the duel and at one point, you know, lynn said well, i mean, come on like we got to get them out of there. so we're not gonna go between 1800 and 1804, so i guess i would say that there's things that are collapsed in time for those of you who have seen the play there's a moment in the play where hamilton's sister-in-law. wants to know hamilton wrote a letter and had a comma my dearest angelica. it's actually the reverse. she misplaced the comma. and hamilton wrote a letter saying second i mean something is that common mean something so there are things that as a historian my main response to it was there's so much history in it, and that was stunning to me that said you know, there's so much that's missing. i mean it's easy and obvious to say but slavery right there are there's the entire world around hamilton is not there now again as a work of musical theater. some part of me is and was so grateful that this came out and got so many people interested in early american history and a lot of my teaching was really capable. i could go up to students and say you love that. so let me tell you about what really happened. so i've never seen anything like the interest that that brought so yes, it's not entirely accurate and a variety of ways. there are things that are missing there are big holes. i wouldn't teach politics that way but it's done an amazing thing for people's understanding of the period for their understanding the people in the period. we're human. and not you know, sort of guy standing around having great oratorical moments. um, so it's done a lot of that i think are good. okay, so that being said if you mentioned politics and a couple of other things. what would you want if if you could sit down with him and say hey, this is hamilton part 2. what would you want in it? wow, hamilton part 2 what would i want in it? i might want no this is coming from a political historian. so but i might want some of the actual real like wheeling and dealing of what the heck he was doing when he was doing everything that he was doing because he it's not boring right? it's very dream. well, it's dramatic and he makes big mistakes. give us some examples. okay, so, um when he's trying to figure out to get that national government to assume state debts, and that's really controversial because people are afraid of the national government having too much power and that's precisely what hamilton wants but he's panicked because he's not clear if congress is going to support this measure and he's trying to do whatever he can do to get this pass and he bumps into someone on the street. and and he's with a group of people and the man on the street says you owe me. she's in congress. i should say you owe me money for a horse. i lost during the revolution government owes me money. when do i get that money? and hamilton says vote for assumption and i'll give you money. now he says afterwards it was a joke. like i wasn't really bribing the guy right? he's like we were all in the street there were guys around us. you laughed. he laughed i laughed but he gets in trouble for supposedly, you know making a joke of a bribe. there are all kinds of things. he does that are about human interaction and are not just about pushing paper around and they have big dramatic results. you know, that's one of the things when you teach the founding is well, so one of the things i do a lot in my work is i definitely want these people to be real and to be making choices and some of them are good choices and some of them are bad choices and i want them to understand that the period there's no of courses in this period which is part of what's really interesting and part of why the politics is interesting. we look at the founding. i say this to my students all the time. we look at the founding and we think well, of course, we won the revolution and of course there was a constitution and of course the constitution work, right? of course, there was a declaration of independence. there's a lot of of courses when we think about the founding but people who were there there were no, of course. that was that was entirely improv. and so once you understand that they're making it up as they go along and they don't know if it's going to work. that makes the period much more interesting and makes everyone including hamilton much more interesting because they're figuring it out. he's not just sitting behind a desk. he's trying to figure out what to do how to do it how to get people to do it and there are people who disagree with him. so it's it's really interesting politics that said i would not ask them noel miranda part two part two politics. i would not ask that. i mean, yeah. the cabinet battles were pretty fun. yeah. okay, so actually at our american revolution museum at yorktown, they will hear and they can see hamilton and his role and things like that, you know, even if it's a little part along with a bunch of other people. but it does raise an interesting question about how certain individuals become so much more prominent. in america's understanding of who the key founding people are right and and i'm curious why you think hamilton's not right up there, right? i mean in terms of american consciousness, we we know jefferson. we know madison we know, you know, washington, obviously we might even know john adams, right? but beside that i don't i think that number unless you're you know, benjamin franklin, right? and yes, i'm sorry and benjamin franklin, so why not hamilton? why why do you think given all that he did? why he is not at the four like that with others. why do you think that it? well, i think with the exception of franklin in part is because they're all presidents, right and we understand what presidents are and what they do and we, you know on the president's generally speaking so it's easy to kind of know what they do, even if we don't fully understand it franklin is kind of so notorious in so many ways kind of makes sense hamilton is you know the coordinator like the you know, he's the person. figuring things out. that's not the person you normally celebrate. so i think in some ways there wasn't really space that there were people didn't they really just didn't and it's very interesting to me when i talk about this people. don't believe it when i say that people really just didn't know who he was didn't care who he was he wasn't a president and you had to argue for the ways in which he shaped everything right? and in many ways he really shaped everything but to know that you have to be poking around in history. okay. okay, that's good. so one of the things that i that you know that we understand especially, you know through your books, you know about honor and and the whole honor code how that becomes this thing or had been a thing and then it finally fades away but it is the it is the nexus point of insane behavior insane, you know, i would say my keys mode, but it's it's just this insane and maybe you're as they are, you know, we know we end up getting this sort of two-party system, which is apparently not the way the founders really wanted it to be but they immediately kind of drop into this two-party system and then we have this this honor code system that's out there about how you're supposed to behave or not behave and this idea of kind of pushing women off to the side as they're doing it. i mean all of this is happening and i i'm just curious to understand and i think you know everyone would try to wanna understand a a little bit better how we actually move that period that early republic period moving from this again bizarre honor code system to party system the violence that we will eventually see by the 20s 30s and 1820s 30s and 40s that lead us on the path to you know political assassination and all kinds of things right? so, i mean it's a long question. it's a long scary question. i mean help me understand sort of that the groundwork of that as we are building this new republic sure. well as you said and you know, we think of the two-party system as being the core of our politics, but the founding generation thought that parties were a bad thing. they were assigned that whoever was in a party was thinking only of themselves and not of the general good. so while they understood that people would have interests and everybody all kinds of clashing interests. they did not assume that there would be organized parties. so my first book looks at what politics looks like given that there were not organized parties and one of the things that i found was this honor code, which doesn't need look a little bonkers, right? because it's it's you know, someone says something to someone who feels insulted and sends a ritualistic letter back and then that person sends a ritualistic letter back and they write letters back and forth and potentially end up going on a field and shooting at each other and how does that make sense? but one of the things that i was interested in and found in the first book and it also happens in the second book, so if there if you can't conduct politics as you know, i am mr. federalist or i am mr. republican, how do you represent yourself? how do people support you as a politician? how do you get elected to office oh by your reputation. right if your reputation is pretty much who you are as a man and a gentleman and who you are as a politician attacking reputations is really handy. and if that's the game defending reputations becomes really important and the honor code, you know the code of honor dueling for some people not everybody becomes kind of a political tool like one of the things i found in my first book was not long after elections. they're usually would be a little spurt of duels why because someone loses the election and he feels humiliated and he or his friends would find a way to provoke a duel with the winner or one of his friends. and they didn't even necessarily have to go to the dueling ground. they could exchange letters back and forth, but then the loser could say i am clearly a worthy leader. i may have lost that election, but i am brave and i am worthy so dueling is kind of practical even though it makes admittedly no sense, but that's the sort of stuff. i love as a historian, right? i love and that's why dueling sucked me in right? how does that make sense? how in the world? does that make sense? so i needed to figure out how to understand it if hundreds of people do that in this time period they had a reason right they reasoned their way into it. so what was their logic and that was part of what was driving me in my early years as a historian. so it's a mix of it's a mix of how they think someone is going to is be smirching reputation versus action or it's a political tool in a way. okay, so they so like sending bad tweets back and forth basically, right? i mean, you know, i it's yeah, it's it's just actually i don't know the the first time i exchanged a tweet within my little miranda. he tweeted something out and he said hamilton would have been amazing on twitter and i tweeted back and said he would have been dead in 10 minutes. well, i mean, yeah, well, let's talk about that in violence because you know again, this is one of the things that you cover a lot in the book and and i have to agree and i was reading those those praises for your work and i was thinking about them. and you know we have this tendency of presentism of you know, it's never been this bad. we've never had our politicians be this disgraceful we've never right. i mean we go through this whole rigmarole learning fact this you know the i guess what you would call the period of calm of relative calm is a is a fairly new phenomenon if i'm understanding your work right there have been other moments, right so i would say we tend to think about history almost anything that we're thinking about in history as kind of doing this. and history really does this. so, you know that in the early republic in the 1790s when everything was up in the air and no one knew really how things were going to work out and their reputations were all involved in it. lots of fear big partisanship polarization. lots of violence things kind of calm down a little they bump up again around an 1830s when you begin seeing the jacksonian period exactly so you stones that oh, yeah. well, he runs as a new list. yeah. i mean, yeah, okay. so then and the slavery issue the more that the question of slavery is on the national stage polarizing. there's no way people you're not gonna they try repeatedly to compromise on slavery but ultimately that's gonna work and because of that again, you have more and more violence building until right before the civil war again, you have a moment where there's a lot of violence extreme polarization the public watching and sort of taking their cues from what's in washington and people in washington taking their cues from the public so, you know, i would say you can follow the trail of violence america is always violent. i mean american politics is always violent to an extreme degree. so um in the in my most recent book the field of blood i was writing about election and the person whose diary i was reading. he says in his diary. it's like oh this was a pretty calm election. he's in washington dc and like 1850 pretty good election. only two people were killed. oh, okay, because there would be riots and fights outside of polling places. there's one moment in which two gangs attack each other actually are attacking immigrants standing online at the polling places and one of them brings a canment that canon one group brings a canon with them and they call in the marines and this is an election right? so there is a lot happening in this period that's off the charts violent not all the time but a lot and it's very much tied to what's going on at a moment at a particular moment and also part of the united states always being violent, but it's i don't i'm not comfortable saying well, you know, that's it's been bad before you know, what's we're in a pretty good shape now because no two moments of extreme violence are the same so you can't say well this happened in the 1790s and this happened in the 1850s. i throw the 1960s in there is another moment of polarization and politics but not the same in any way so we have had really bad times in the past. but that doesn't mean we can predict the present, right? oh, absolutely. i i was thinking about and forgive me for not remembering the period i want to say 18. where congress men were? like one in three were bringing weapons onto the floor a lot of them had weapons by the 1850s. yeah. i tried really hard to figure out right because i knew that they were armed i even went to the smithsonian and to look at the kinds of guns that they were carrying and the bowie knives some of them had buoy knives and i really wanted to know how much how many were armed which was really hard to find out and then i found a letter from i believe 1850 from a north carolina congressman who was a small guy and he wrote a letter basically saying maybe people who come to congress should be big guys because it's a little intimidating here with these guys with the weapons, but he and his friend count in the house and he believes at 70 people are armed at that particular moment, which is a lot by the late 1850s. that can't say everyone but most people have arms of some kind and what was fascinating about that is they're not carrying weapons because they want to do damage. they want to kill someone their care many of them are carrying weapons defensively because they don't know what's going to happen on the floor. and for example, there's a south carolina congressman and he has this very famous quote of his that a lot of historians like to quote in which he says people here who don't have one gun. they have two right? that's sort of some what joking, but he goes on in that letter and he says, i've never carried a gun in my life. i've got a gun in my desk now. the reason i have it in my desk is if bloodshed breaks out in congress. i am going to fight with the south. now that's a remarkable statement, right? he's ready for warfare in congress. that tells you a lot about the the spell the state of the nation, but also if that's the state that congress was in and some of that is hard to find right but that's not necessarily the way we think about politics in this period that's a really fascinating extreme and alarming statement that really gets you in that period right up close to the start of the civil war. yeah, i mean, you know, i i find it. so. and it's it's not the image that we have we get this this idea that our early politics was just so refined. all right, there's clay calhoun in western. they're like holding for a few bad boys in the mix, but for the most part everybody's very well behaved and very manly towards one another and like i said when i was reading that i thought wow, okay, so this is the kind of place that you walk into conduct the people's business and yet in conducting the people's business the concern is so great that one of your fellow legislators could blow you away if they well, you know, some kind of offense to you, right? well i was on the floor. but might but they're taking the weapons on the floor they are but so here's the interesting thing. they're taking the weapons on the floor in part. as a political tool if you're and it's in is this a form of bullying it precisely and it's initially southerners who do that. they're more likely to be armed. they have knives and guns. some of them actually wear them so they can be seen the knives and guns and so if a northerner stands up and says something anti-slavery, for example southerners gonna walk over and say you want to say that again that happens on one occasion on another occasion of southerner comes up to someone who says something he doesn't like and says you do that again. i'm going to cut your throat from ear to ear. sometimes the southerner would sort of you know move into dueling territory. did you just call me a liar? and whoever the northerner is knows like oh like no no, no. no, i didn't call your liar. it's bullying and the thing about bullying and they know this is actually a virginian as a matter of fact, i think who says what we have to do is just keep them afraid for their lives because of their afraid for their lives. they're not going to do anything. we don't they're not hoping to kill people, but they want people to be afraid of violence afraid of being challenged to a duel afraid of being humiliated by a southerner in some way or another and that becomes a really powerful tool and it's bullying as politics. it's a group of people who will do anything it takes. to keep to maintain power and who are afraid of losing that power as the slavery debate begins. so if you're worried about demographics or if you're worried about losing power bullying is really effective as a tool. but at some point i mean at some point we know that northern politicians start pushing back, right? yeah and are encouraged to do so by their constituents basically wanting to know are you gonna man up right and right and face this down or not? so around 1855. yes, so that that begins largely with the start of the republican party. so the republican party is in northern party. it's an anti-slavery party. although some people are anti-slavery because they want free labor in the west and some people are honestly anti-slavery andy slavery, but regardless, that's a new party. it's in northern party and they run one of their campaign promises is we will fight the slave power and some members of congress mean that literally and they up with weapons. one of them i think he's from ohio comes to the senate and just puts a gun down on his desk. right? he's like, okay and a lot of the time when they're when they're challenged or people bully one or another of these northerners will stand up and say and this i believe is close to the exact words that someone says we're a different kind of northerner. we're not here to sit down. we're here to stand up and so 1855 to the civil war is is the most intensely violent time in congress because now you've got both sides. you've got the southerners who are taken aback because what the heck what are these northerners doing? and you have the northerners who their constituents want them to fight and the most extreme example of that was sort of throwaway story in a newspaper and this is one of the fascinating things when you're historian, you're reading diaries or reading congressional reports or newspaper and you're looking for something specific, but they'll be some little common in the side or an advertisement or something that will reveal everything in this case. it's 1856 i believe. and it's in massachusetts newspaper, and it says mr. congressman so-and-so was at the train station headed back to washington and his constituents. gave him a gift at the train station to take back to washington with them. it was a gun and it was inscribed with the words free speech. food his constituents sent him to washington with a gun and basically said fight for your rights to represent our interests. to me. that's just stunning. right, that's almost every time so, you know, i've been working on this book for like a thousand years and still that story kind of sense chills, right? huh? okay, so let's flip it a little bit because as i started off and i was talking about, you know, our our mission here at jyf. i it is this conversation that we're having among the staff is about. okay. well what really are the legacies of these errors that we represent and being an early americanist. i would ask you what do you think because because as i'll give you an example because i thinking about the bacon's rebellion right thinking about that in context of this. i mean, here's a situation where a guy basically he wants to seize land he wants to you know, do it right belts entitled to it. he essentially is bling his position in the assembly right and then he's kicked out governor kicks him out. he gets mad. he goes off and starts gathering supporters. he's rallying support right and and getting people riled up. any company than anybody's allowed to come back before he's expelled again, you know, but but there's all of this stuff that the bacon does that. i couldn't help but think for a moment, is this a legacy of sort of? a european model. is this something that brash, you know, all of these brash america, you know europeans that are making themselves american or virginians at that point. so let's start there. how would you you know, and i know that people have tried to use bacon's rebellion incorrectly right as sort of a precursor to the revolution and it's not this is really a very selfish thing that he's doing. you can't draw straight. yeah almost there no street lights. no, you know, the years are kind of close, you know, it's 1676, but it's not right. it's it's not a precursor, but it does say something interesting about this political idea. so could you could you speak? for me and how you that again, how some of that behavior may may transfer over time in terms of the behavior of popular and and it makes perfect sense given that the colonists are european that they bring their culture with them. they bring their education with them. so it makes perfect sense that whoever wherever and whoever the colonists were. that's the background that they're grounded in is whatever in england. but there are some people who came and bacon's a great example who came to these colonies and felt entitled to something. and was a enough of a gentleman or felt that he had enough status that he was totally justified in fighting for what he was a title to have and they're so there's some behavior along those lines. the honor code is european right and and some people like to say, oh, you know it caught on during the revolution when they were french soldiers a predates that so it's it's european but in the united states, they democratize it which is really interesting to me. so in here when you say that in europe if you fight a duel in england, let's just say england. it's illegal, right? i mean, it's illegal everywhere. it was illegal in the united states. um, so you would do it privately and gentlemen would do what they need to do and then they would go away and whoever needed to know that it happened would need to know in the united states. they fight the duel and then they go into the newspapers and publish an account of the duel that basically says i have just proven that i'm a gentleman by fighting a duel and the subject is vote for me the next election europeans. shocked right? what are these people doing? it's like it's democratized and it becomes weirdly bound up with. appealing to the public and getting votes so i heard a lot of hmm out there that is but you know it so the united states is violent. the united states has a lot of people wealthy white people who felt very entitled to things though some of that violence was taken for granted and was seen as normal. i mean, i found over 70 physically violent incidents in the house and senate between 1830 and 1860. and almost no one suffered any consequences. for that sometimes if it was a fair fight people would just stand back and let it happen. sometimes people would pull them apart any number of things happened, but it was kind of seen as normal and northerners didn't want to say hey, this is against the rules because it made them look cowardly. so it's i know it's complicated but it's that's the fascinating part to me is figuring out the emotional logic of it. right? so if you're a guy in that space with these southerners who are armed and are treating you that way. what are you gonna to see is your options? what are you how and what are you going to choose to do and what are the consequences of that? so, you know if you're talking about legacy, i mean it's not as though the united states is violent in europe wasn't they were but i would say a democratic politics changes things and i would say in the 1790s and the founding period so the revolution if we just talk about democracy as a legacy. in the revolution, it is a democratic revolution in a sense that you know, it's the colonists fighting. it's a it's a people's revolution. so there's a democratic component and that the end of the revolution a lot of people feel entitled. to getting what they fought for right? we fought for whatever. so then you move into the 1790s and now people are talking about. okay now we have a new government how democratic is this government going to be and you have americans who feel entitled to make demands and you have a political elite who are worried is going to collapse and some of them are saying in hamilton is one. i don't know about this democracy thing. it's a little i'm a little nervous. i think people should vote and then shut up and get out of the way, which is essentially what a lot of the federalists in the period said, so they're not entirely comfortable with democracies. we understand it today then you move on into the 19th century and you you have democracy for white men. and everybody else gets very explicitly moved to the side so you can even in the legacy of people wanting things through a kind of democratic sense of entitlement, but the fact that no one really knows what that means and that's worked out over time. you know, i think when people ask about among other things the legacy of the founding to the present day. one of those legacies and it's bound up with a lot of other things but one of those legacies is i think the ideas from that time period including the idea of democracy matter, right and the founding generation were not democratic. we're not comfortable with it explicitly cut a huge swath of society out of power in every way, but they put forward this idea, which ultimately becomes a tool for people down the road to use to pull themselves into power. that's important and that's just as important as recognizing all the ways in which the people in the founding didn't live up to their ideas and didn't live up. to what they were saying all of these promises they didn't and in a sense the united states is the clash between these ideals that that in a general way democracy that people reach for and the big ugly realities that have been with us since the beginning and some of them have to do with race. you know, it's it's always a conflict. i know, i think. sometimes i think when people look at the founding they either want to focus on the negative components and not acknowledge anything positive or focus on the positive components and not acknowledge anything negative. neither one of those i think. is useful think the negative parts have been ignored for a long time and they need to be added back in. but i think it's the clashing of those things and the contradictions in those things that are really important to understand and i think to understand america, you've got to have both parts of those that equation. across history thank you. that was a long answer. i realized it's no it's it's it's wonderful and and in and i think that that that's one of the another one of those conversations that everybody's having as we're prepping for the 2026 right the 250th of the declaration and acknowledging that this language that was set forth right this language that was set forth in that period was embraced by people and and fought for who had not been included in that and i think that there's a i don't want to say this there's a but no, i mean it's like it's one of those things that always gets me curious when people start talking about original intent, right? yeah. yeah, so, you know because that sounds like a dog whistle to me original intent, right? i mean it has this because if we if we're really cognizant of the historical past and this contradiction and the paradox of what was being said versus what was being done on the ground and this idea of weight your turn or whatever very iterations as people were fighting even at the even, you know in the 1780s and 90s as this was being laid out people were pressing. this new government to include them, you know make me a part of this right as you said i've earned this right? i've you know, what have you so i i and i know that i'm being broad about that about original intent about original intents. you know that it's it's how people frame constitutionally they like to frame things constitutionally, but it does have a carryover into this of the founders intended. well, right, so let's let's talk about that. yeah, so let's talk about that for a minute. so yes there there it certainly is a school of thought the people say, you know, what the founders intended in the constitution and that's how we should interpret it now. speaking as a historian the founders didn't assume that what they did was going to move across time in an unchanging manner. they didn't they put the amendment process in there because they assumed it would have to change over time. so first off they don't understand original intent in the way that people look at it today and you know, i think on the one hand they wanted the constitution to be a separate kind of document an important kind of document that i suppose you could say had a sort of sacredness to it. so the people would take it seriously and would abide by it. but they also you know, they created it in this time period and they were much more they were much freer in thinking about tweaking it. then we might be now. so for example the election of 1800 when john adams is running against thomas jefferson. really fraught election. john adams ends up not being a final candidate and you end up having aaron burr and thomas jefferson running against each other. it's personally was supposed to be the vice presidential candidate gets really fraught when i was researching my first book. i saw people talking about they were afraid of civil war there were people arming in maryland if they had to march to washington to take the government. so it's it's a moment and after the election is successful someone writes to jefferson and says, what would you have done? things had not gone well. what would you have done? first of all jefferson says we let the other side know that if they thought they were going to do something they weren't going to get away with it, which is sort of like oh but but more interestingly he says. well we would have tweaked the constitution and then you know, i think he says wound up the clock again and gone back to whatever we were doing. so it's it's i think you always have to understand documents in context and i think there are aspects of the constitution. they structure our government they put public opinion at the center of our government there any number of things that it does that are concrete and absolute. but i think the founders this is a dramatic thing to say and someone's going to be like someone out there and online land is gonna be like but i i just don't think the founders understood the constitution in that way. i think that's a modern way of trying to the constitution in time. and i just i think that's a legal way of thinking but it's not necessarily a historical way of thinking. okay. all right, so will end the wrapping it back around since the constitution and the discussion of all of that and alexander wrote so many of the fed the majority of the federalist papers, and we know that he was not necessarily full-fledged for a representative democracy. is that problematic? in terms of the essays that he wrote in defense of the constitution. knowing that there's this underlying piece where he really didn't think that the average joe should be able to be involved he thought basically that if he had a key role in the washington administration, he could mold things to be more along the lines that he wanted them to be. he could make the president stronger. he could push more national power. you know, he could sort of quietly through his policies and his ideas and his influence over other people make this a more powerful national government and make it more strong over the states than it might have been through the constitution. there's a really interesting james madison. and in his old age, he lives a long time and people keep going up to him all the time and like james tell us about the constitution in the writing and the constitution and someone says to him. you know one of hamilton's sons is going to ride a biography of his father. and apparently he's going to say you abandoned him that you guys were pals during the constitutional convention and then the 1790s came along and you abandoned him and you went over to jefferson and madison first says, oh no, right. he's like stricken. oh no, and then he pauses and he says hamilton tried to administration the government into being something that was never intended to be. hmm, that's how he understood it. and apparently he smiled when he used administration as a verb. whoever was writing. this account is like he seemed very pleased with that. so, and i think hamilton i think that's part of what he was trying to do the other interesting thing about hamilton though is i don't think he really fully believed that this experiment was going to work which i realized is a radical thing to say, but about 10 days after the constitutional convention he wrote down sat down and wrote notes to himself about what he thought would happen. and it's very loyally, you know if this happens then that happens if this happens and that happens if washington becomes president, that's great people trust him. they'll trust the people he picks. if that doesn't happen or something goes, awry the states are pretty much going to turn against each other. probably going to be like the union might not be whatever union is there. i don't know maybe foreign countries will come in and start to swallow us up and he describes this catastrophic scene of what will happen and the kicker at the end of this memo is that's probably what's going to happen. 10 days after the constitutional convention now when he the night before or shortly before the duel. when he sits down and tries to explain on a piece of paper if he dies, this is going to get out to the public why i'm fighting the duel and he explains, you know his relationship with burr and why he can't apologize but the last paragraph of that statement says um, essentially there are going to be future crises this country big ones. and if i want to be useful in them. i have to defend my honor what men of the world denominate honor actually his words. i have to defend it. so he essentially says ugly things are coming like this this i still don't fully think this is gonna work and when it breaks down i want to be in the mix right? i want to be sort of helping people out and that's part of his logic for fighting the duel so i think he fought as hard as he could to make the government what he wanted it to be which is not necessarily what everybody wanted it to be. it's kind of extreme. but i also think he was eternally not fully convinced that it was going to survive. interesting. okay. okay dramatic. i know but yeah, no, that's perfect. that's that's perfect. i i did say when we were in the car. i i'm gonna take a guess. okay, so in the clip that we showed you she talked about. oh that's in my book. that's in my book. that's in my book. oh that was from the new york public library this little snippet of information. so i i would i wish i could like write it on a card like hollywood squares or something of what i think that moment is so was it the comment about the glasses? no, no. okay. no what which which element was it that you found? so the the giveaway was i did research at the new york historical society and what i found among other things and it was in the bottom of a box and normally they serve you microfilm in the day. i was there they couldn't find the microphone. so i got the box and the bottom of the box is a document dated 1805, which is a year after the duel and it's hard to read on the microfilm. so i just don't think people focused on it. what it actually was was the note. so aaron burr's second in the duel gets tried. he goes to trial he's accused of taking part in that duel, and he has to defend himself. the note these were his notes of people testifying. a boatman who rode them across the river testified the doctor testified and the doctor is asked. what did you see? and he says oh i didn't see anything. i had my back to the dueling ground. so it was the line in that song to turn your back so you can have deniability. i i knew that was like my document right and i was like no one knew that that was mine and when that came out of the mouth in the play i was like i turned to my friend actually and said that's my document. and on that note, we're gonna bring up the house lights and you will be able to ask your questions of joanne. we have microphone set up on either side and we do ask, you know with our new handy-dandy mics that as you ask your questions to please speak directly into the microphone don't do this because you won't we won't hear you. so please speak into it if you have questions by all means because this has been a lively conversation about the past and the present and all the stuff in between and we want to hear from you. so first of all, please join me in thanking joanne for a remarkable conversation. thank you. and like i said, we're gonna now take your questions, so we have volunteers and staff off to the side raise your hand and they will get to you. someone in that person. yeah, there's a person gentleman right there in the middle. and i know there's somebody in the back. good afternoon question i had was and i've always sort of contemplated about is. what do you think would have happened of say the dual head and happened if hamilton lived say to like old age considering like the direction of like violence putting that in the context of this evening and going forth closer to the civil war because he wasn't that old obviously when he died, so i'm trying. yeah, so we'll daunting so like if he had lived to say like the 1840s or something, what do you think would have happened? well, so here that's a great question. what's interesting about that? i don't think he had any illusion about the fact that he was gonna somehow have power again. i think he could see that the tides turning but apparently not that long before the duel. he was beginning to ask people friends if they wanted to write essays about the government creation of the government the nature of the government, so i think he was thinking along the lines of another federalist-esque collection of essays. he never got to act on it. i know he wanted to people who he asked who later said he had begun thinking about it. so he might have been essentially a political commentator somebody who would try to weigh in and influence. what was happening in national politics, and i think he would have tried really hard and he was very aggressive and manipulative. so he probably would have had some influence, but i think that's probably what he would have done. thank you for your question, and we have a question in the back. i thought i saw a question about yeah, that was a gentleman back there. hi, thank you for this. oh the lady. i'm sorry, and please put it to your mouth so we can hear you. can you hear me? i don't know. okay. okay, um i came in enough time a little bit late. i'm sorry, but could you just tell me what your books were and what the themes of all the books that you published and were are working on our oh for sure if some of them i have nothing to do with hamilton or what? yeah, no, and you are correct. so i i have published i've edited two collections of his papers and i've edited another collection of essays but my two main books, my first one is called affairs of honor national politics and the new republic and essentially it looks at what it felt like to be a national politician on the stage the national stage in the 1790s the first 10 years the government. what did it feel like to be a politician? what did you do to politic and i write about newspaper fighting and dueling and all of the different kinds of weapons people use to fight in politics. my most recent book is the field of blood violence and congress on the road to civil war and that book looks at these 70 incidents physical incidents in congress between 1840 and 1860 and talks about what are they show about the nation at the time? what do they show about the fight over slavery? and what do they show about the road to civil war? so those are pretty much my two books. i write a lot about political violence one of my friends actually recently said to me, you know when you look at your cv when you look at your resume, it's like kick fight punch shoot you but i'm interested in how people reason their way into those things and sometimes they're not reasoning but sometimes they are so how do those things make sense as a historian? that's one of the things that really interesting? do we have any questions from folks in the zoom? oh. so our first question is what was the most surprising to you when you were doing your research into hamilton oh the most surprising thing in my research into hamilton. um i think it was actually the fact that 10 times. he almost got involved in a duel. i mean that's that's pretty extraordinary. and i you know, there's 27 volumes of his writings of his reports and his letters so i marched my way through and i noted down so there are like very ritualistic letters that you send when you're on the cusp of an affair of honor which people hadn't really recognized as being part of the road to a duel once i saw that then suddenly i saw wait a minute that so there's this time when he's you know, standing on the street and someone says, you know you federalists i don't care about you federalists. you're all a bunch of crooks essentially in hamilton says, you know, i'll fight the whole bunch of you and someone steps forward and says, i'll fight you being now you have almost a duel. so there are that that surprised me because um, i hadn't noticed it before tells you something about the politics of the period really tells you about hamilton. yeah. yeah, absolutely other questions out there. we've got quite a few. hello. there's some right here. okay. there you go. um, i actually would be curious to get both of your perspectives about this. i currently write curriculum for middle school social studies and it is very difficult and challenging because there is so much just to give you an example for those of you that haven't been in middle school for a really long time. i have to cover the entirety of world war. you through the holocaust and i have three weeks so really it is about like wrote memorization and everything. you don't get to go in-depth and talk about the things that we all really love about history. so if you could change something about history education and the road that we're going down and you know, it being divisive in all what would you change about history education education in america or virginia? wow. i would well one thing is related to what one of the things i've talked about when when we were chatting and that is um, i would want students to understand the complexity things so that bad things that happened and those bad things had a legacy right and there's good things that happened and you can't tell the story without both of those things being there. i think something else that i would do would be to find and this is probably your already doing this, but i think you can find documents or cartoons or things from the time period and i do this actually sometimes with my undergraduates. i'll have them look at it and then i'll say to them. what how does that make you feel? and because if you ask them, what does it mean? they won't answer because they're afraid of being wrong if you ask them. how does it make you feel? that sucks you right into the politics of that time period and sort of lets you plunge in. so i guess the complexity of it the fact that some of the things we grapple with today in a different way. we're being grappled with in that time period and that you have to have both halves of that equation present. to understand the logic of how we got to where we are. so i i don't think it's useful or good to only teach good things, you know heroic things to students. i think that leaves them unable to understand how we got to where we are. i also don't think you should only teach negative things. i think both halves have to be there. but if you only teach heroics you're leaving the history of the country pretty much out of the picture. i have no doubt that that you are you're asking the question. so you already are a good teacher, but i guess that's the start of my answer to that question. i i will be brief on this one because because you asked me and i'm i really want folks to focus the questions to but i i i would add to that understanding that children at that age. are really in that concrete period but they're also an exploratory period and so to me if we can create opportunities for them to understand that history is like solving a puzzle. that it's actually a detective thing and you're going to be drawing on different sources and as new sources come to you and may change how you view that thing. i think if we did if people in general understood that dynamic that history is not a static thing. that would be most wonderful thing to me. right that this is something we're constantly learning and growing just like she found that one document at the bottom of the box that nobody else was looking at and how it impacted the way that she understands and writes and teaches about about hamilton because of one item so that that would be my suggestion is teach the kids early as they're learning the particulars, but also help them understand that it could change and why because it's solving a puzzle. it's a detective thing to help us get that whole picture. and you're going to rely on different types of resources. um, i want to kind of move across the room. so who's got the microphone over on this side now? i think it was a woman down. all right, okay, and we'll have them come down to to see oh, there you go. no, you don't come down. i just i was saying that the volunteers will come down so we can see the person in the front. i'm sorry. go ahead sir, please it's popular today to to say we're very polarized country. i'm curious we can't hear you. can you bring it closer to your mouth, please? i'm sorry. it's popular today to say we are very polarized country at this time. how would you compare the vitriol of today versus hamilton's time and whether you know, we're the looting ourselves into thinking of things are worse and all the rest of this, but also what i'm curious hamilton if you survived his dual, what do you think? he might have accomplished the rest of his life. it's it's a good question, which i actually was just asked it that um, he would have been kind of a political commentator. he was already planning to do that. but the first question was this the vitriol about now, and does it compare? one of so there was a lot of nastiness in the 1790s. there's a lot of nastiness in the 1850s. there's a lot of nastiness now one of the interesting differences about what's happening now is social media because anything that said particularly at the national center, but anywhere becomes international in a nanosecond and what's interesting if you look over the broad view of american history technology dramatically changes democracy again, and again, so in the 1840s late 1840s 1850s the telegraph does something really similar where all of a sudden things happen in washington things happen in congress and within 45 50 minutes people around the country know what it is and all of a sudden the politicians feel that they're losing control of the narrative and at a moment that's already polarized it helps to make things worse. i think social media is is and i don't mean to be like ev. social media, but i just think the simple fact that it allows and encourages such quick. responses and communication of what's going on any wiggle room that there might have been for someone to say something and then take it back or change what he or she would say is gone. and plus now we're in this period and we don't have to go into depth about this. but now we're in this moment where like what what actually was really said and and how can we tell what the truth is which gets back to your idea that's students should understand how to evaluate things and question them to try and get a sense of what's right and wrong, but so i think you know vitriol changes over time technology changes its impact if you think about a democratic politics being a kind of conversation between politicians with power and the public any technology that changes that conversation changes democracy? excellent point there's a question there in the back. i think that's coming from zoom. okay. go ahead. we have a question from zoom. all right, so if alexander hamilton were questioning today the current supreme court justice nominee. what would he ask? oh my gosh. what would hamilton ask? wow, why are you here? well i mean it it has to be said a woman and a black woman. he wouldn't have known what to do with that. right, but let's get him past that we can't get a lot of people today passed out. give him give him that get him back. um. in one way or another what he would have wanted to know was what she thought about the power of the national government. in what way so he would be thinking about federalism and states' rights and national rights, and he would want to hear that the supreme court. whoever's running for the support is up for a seat in the supreme court would be someone who would not necessarily fall into states' rights again, and again hamilton thought the states already had too much power and the federal government had to be strengthened. so i think in one way or another that probably would be what he would want to know. great question is a great question. which a great question. i've never considered before. i don't think no. we have a lady down here in the front and then we'll come back over there. but i feel like we're missing some folks in here, too. thank you. i'm thinking about what you said about hamilton. not really knowing if we were going to work out and i'm actually wondering what you think. i feel like we're at this huge crossroads right now with everything going on and as a historian, i want to hear what you have to say about us. that that's a great and and big question. i will say i wrote a while back an article in the atlantic thinking about this in a really general way, but you know if you write something and wait three months or three weeks everything has changed so in a really general kind of way. here's what i would say, i think that this is where in a moment of extreme contingency. where a lot of things could happen and we really don't know what will happen. and and in an extreme kind of way so we could move in a bad direction. i personally think democracy is in peril as a historian democracy is in peril. so we are at a moment when things could move in a dramatic direction one way, or it can be a moment when people realize what democracy is and they can use this moment for positive change. you know, i think at a moment like this when people are really sort of the ground is unsure and we're not sure which way we can go. people need to be to understand the power that the public has in our government generally speaking and the fact that positive change can come from unstable moments. so i don't know, you know, i'm not going to say i'm not gonna be hamilton be like, oh, it's all downhill. i think it can go in any number of directions, but i think it's important to realize and i know one of my colleagues at yale. tim snyder says this a lot in his work. this is not a moment to surrender and say oh, well, whatever happens happens. i think it's a moment where what we think and what we do matters supremely and which part of why i do all of the public work that i do. thank you. i will yes, i see you standing there. there you go. um, please i've been following you since founding brothers. so this is a gigantic thrill for me. my question is you said that hamilton and and all these other guys reveal themselves in their letters in newspaper articles that you you get a real feel for them based on sometimes the funkiest little bits. my question is if you could sit hamilton down or pick another one if you have a specific answer, what would you ask him that you feel like you haven't gotten? the truth on yet wow. whoo. that's a hard question because there's so many ways to answer it, right. i mean it in general say i would probably want to talk about the first half of the 1790s the first years of the government because that's the that's kind of what i've always really been focused on and where my heart is and where things were so unstable. i don't know if it's necessarily hamilton that i would ask this of but i think i would want to ask the people in the mix on the national stage. what they thought of what would happen or what they thought of that moment right in a way that they don't put in letters and that they didn't necessarily record in diaries. i think generally speaking when you can engage with someone in person and get a sense from them about how they feel about something about the logic their personal logic that can open things up in such a dramatic kind of way. i think that's part of what i would do now hamilton has a series of really dumb moves. he makes over the course of his life, so i might want to question him on some of them. how did that reynolds pamphlet make sense? let's talk about that. yeah, so this will probably in a specific way. i would want to you know, i always think if i ever met hamilton i can't imagine how freaky that would be because i know everything he's written. and i can quote some of it. you know, i could sit here and quote letters to you. how weird would that be for someone when you know, i could be like well in 1792. you said? but we have we we have time for oh we got. oh we got. oh, yeah, we got time. hi. um, i was wondering if hamilton had ever become president. do you think he would have done a good job? and how do you think that would have changed america today? interesting if hamilton had become president? you know hamilton, i don't think he thought he would have been a very good president. i and i only say that because he did not believe himself to be. popular he understood that the public didn't like him that they didn't necessarily trust him. and so i don't think he expected that. i don't think president was on his bucket list in 1795 when someone is going to be sent to europe to help negotiate what ends up being the j treaty, but before it's jay john jay hamilton is someone who's in the mix of people who might get sent and hamilton basically writes a letter to washington in which he says. yeah. i don't think on the right person because the people don't really trust me. yeah, i think you gonna have someone else in the mix, so he's distrustful of democratic politics. he also didn't consider himself to be. by any means a favorite among the populace and i think and he prides himself as a matter of fact and talks about this kind of prides himself on the fact that he does things that he knows are unpopular and he doesn't because he thinks they're right so ha i'm not some kind of demagogue. i'm actually doing what i think is right, so, i don't think he was aiming for the president's chair as ambitious as he was i don't think that was in the mix. ah who has the mic? there's there you are. hi really been enjoying your perspective this evening. thank you so much. so my husband is obsessed with jefferson, and i'm obsessed with hamilton. we have lots of fun conversations at home. that's gonna be interesting. yeah, so lots of books on the bookshelf. he loves clay jenkins and you know, and it's easy for you to find, you know, jefferson and deering less so for hamilton, although i tell you something about clay jenkinson. he was my senior advisor in college. oh i and he was at the time getting into being jefferson and he was building a model of monticello on his desk in his office and i remember going into his office and making a crack about jefferson and he looked up at me like you know, what? i'm sorry. i didn't mean to know that's really great. i really enjoyed that. so, you know, i just wondered, you know, do you have a favorite federalist paper a favorite work my hamilton something, you know for my husband and i almost jefferson and hamilton almost become like friends like people, you know and forgive me if i'm projecting but i just assume while you're reading a person so much you feel like you know them. so is there something that has, you know inspired you about hamilton or just the favorite work that brings you back to him is the man you know, and as you compared, you know works between each other and that sort of thing so i could answer that in a lot of ways, but i will mention the first paragraph of the first federalist essay. in which hamilton basically says that it appears to be now this moment when we are going to decide if you can create a government through reflection and choice. or if it will forever be determined. by warfare and conflict and a wrong decision on the part. we shall act may deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. and to me what that captures is this idea that we're trying something different, right? the whole world is monarchy. we're trying something different. and we putting people in a room and sort of trying to come up with something and who knows if it's gonna work or if it won't but if if we mess this up, then probably people are not going to assume they were public can work and that we will be making. a we will be doing something that's going to act on in a negative way on mankind. we will we will people never try this again the sense of responsibility and the sense of the recognition of the importance of that moment. i think that's important and i think that captures. the kind of contingency of it and the fact that they really didn't know what was going to happen. so in almost every one of my classes at yale, i read that first paragraph because it just captures that moment in such a such a powerful kind of a way. i think we have time for maybe two more questions. we have someone over here. hi, do i have to stand up? i guess just stand up you don't i am fascinated. about how you went about researching all of your work and this picture of you being in a library and pulling out a box and finding something at the bottom. i mean, it's just it's just so inspiring for young historians. however, what are the young historians of today going to be looking at because no one's writing people are tweeting. what are the papers? what where will they find the truth? it's just speculation, but where do we go from here? it's a really good question. um. for a while. i worked at the library of congress and i remember remember attending a meeting. in the manuscript division. this is a while back and the question was what are we collecting? right. i mean we collecting like, you know memos for phone calls like what there aren't things that there used to be so we have to think about what we're going to be collecting. you know, i think that and i i love the first half of your question or your comment because i adore researching if that's not already a parent right? i love it. i love the adventure of it. i love the fact that you don't know what you're gonna find. i love the smell of it. i love the feel of it. it's my favorite thing to do but doing the late 18th and 19th early 19th century. you're right. there's a lot of stuff. what it exists now and doesn't exist earlier. is stuff that you can see video newspapers, you know, what i think to myself is so so working on the 1790s. there's a lot of stuff you can work on when you go ahead in time and you look at like the 1850s. whoa. there's like a lot more newspapers and a lot more print and it i remember feeling sort of dumb struck at how much more evidence there was as a historian when i think about what people would be looking at now. i don't even know how i would sift through the amount of evidence there will be so there will still be things to read and there will still be things that people write in which they reveal things but there will be all kinds of other kinds of evidence that people will be using and there will be have to be ways of figuring out how to analyze and use them so that it's historically responsible, but i think it's a wealth of things. it feels to us sort of like a wash of things where a wash and all of that kind of evidence. but you know the sort of goes back to an earlier question. it would be fascinating if i had that kind of evidence of my earlier time period i don't so there will be ways of analyzing and using that evidence that we might not even know yet oddly enough even even tweets. we're going to feed into how people understand this period absolutely, absolutely. down who was the next i see a hand there, but is that where the microphone is? no where because the microphones the the team is putting. the president which you okay, isn't it? great. everybody is helping you everybody. i really appreciate it because i'm a huge fan. that's all right. i'm sorry. go ahead. but high professor freeman, i'm a big fan i can send thank you, but i made history major at the college of william and mary right down the road and i'm an aspiring jefferson audience historian. so i'm sure you can understand how niche it is to have such an a specific interest but on the topic of young and the new generation of historians. i was wondering what advice you would have to not just me, but my my fellow students of history in creating works that speak to not just history nerds like myself, but you know the greater american audience so we can sort of revive this this study of what i believe is is important in national memory. that's a great question and the end of your question is part of my answer which is i think we're at a moment. where? it's beyond important for people to understand. american history for any number of reasons to understand how we got here how we how the problems we're experiencing now where they come from what our traditions are how our government works? right. i part of why i do a lot of public work is i've had people i will say something that feels to me goofy like, you know checks and balances are important. here's why or you know here we got three branches of government and it's important that they're separate and someone will say. oh, thank you for explaining that i never understood it. okay, so if you don't understand checks and balances or branches of government, we're in deep trouble if you don't understand what democracy is and why it's good, which many people don't we're in big trouble. so i would say anyone interested in history now. think about again depends on the period you're interested in but think about what it suggests about where we've been. in a realistic kind of way, you don't necessarily have to address the present, but it's so important to understand the past in a complex way. that has good and bad that acknowledges the bad and suggests. in some ways where it might lead. i think i think the business of history the writing of history right now is supremely important. you can feel it as a historian. i can feel it because people are constantly asking me questions is this happen before what does this mean? is there a pattern? those questions are hard to answer. but history is where you look for those answers, so i've never in my lifetime been alive at a moment where i feel that history at clear understanding of american history. and our constitution as a as the structure of our government, i don't think i've ever been alive at a moment when it's more important for people to understand that and i think anything anyone can do to explain what democracy is to talk about what citizenship gets you to to explain the kinds of basic rights in any kind of a democracy. but you're in. people don't understand that a lot of people don't understand it. i went i can't believe i'm talking about a tweet, but i went on twitter. i woke up one morning feeling kind of despondent and i sent out a tweet that said, i don't think americans many some americans understand what you lose when you lose democracy. and that was it went viral and it was like thousands and thousands of people responded, right? so a lot of people responded by saying by chiming in right? i think that's true a lot of people responded by saying we've never been democratic anyway, so it doesn't matter or i don't care about democracy. why do we need it? it's not helping us. it's not doing anything good for us right now. so there was a thread of people basically saying to heck with democracy and when i asked questions back, it's like do you like being able to say that? you know, you have the freedom to say that in a democratic former government, but that was alarming to me that just showed people who don't they don't understand what democracy is. people need to understand that right. that's the podcast that i'm doing with heather cox richardson, you know, our agenda is just whatever we talk about what there's a heather cheer out there. i heard i'm gonna pass that along to her part of what we want to do is communicate to people what democracy means and why it's valuable and the fact that some people don't understand that now is alarming so anything anyone can do to write about or talk about or teach about or learn about democracy and our system of government. that's that's really important. and on that note, we're going to stop the q&a and i thank you all so much, please. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. oh my gosh. thank you so muc