Laudi degree he joined the air force. During the training he found out that his eyes werent good enough so he was sent off to japan to be a photo intelligence officer. When he arrived to his dismay he found out he was made a Personnel Officer because his boss was lazy and didnt want to get up in the morning. When lieutenant wood arrived in the orderly room at 7 30, he had nothing to do. So he spent his time reading history books. Thankfully for all of us, for his students and for america, he completed his rotc requirement, didnt think the military had treated him well and went off to study history. He earned his m. A. And ph. D. At harvard studying under the famous bernard bailin. He once wrote in a quote, history may be kept alive and made vivid and make constantly relevant and urgent by the living memory of it. Which is exactly what were trying to do here. He was the great and friendly rival of ed morgan who taught joe ellis. Teachers matter. In 1969, wood joined the faculty of Brown University where he is still professor emeritus. He told me nothing he had ever done achieved as much excitement on campus or the wide approval of his students as the few seconds of fame he had when matt damon and ben affleck mentioned his name in the 1997 movie good will hunting. The campus went nuts. And he said when Newt Gingrich 1992u simply praised his pulitzer prizewinning book the radicalism of the American Revolution, wood describes newts praise saying that was the kiss of death for me among academics. None of them are republicans and none of them are conservative. George mason law School Sponsored American History seminars for United States federal judges for about five years. The two history professors chosen to lead the discussions among these elite were gordon wood and joel ellis. I have talked with federal judges Doug Ginsburg among many others and they said how much they benefited from these incredible seminars which coincided with the annual conferences that our federal judges have by district around the country. Wouldnt you love to have been in those meetings . Dr. Wood was one of three historians chosen to write for the oxford history of the American People, by far the most respected multivolume history of the United States. This is the equivalent of the American History of American History encyclopedia. His contribution, which is wonderful if you can read it, empire of liberty history of the early republic 1789 to 1815. With all of the additional writing and teaching he was doing simultaneously, it must have been a huge burden. It took him 20 years to complete. But in the process of finishing this 700 page book, joel ellis told me gordon wood read everything. More important than the prodigious productivity is the quality of his work, said david hacket fisher. Dr. Wood is a trustee of the new museum of the American Revolution which will open in philadelphia next april. They are so lucky to have him and we should all go and visit. Ladies and gentlemen, it is such a privilege to introduce our second speaker for the founders and us, historian, professor, author, father of two daughters and a son, and 61year long husband of wife louise who is in palm beach and joining us for lunch. Ladies and gentlemen, dr. Gordon wood. [applause] dr. Wood oh, my goodness. Isnt she something . [applause] dr. Wood im delighted to be here and to be part of this extraordinary series on the founders. Ive spent my whole career working on this period and its got to be the most fascinating period of American History. The questions that joe raised last time i think im going to try to touch on two although i have not heard what he had to say. But why do we americans honor these historic figures who lived two centuries ago in the fullsome way that we do . Our founders is the term that we use have a special significance i think for us. Celebrating in the way we do this generation that fought the revolution and created the constitution, i think is peculiar to us. No other major nation as far as i know honors its past historical characters in quite the same way we do. We want to know what Thomas Jefferson would think of affirmative action or what would George Washington think of our invasion of iraq. As far as i know the british dont get to check in periodically with either of the two William Pitts in the way we check in with jefferson in washington. We americans seem to have a special need for these authentic historical figures. They are authentic. Theyre recent by comparison with romulus and remus for example. Why do we check in with them . Why should we behave the way we do . Scholars have a variety of answers. Some suggest that our continual concern for constitutional Juris Prudence accounts for the fascination with the founding and framing of the constitution. Still others think that we use these 18th century figures in order to recover what was wise and valuable in americas past. They believe that the founders of 200 years ago have become a kind of Gold Standard against which we measure our current political leaders. Why dont we have such leaders today seems to be the implicit question that we ask. I think the most important reason for our preoccupation with the revolutionary generation has to do with our sense of identity as americans, of the kind of people we are. The identities of other nations, say being french or being german are lost in the midst of time and are usually taken for granted, which is that is to say theres no american ethnicity. The french have an ethnicity. The germans have an acute sense of their own ethnicity. We americans dont. And never have, even at the outset. Which i think makes us much more acceptable, more willing to accept immigrants than the european nations. I know we have problems with immigration but they pale with the problems the europeans are facing and will continue to face. Those friendship arabs living with them, algerians living with them for three or four generations. Yet the french dont really think of them as french. Anybody whos been in america for three or four generations is utterly american. We do not have an ethnicity. We became a nation in 1776 and thus in order to know who we are, we need to know who these founders are. The United States was founded on a set of beliefs and not on as other nations were on a comment ethnicity, live common language or common religion. To be american is to is to believe in something, not to be someone. You have to that set of beliefs is what came out of the revolution. Not only did the revolution, i think its by far the most important event in our history bar none, not only did it legally create the United States and make us a nation, but infused into our culture our highest aspirations, our noblest ideals, i release and liberty, a quality, constitutionalism the , wellbeing of ordinary people. Its these aspirations, these ideals that hold us together and make us a single people. Since were not a nation in any traditional sense of the term, in order to establish our nationhood we have to reinforce and refresh periodically the values of the men who declared independence from Great Britain and framed the constitution and as long as the republic endorsed es, in other words, we americans are destined i think to go back continually to look at our founding. Abe lincoln knew this. He identified completely with the founers and thought all americans should do so as well. Present day academics some times mock the close feelings that ordinary americans have for these as they said dead white men of 200 years ago, but its not so easy to mock lincoln. Half the American People said lincoln in 1858 on the eve of the civil war, half of the American People had no direct blood connections to the founders of the nation. The german, irish, french and scandinavian citizens and hes aware of the diversity of america even in 1858 hardly imagining how diverse the country would eventually become as it is today. These various people, germany, irish, french, either had come from europe themselves, he said, or their ancestors had and they had settled in america finding themselves our equals in all things. Although these immigrants may have had no actual connection in blood with the revolutionary generation, that would make them feel part of the rest of the nation, they had said lincoln that old declaration of independence with this expression of the moral principal of equality to draw upon. This moral principal, which he said was applicable to all men in all times made all these different peoples one with the founders. And this is the most extraordinary statement i think lincoln ever made and its still, i think, makes us feel something a kinship with these founders. He said they are made us feel one with the founders as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that declaration. This emphasis on liberty and equality, lincoln said, was the electric cord he changes the metaphor that links the hearts of patriotics and liberty loving men together and will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. That was lincolns assessment of the founders and i think lincoln rescued the founders from obscurity and after the civil wars the founders achieved that kind of reputation that they now still have. The revolutionary leaders in my mind were the greatest generation. They were larger than life, giants in the earth, a forest of giant oaks lincoln called them. They seemed to peace intellectual and political capacities well beyond the generations that followed them. We americans have been unable to look back at them without being overawed by the bring answer of brilliance of their thought, the creativity of their politics and the sheer magnitude of their achievement. What were they like . What made them different . Different from all succeeded generations and certainly different from us . Great as they were, these revolutionary leaders were certainly not demigods or super human. They were very much the product of peculiar circumstances in a peculiar moment in time. They were nor were they immuned to the allures of interests that attracted most ordinary human beings. They wanted wealth and position and often speculated heavily to realize their aims. They are not demigods, but they were not democrats either, certainly not democrats in any modern sense of the term. They were never embarrassed to talk of a leaderism of being superior, and they need their that never and they never hid in fact, they always believed that the people in general were the source of their authority. We had a moment i think where we had a nice balance between what we might call aristocratic and democratic values. Even in their own undemocratic times and circumstances they were unusual if not unique. As political leaders they compromised a sort of elite. A selfcreated aristocracy largely based on merit and talent that was unlikely hereditary nobility that ruled 18thcentury english society. 18th century britain remained under authority of four hundred noble families whos political influence were unmatched by take for example, the duke of rockinghams Country House, he was the patron of edmund burke, his Country House was 650 feet long. Thats longer than two football fields. Compare that to william birds estate which still exists on the james river, westover, 90 feet. 90 feet long. While Charles Carroll of maryland, one of the wealthiest families and planters in the American South was what was earning what americans earning as a huge sum of 1,800 pounds a year. The earl of darbys vast estates in england were bringing in an annual of over 40,000 pounds. By english standards americans aristocrats Like Washington and jefferson, even with their hundreds of slaves remained mine minor gentry at best. And by the english measure of status, lawyers like john adams and Alexander Hamilton were even less distinguished. Gentlemen, no doubt but nothing like the english nobility who vast scale of wealth was beyond anything that existed in north america. They were different from the english aristocracy. Century it was placed to explore enlightenment. Now the 18th century angloamerican enlightenment was preoccupied with what they called politeness, which had a much broader meaning that it had for us today. Much more than manners and decorum. It implied afterability, socialability, cultivation. Indeed politeness was considered to be the source of civility which was soon replaced by a , much more expansive term civilization. So what they meant by politeness was civilized, to be civilized and this american gentry, was caught up with these ideals of politeness. Civilization implied a social process, societies it was assumed moved through successive stages of Historical Development and you get this development at the end of the 18th century of what was caused the 4 stage. The third stage farming agricultural, agriculture and then the final stage of commerce. Beginning in rude simplicity of civilization all nations could be located along with spectrum of four stages of social development. Since civilization was something that could be achieved, everything was enlisted in order pushed back barbarism, and spread refinement and knowledge. All sorts in the 18th century English Speaking world, also its a new organizations and instruments grew up, sprang up to spread light and knowledge among people. This is the period and we call it the age of enlightenment. Learned societies, debating clubs, assembly clubs, reading groups, gentleman magazines, concerts, galleries, museums all were created in this period of the 18th century. 18th century English Speakers saw the beginning of culture, culture as a public commodity, as something that was valuable and that gave status and that could be acquired. The cultural world that we are familiar with today as the 4 Arts Organization exemplify, that cultural world was born in the age of enlightenment. Now at the center of this new civilized world was the idea of a gentleman. Defineing a proper gentleman educated the public of the 18th century English Speaking world and writers from richard steel, addison steel, to jane austin spent their lives struggling with what constituted the proper character of a gentleman. Indeed, john adams and Thomas Jefferson were still going at it in their correspondence at the end of their lives. For many in the 18th century, including the American Revolutionaries, being a gentleman assumed a moral meaning that was much more important than its social significance. Pure monarchists might still define aristocracies exclusively by the pride of their families or the size of their estates or the lavishness of their display and the arrogance of their bearing, but others increasingly down played or ridiculed these characteristics and emphasized others. Think of jane austins novel, particularly pride and prejudice. Elizabeth bennett is looking for a proper gentleman and mr. Darcy has other characteristics. Hes got wealth, 10,000 pounds a year, hes got blood, purple blood but thats not what jane austin or Elizabeth Bennett wants. She wants a man whos a proper 18th century enlightened gentleman. To sum up in the idea of a liberal Arts Education. Indeed, the 18th century created the modern idea of a liberal Arts Education in the English Speaking world. The age old distinction between gentleman and commoners had a vital meaning for this generation that we today have totally lost. We put gentlemen on our restroom doors. It has no more significance than that. But this distinction marked horizontal cleavage, in some respects even more imposing than the horizontal cleavage that appalls us between free and enslaved, but it also divided the social hierarchy into two unequal parts almost as sharply as the distinction between officers and soldiers. The two are linked. We hear officer and gentlemen. Officers are supposed to be gentlemen were eligible to be officers. Gentlemen who constituted about 2 of the Southern Society and about 8 of northern new england, north new york society were all those at the top of the social hierarchy who were wealthy enough to not have to work, at least not have to work with their hands. They were those who were able to act in what was called a disinterested manner in promoting a public good. The gentleman the character designation of gentleman actually had a legal meaning as well and often, as john adams pointed out, somebody in a trial had to be designated, is he a gentleman or not . And he would be treated differently in the law in accordance with whether his status was that of a gentleman or not. Now disinterestedness, fascinating word, was the most common term that the founders used as a synonym for the classical conception of virtue or selfsacrifice. It was washingtons favorite word. He used that more often than he used the term virtue. It meant being impartial. Now we today have lost most of this earlier meaning. Educated people use disinterested to mean uninterested. If you look it up in the dictionary, both meanings are there. Uninterested but also the older meaning of impartial, standing above interest. Its almost and the modern meaning of uninterested is almost as if we cant imagine anyone being truly disinterested, standing above an interest even if they have one, theyre supposed to act impartially and rise above any pecuniary concern in being unselfish and partial where an interest might be president. Present. Washington was very much caught up in this, and he refused to take a salary for that reason as commander in chief and tried to not take a salary as president. They wouldnt let him do that. And if youve watched downton abbey, you get some sense of this. That kind of you extended into the 20th century in england. Do you remember Maggie Smiths character, whos really born in the shes a victorian woman. Shes appalled that her grandson in law wants to continue practicing law when hes going to supposed to run the estate, and that was a violation, in her mind, of what an aristocrat ought to do. You shouldnt be a lawyer. She didnt understand the whole notion of working at all. She said at one point, whats a weekend . She didnt understand that there were distinctions. This you know, Benjamin Franklin in the Constitutional Convention made several proposals, one of which was that all members of the executive branch from the president on down should serve without pay. Now it got tabled, it was just impractical for americans, but it was he was echoing this kind of oldfashioned notion of what an aristocrat ought to do. You know, members of the Parliament Got no salary until 1911. That was the first time they were paid. So this was the responsibility of aristocrats, and you get some semblance of this. Now others disagreed with this. John adams, for example, wrote several long pieces on why Political Office holders had to be paid a salary. He needed the money. He couldnt serve as washington did without pay, and at one point he really he did not Like Washington for that reason, because it put him in the shade. He said, i know well that the word disinterested turns the heads of the people by exciting their enthusiasm, but although there are disinterested men, there are not enough of them in our in any age or any country to fill all the necessary offices. And, therefore, the people may depend upon it that the hypocritical pretense of disinterestedness will not be set up to deceive them much oftener than the virtue will be practiced for their good. Hes trying to take on that conventional wisdom that a leader ought to rise above pecuniary interest and act in an impartial way. Now i think there are only two occupations left in our time that have a semblance of this disinterested behavior. I cant see you because the lights are strong, shout out, can you think of any of these two occupations. Salvation army. Dr. Wood well, ok. but im thinking of im thinking first of judges. I think they although weve got doubts about judges because we see these hearings that we have when a judge is appointed, were not even sure of judges any longer, but i guarantee you there is one occupation which billions of dollars are invested in where we really count on these people being disinterested in this oldfashioned sense of the term being impartial. [indiscernible] dr. Wood no, not the military has some semblance of this i think oldfashioned notion, but im thinking of referees and umpires in our sports world. [laughter] i mean, think about it. A kid grows up in boston as a red sox fan and then he becomes an umpire and hes umpiring a red sox yankees game and his emotional commitment to the to the red sox is very strong. We expect him to transcend that emotional commitment to the red sox and be impartial in his judgments. Thats what washington meant by disinterested. It didnt mean that you had no interest. You have interest but you you overcome your interest, the emotional or pecuniary concern you have for that interest and make an impartial judgment. And that is difficult to do, and yet we count on it, i think, for sports umpires. The whole the whole vast professional sports world is dependent upon it, and i think thats the one group we really hope will be truly disinterested. Now as a spiraling gentleman, these leaders, these revolutionary leaders shared these assumptions about work, about politeness and civilization. In fact, they were primed, i think, to receive all these new enlightened ideas about stability and gentility. They were primed in a way more than the english themselves. They were like the scotts, and i think the comparison with the scotts in the late 18th century is very, very relevant. These new ideas of politeness, what constitutes a gentleman had a special appeal for all the outlying, under developed provinces of the greatest british world, for the scotts as well as those leaders in north america. The similarities are extraordinary between the scotts and the north americans. Both of them, both the americans and the scotts were provincial People Living on the edges of the metropolitan english world. Both provisional societies lacked the greater hereditary noble families that were at the Ruling Center of the political life. When the union with england was formed in 1707, all the great noble families in scotland moved south to london where the action was leaving scotland under control of the minor gentry. In both north american scotland, unlike metropolitan england, the upper most levels of the aristocracy tended to be dominated by the minor gentry, people Like Washington and jefferson in america and people like boswell and hume and adam smith in scotland. Professional men or relatively small landowners who were anxious to have their status determined less by their ancestry or the size of their estates and more by their behavior or their learning, their politeness. Both the scotts and the north americans moreover were acutely aware of the contrast between civilization and the nearby barbarism on the one hand of the highland clans which many people compared to the savages, they called them the indians in america and of course the north american indians. Both of these people were well aware of earlier development of the social process. The highland clans which were wild, frightening, and the indians who were savage hunter gatherers. Both were keenly wear of the civilization. They were aware that civilization was a process and they spent much time writing and reading essays from rudeness to refinement, a common theme in commencement addresses, for example. They, too, both the scotts and americans, knew they lived in cruder and simple societies than the english and england was well along, well along in the 4th and final stage of social development, in commercial society and had much to offer off of these pro vinceal provincial these pro vinceal outlying areas, had much to offer them in the ways of politeness and refinement and civilization, yet at the same time both the scotts and the americans knew only too well that the polite and sophisticated metropolitan center of the empire was steeped in luxury and corruption. England had sprawl and poverty ridden cities, over refined manners, gross inequalities of rank, complex divisions of labor and widespread manufacturing of luxuries, all symptoms of over advanced social development and social decay. England in the eyes of the scotts and of the north americans seemed to be on the verge of disillusion, of destruction. Both both these provincials in scotland and north america began to feel an acute ambivalence about being part of the british empire. What im going to try to explain is what might be called the sociology of creativity. Why are some people creative and others not . These people on the edges, scotts and north americans, were proud of their simple native provinces. They were proud to be from edinburgh or glasgow. They were keenly aware that the metropolitan center of civilization that was london, they knew that london was superior in so many ways to their small provincial centers, but at the same time they had the unsettling sense of living in two cultures simultaneously. Theyre aware of being english, of knowing about london, but at the same time proud of being scotts or being north americans, proud of being virginians or proud of being from boston. Although this experience may have been disturbing, and it was, it was at the same time stimulating and creative. I think one way of understanding what im getting at is looking at novelists in america in the 20th century. Provincial creativity. Think about the beginning of the century, 1900, from the midwest. A number of novelists emerged. Sinclair, lewis. They had an acute consciousness of growing up in chicago, or minneapolis, and were proud of that. At the same time they were aware that the centers of civilization was not chicago, minneapolis but was new york, london. They had a dual sense of being in two cultures simultaneously which feeds their creativity. You can go through groups right through the 20th century, southerners, faulkner, welty, a whole host of southern writers. Acutely conscious of being southern and proud of it but at the same time aware that the south was not metropolitan new york or london. And that sense of discrepancy was jarring but creative and the same is. That the same was true of blacks. Acutely conscious of black culture. Baldwin, tony morrison, richard wright, ralph ellison, aware of a larger, more cosmopolitan, more sophisticated white world. Jews had the same thing. You had a series of creative jewish writers, belo, fill lit roth, malmud, acutely consciousness of their jewishness but acutely aware there was a jewish era that they were aware of. That is the crucial point. They have the sense of discrepancy and of course the example that clinches everything are the irish. Starting with when you think about it, start with Jonathan Swift and edmund burke in the 18th century all the way up to james joyce, obrien, the number of irish novelists. Why should that be so . Its not in their dna. Its in the fact that they were writing in english acutely conscious of being irish but participating in a larger english world, that sense of discrepancy, of being in two worlds simultaneously was disturbing but i think its the source of their creativity. Thats what im suggesting the founders experience, as did the 18th century scotts. Helps explain why both these areas should have become such remarkable places of enlightenment and intellectual ferment. Scotts like david hume, adam smith, adam ferguson, john miller, they matched if didnt excel or exceed the american founders in their brilliance, in their creativity. Those scotts created modern social science, and adam smith and david hume were world class philosophers. Living so close to what they regarded as savagery and barbarism, they thought freshly about the meaning of being civilized and in the process they put a heightened emphasis on learned and acquired values at the expense of the traditional inherited values of blood and kinship. If the revolution was about anything, it was repudiation of blood. They enthusiastically, therefore, adopted the new enlightened 18th century ideals of gentility, that was something that could be learned, acquired. They were preoccupied with their honor or their reputation. Or, in other words, the way they were represented and viewed by others. These revolutionary leaders inevitably became characters, if you will, selffashioned performers in the theater of life. Washington was acutely aware that he was always on stage and behaved accordingly. The characters today we are to understand the inner personality that contains hidden contradictions and flaws. Instead, their idea of character was the outer life, how you presented yourself to the public, trying to show the world that one was living up to the values and duties that the best of the culture imposed on him. These revolutionary leaders committed themselves to behaving in a certain moral, virtuous, civilized manner. Indeed, the intense self conscious seriousness in which they made their commitment to this to these values was what ultimately separated them from later generations of american leaders, but that commitment also sets them sharply apart, i think, from the older world of their fathers and their grandfathers. They were men of high ambition and yet of relatively modest origin. This combination made achieved rather than ascribed values naturally appealing to them. Almost all of the revolutionary leaders, including the second and third tiers or ranks of leadership were first generation gentlemen. That is to say, almost all were the first in their families to attend college and two of the prominent ones, franklin and washington, did not attend college but were read extensively and educated themselves in these values and they wanted to display the new 18th century marks of enlightened gentlemen. Jeffersons father, peter jefferson, was a wealthy virginia planter and a surveyor who married successfully into the prestigious randolph family, but he was not a refined and liberally educated gentleman. He did not read latin. He did not know french. He did not play the violin. And as far as we know, he never once questioned the idea of religious establishment or the owning of slaves. His son, Thomas Jefferson, was very different. Indeed, all the revolutionaries knew things their fathers did not know, and they were eager to prove themselves in what they believed and valued by their disinterestedness, by their virtue, but there was one prominent revolutionary leader who did not seek to play this role that the others did. Now on the face of it aaron burr had all the credentials for being a great founder. He was a revolutionary war veteran, a princeton graduate, and a charming and wealthy aristocrat. He eventually became a senator from new york and Vice President of the United States, the third and his predecessors were john adams and Thomas Jefferson. He was well on his way to a great career, but something set him apart, set his character apart from his colleagues. He inherited his claim to leadership. He was a real aristocrat, if you will. John adams said that he had never known in any country the prejudice in favor of birth, parentage and dissent more conspicuous than in the instance of colonel burr. Burr was the son of a president of princeton and the grandson of another princeton president , none other than jonathan edwards, the most famous theologian in the 18th century. Burr said adams was connected by blood, by blood with many respectable families in new england. Unlike the other leaders of the revolutionary generation, unlike jefferson, washington, adams, hamilton, madison, franklin, burr was born fully and unquestionably into whatever nobility and gentility 18th Century America had. Unlike the other revolutionary leaders, therefore, burr never felt the need that he had to earn his aristocrat particular his aristocrat status. Aristocracy was in his veins, in his blood, and he never forgot it. And he took it for granted. Consequently, he behaved very differently from the other revolutionary leaders, especially in promoting his own selfish interests at the expense of the public good. His letters are not full of any talk of virtue or disinterested behavior. He just didnt care about that. His talk was always concerned with what can i do to advance my interests. He didnt care about the other values that the others were intensely trying to cultivate and perform. Burr behaved differently, and in the end i think that difference provoked his fellow states men statesmen into bringing him down. He was brought down from both ends of the political spectrum, from hamilton at one end, from jefferson at the other, both came to despise burr and both brought him down and destroyed his reputation. Yet i think the very high mindedness of this of these mainstream revolutionary leaders raises some fundamental questions. If it was the intense commitment of this generation, these founders to new enlightened values that separates them from other generations, why, it might be asked, and it has been asked by recent critical historians, why did the socalled enlightened and liberally educated gentlemen not do more to reform their society . Why did they fail to enhance the status of women, eliminate slavery entirely, treat the indians in a more humane manner . Now its. It is true that the founders did not accomplish all that many of them wanted. It turned out that they did not control their society and their culture as much as they thought they did, and they were no more able accurately to predict their future than we can accurately predict our future. In the end, many of their enlightened hopes and their kind of enlightened elitist leadership was done in by the very forces that they unleashed with their revolution. No doubt all of the founders assumed instinctively that the western territories would eventually belong to White American settlers, but many at the same time were scrupulously concerned for the fate of the indians who occupied the territories. Indeed the status of washingtons secretary of war, henry knox, in the 1790s in letters he wrote to washington about the need for a just treatment of these native peoples. Our modern anthropologists would praise and applaud, but purchasing the indians rights of the land to the land and assimilating or protecting them depended on an orderly and steady pace of settlement, but the ordinary white settlers moved west who moved west flush with confidence that they were, indeed, the chosen people of god, their leaders told them they were, paid no attention whatsoever to what knox was saying and to what the leaders back in philadelphia and the capital were trying to do. They went ahead and rapidly andd chaotically scattered westward and stirred up warfare with the indians and to which the federal government was inevitably drawn. Did the same for the other hopes and plans of the founders. All of the from the leaders thought that the liberal principles of the revolution would eventually destroy the institution of slavery. When even southerners like jefferson and Henry Lawrence publicly deplored the injustice of slavery, from that moment, declare the new york physician and abolitionist eh smith in 1798, the slow but certain death wound was inflicted upon it. Of course, such predictions could not have been more wrong. Far from doomed, slavery in the United States was on the verge of its greatest expansion. At the end of the revolutionary era, despite enormous eliminations of slavery in the north, there were more slaves in the nation that had existed in 1760. Such selfdeception and mistaken optimism by the revolutionary leaders was understandable. They wanted to believe the best and initially, there was evidence that slavery was dying. The northern states where slavery was not inconspicuous or inconsequential, 14 of the population of new york or example were slaves. From the mona revolution, they were busy trying to eliminate the institution and by 1804, all the states in the north had done so. The founders thought the same thing might happen in the southern states. Helle sharp was given was the leading british abolitionist at the time. He was given an Honorary Degree in 1791 by the college of william and mary. Why would these planters who are all slaveholders give an Honorary Degree to a leading abolitionist . Why would they do that . They were optimistic that slavery was dying and it would die, maybe not immediately, but it was on its way out and they could celebrate and abolitionist. Not only were there more antislave societies created in the south, but Many Missions in grew quiteouth rapidly in the years immediately following the end of the war. Many thought that the end of the International Slave trade in 1808 would eventually kill off the institution of slavery. The reason the founders took the issue of slavery off the table in the 1790s was because of stake in the future. They lived with the illusion. The third seat third chief justice of the u. S. Supreme court declared, as population increases, poor laborers will be so plentiful as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a spec on our country. The leaders did not count on the remarkable demographic capacity of the slave states themselves, especially virginia, to produce slaves the exploding areas of the deep south in the southwest. Whatever the revolutionary leaders might have wished was vilified by the demand of ordinary White Planters for more and more slaves. If you want to know why we can never again replicate this extraordinary generation of founders, there is a simple answer. Presumablyof what we value most about American Society and culture, democracy. People,es of ordinary ordinary white people began to be heard as never before in the history of the world, and they soon overwhelmed the highminded desires and highminded aims of these revolutionary leaders who brought them into being. The founders has succeed had succeeded too well in promoting democracy and equality among ordinary people. They succeeded in preventing any duplication of themselves. Thank you. [applause] let me start by asking
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