Introduction that my wife and i are coming out with a book called founders advice. I know this has been done before. Secretary bennett did a number of years ago. The way he did it was considerably different than what were trying to do. I have a background was a historian but im married to a woman who was in business. She was in washington d. C. Working for a defense contractor and had the opportunity to go to seattle to work for a small start up company that had not yet gone public, microsoft. When she started with mike cros, when she started it was such a Small Company they could have employee meetings that small auditorium. A lunch time. She had an opportunity to listen to this man time and time again named bill gates who didnt talk about making good products or capturing market share but he talked about changing the world. I think for her that was such a heady experience and the experience of being in a company like that at that point in time was so remarkable that she began to real
Differences, what we read for today is its clearly not the case. What we see is in the 1790s, many of the divisions, many of the concerns that people who viewed the constitution in these folks came to see this still as a problem in the 1790s. The ratification of the constitution did not do away with these divisions. Instead they continued to manifest themselves. And we can see them manifest themselves in a variety of ways. Were going to talk about three ways today that are two clear examples. Examples that highlight the ways in which certain individuals, american citizens decided that they were going to rebel against the constitution and the federal government. In the 1790s we see two examples where rebels decided perhaps they decide to try to form their own more perfect union, their own country. One of these events takes place, or both of them take place in 1794. The first of them that were going to discuss is the whiskey rebellion, which takes place in 1794 in pennsylvania. As well d
This letter, it was a matter of National Honor. American treatment of loyalists after the war would say a lot about the character of the new nation and hamilton wanted the nation to start off on the right foot. So hamilton was thinking about National Honor almost from the launching of the new nations, but he really concerned himself with the preservation of National Honor when he became the nations first secretary of the treasury in 1789. Hamilton was the man responsible for dealing with the new nations enormous disorganized war debts so essentially he was responsible for establishing national credit. Now hamiltons concern makes sense if you think about the meaning of the word credit. The formal focus of hamiltons job. Credit is essentially honor in another form. Credit, a person with credit is trustworthy. A person with credit has a reliable and upstanding character. A nations credit represents all of those things as well as its standing in the eyes of the world, a nations reputation.
Least 17 other, many interrelated. So for example it wasnt a lone duel in and of itself but part of a larger trend. And when you look at all these political duels together you notice really interesting patterns. Most of them took place shortly after an election. And there were deliberately provoked. And a common ploy was one man would call another a selfinterested politician. And there is only one response to that sort of insult, which is you are a liar. And poof, you have a duel. It was very effective way of provoking. And many most cases the loser of an election would provoke the win ore are one of his friends into the duel. And what wore talking about here when looking at these duels. They were deliberately provoked and strategically timed. In other words Many American political duels were kind of like counter elections. Someone dishonored by an election, by losing an election tried to redeem his reputation by an aristocratic contest of hon e a duel. In essence american political du
The war. It was what they experienced. Marshal was a virginian. He was a bit of a backwoods virginian, but he fought in a number of the battles in new jersey. But he became part of something that was a lot bigger than virginia. And he got to know people from many different states, many different backgrounds, and it changed, it changed him and he began to think of the United States as his country. Not virginia. And he became to think of the government as the government of the United States, not the government of virginia. And of course, this gets revisited in the american civil war. This is exactly whats happening. The secession begins. These states are asserting the rights that they retained when they voluntarily became a part of the federal union. The view of lincoln was thats not true. You cant leave. Youre in it, you stay in it. But its primarily over the belief of the Southern States that they were the primary unit. They had given certain things to the federal government, but they