Freeman talks about her life in writing, she appeared in her monthly call in program in depth in september 2019. Joanne freeman, youre gonna hate this opening question. [laughter] trace the arc of our nations history from 1783 to 1861, the political history of our nation. Wow. I wont use the word hate. [laughter] thats a little daunting. Trace the arc. Im gonna do historian thing and speak generally. I guess i would say if youre looking at american politics from the beginning straight to we could even go past the civil war you are talking about paradoxes and conflict and improv. The periods i tend to focus on really more the early part of the earth and its the improvisational nature of that that really fascinates me more than anything else because the nation was founded in a world of monarchy and the United States was a republic beyond that there was a lot of open grounds theres a lot of improv in those early decades about what the onation is, how it functions, the tone of the government. How this nation is going to stand up amongst the nations of the world that are other kinds of nations, what does it mean to be republican in a world of monarchies . How is this new nation going to get any degree of arrespect and equally if not more significant as far as the inside of that nation is concerned what kind of nation is it going to be . That question is true on every level you can imagine it being true. There is a broad ideological level of which thats true but theres a groundlevel how democratic a nation this will be. Who is going to own the land and how is that way im going to be llliterally wrested from other people. What kind of rights will some people have and what kinds of rights will other people not have it all . A lot of the questions that we are grappling with now, questions about equity and equality and race, those go back to the beginning of the old republic and beyond. As a historian living in the moment we are living in now and thinking in that broad arcing way we deal with these Big Questions and these big legacies of undecided things. We are still dealing with them. They go all the way back. Where we inherently democratic to begin . No. [laughter] the word to monarchy and americans had very strong sense of, certainly elite white male americans had a very strong sense of their rights. They felt that they were occreating a more democratic regime than what had been around before. They were thinking very much about right. Theres a reason why theres a bill of rights attached to the constitution. In that sense they were very right minded but by lno means was a country founded with people thinking everyone will have rights they will be equality, there were different, i dont like to call them parties but two different points of view the federalist hamilton and republicans jefferson which is over symbol five but those are the two camps and they had a different view each by how democratic the nation should be federalists wanted to be somewhat less democratic the even so, a pretty limited view of democratic. When i teach about this period and i tell my students theres all kind of words you have to think about the meaning of democracy is a big one because we see that word in the founding period it does not mean the same thing it means now. You have to rethink and recalculate what you are talking about when you are looking at the founding and seeing these words that now are kind of political pundits. How many points of view where there back then . In a sense today we are divided democrats, republicans, independents, was that the case back then . I would say was more complex than that. They were thinking in the way we think about party. Party its an institution, a party is an institution, a structure, and Organization Bring yourself back to the mindset of the founding first of all, they were assuming that a National Party like the idea that the nation they could get something that overarching that that many people would buy into amongst all these diverse states that would not have occurred to them but even beyond that they didnt think a idNational Party was a good thing. They assume that a republic meant lots of viewpoints banging up against each other and that in the National Center those viewpoints would bang up against each other and ultimately some kind of decision or compromise or something would be worked out a bit and that was the point of the National Center was to have all the banging up of opinions but initially they worked assuming that there should be two or three viewpoints. They were federalists and republicans but even under i like to call the umbrella of political thought, even under those umbrellas were vast differences, if you are federalist in massachusetts or federalist in South Carolina that could mean something really different. It was more of a spectrum then categories. In the founding period. What were some of the improvisations that did not succeed and some that did. Id the improvisations are really fun to teach about our political culture improv. One of the wonderful things about studying and writing about the founding s they put all kinds of things in writing that you dont expect them to tput in writing. John adams writing to a friend and saying how should an american politician dress . I will look like those british or french european aristocrats, the clothing i have is from my years in europe had a lot of lace on it. Is that too much lace to be american . Should i strip some of the waste eaway or washington . How many horses with the carriage would seem appropriately american versus comedy are remarkable. Which sounds really trivial and goofy and part of what so much fun to teach but on the other hand they are seriously thinking about the fact that those kinds of little seemingly stylistic decisions are really going to shape the tone and the character of the government and the nation and when everything sets a precedent, that kind of improv can have a big impact. On the one hand its almost comical because it alseems trivial. On the other hand. It really is a ttrivial that i and of itself is interesting. We have several hundred white male elites forming this country was thereby in from the 3 million to 40 Million People who lived at the time. Is a small group of elite people that have power, on the other hand, the revolution was a popular revolution it was not conducted by dirty guys in the room. It is important to remember whatevers going on although the elite has power and worried about maintaining power theres a lot happening around them and part of the challenge or the widow i want to call it, i want to say difficulty some of the challenges or the tension of that period is the American People figuring out how to voice what they want, how to demand what they want, how does the system work for them . If it does work for them what can they do to make it work for them better . It isnt just cancel the elect guys running everything they have the power but the American People understood in a broad sense that they had rights in some way and different kinds of opeople had a different understanding of what rights but there was a broader sense that whatever the experiment was that was going on in this new nation that rights were something that were still being worked out and determined and that they potentially extended more widely than someone who had come before. Joanne freeman, what was a wig and what did he believe . Wig, talking, and can answer the question by moving ahead in time to wig. This gets back to earlier question about parties and categories, people particularly now people like to go back in time and draw w Straight Lines between the parties of the president and the parties will pass. They like to say, if youre republican, republican, go all the way back to jefferson. There is no Straight Lines and certainly no Straight Lines when it comes to political parties. Parties bounce back and forth and names change all the time. Wig parties, for a while had the Democratic Party, which was its own thing on the one hand and he had what was known more than anything else is the antijacksonians. It wasnt really a party it was more like people who arent really athat. We dont want jackson, we dont like what they represent. That comes the whig party and you end up in the mid19th century essentially for a while two main parties and one is jackson, democratic, supposedly popular supposedly common man, common white man on one side the other side you have the whigs which are more centralized which are more big National Governments. In represent two thirds we can still see but really represented a very different point of view. If you were governor of massachusetts or president of the United States at that time, who held more political power . At that time meeting the founding or whenever i want it to be . Whatever you want it to be. [laughter] if you go all the way back to the real founding moment, thats a good question. There were people like hamilton and the federalists who assumes that the bulk of the powers was with the state and not with National Government which was new and who knew what it encompassed billy above and beyond the skeletal constitution, our constitution really brief for what it does hamilton and his ilk thought that the answer to that question would be the governor of massachusetts probably. Although on paper you might say the president had a lot of power. The fact of the matter is, for people they are loyalties and sense of belongingness and their understanding of power is pretty much going to be grounded in their state. Over time that shifts but in tthe 19th century certainly th first half of the 19th century if you were to pick up a newspaper from that Period Congress would be getting a lot more attention then the president at that point. We assume now that the president is allpowerful and the president is at the center of the news and thats not an early american way of really thinking about politics. In reading your books, i dont know if this is purposeful or if i missed it but the president doesnt play the large role that the president plays today in our world. Right. I would say thats partly deliberate and partly reflects my interest. It is true that throughout this period, although clearly americans understood that the president was significant, in the early founding period trying to figure out what that means. Congress as the peoples branch, people understand that congress is really where the nation is being worked out in a groundlevel kind of way and people dont they had a direct connection with their member of congress when members of congress stood up and particularly when you get into the 1840s and 1850s members of congress stood up and seem like they were speaking to their constituents. Would we recognize Congress Today as it was back then in the early republic in the early republic, no, i dont think we could recognize in the early republic or 19th century. The early republic exposed in some ways might be what we assume congress should look like. Compared with what i just written about in my book somewhat tamer. Its a group of men, white men in the room, above and beyond that. Decisions and legislation and those are the things we assume congress should do. Over time the United States becomes a lot more violent and congress is a representative body and Congress Becomes a lot more violent. In that case i think it begins to look in some ways we would not necessarily accept. From your book the e field blood the tobacco juice drugs at the house and senate are apt metaphor for congress in the decades before the civil war. Yes there were soaring oratory on occasion, yes they were union shaking decisions being made but underneath the speechifying pontificating and politicking was a spit spattered rug, the Antebellum Congress had its admirable moments but it wasnt an assembly of demagogues, it was a Human Institution with very human failings. That was an important point for me to make it a really early point in this book because my assumption about what most people think about particularly congress in this time period, the period of play dome at clay and webster and, great men, congress was a bunch of people in black suits being lofty. I have another lofty thought. This very important for me offthecuff to say no, this is a really Human Institution and its an unruly institution. Its a different world then you assume in the book really is about this Human Institution and how it functioned and how that shaped not just the nations politics but americans understanding of the nation. What is an affair of honor . Good question. Thats another fundamental thing that really pointed my first book i talked about that. That becomes an allencompassing term. I think people assume thats all there was with two men on the field and shooting each other. Part of the point i make an affair of honor was given that. The point of an affair of honor or even a dual was even counterintuitive. If you have two men on the field with guns facing into their shooting someone tried to kill the other one. One of my early points was no. The point of affair monitor is to prove you are willing to die for your honor and affair of honor means its a long ritualized series of letter oexchanges and negotiations ve often that can take place two men can redeem their names reputation and honor and you dont even have to make it out to dueling ground. An affair of honor includes all the ritualized negotiations. Once you get past that point on the dueling ground that becomes a dual and even at that point that the point to prove you are the kind of man and uleader whos going to die for your name and read davidabreputation. Joanne freeman, where we taught at the beginning of. [singing] history at the burr hamilton duel of 1804. Where we taught about it. Partly because sometimes history is first the ways and switch some people teach history is about good stories that seem to sum things up. You get the caning of charles sumner. Dramatic stories it does a lot of character work more than anything else. Or at least not until recently has that been taught as a way of getting deeper. What happened on that day in 1804 and why did it happen. Agnew opponents for a long time. Hamilton was largely the fuel behind much of that opposition. Ephe thought of them as somethi is a demagogue. Because he came from the equivalent of royalty. His family he was someone who hamilton saw as an opportunist, hamilton sounds really early on in their relationship back in 1792 pretty much a direct quote i consider it my religious duty to oppose his career. That serious opposition you have going there. Y hes pretty bound and determined to quash in his career and that goes on for quite some time. In the election of 1800 two candidates from the same party they step forward and do everything they can do to quash his chances, this is not make them happy, they came near fighting dual at that point and got smoothed over, four years later berger is running for governor of new york, hamilton steps forward to do everything he can do to stop that from happening and he says as luck would have it someone steps forward after that and have you seen this newspaper report of what hamilton said about you at a dinner party. Burn needs to prove hes a man, a leader whose work being followed since hes losing contest after contest. He tends to redeem his name. He asked on the edit happens to be hamiltons word. You end up with berger being handed something that is his mind is dual worthy. He commences an affair of honor with hamilton. They exchange these ritualized letters, neither one, it doesnt go swimmingly. Bird sends a very ritualized letter they usually say those kind of letters when you initiate a bare bone they say the same sthing. If you get one of those letters you knew you were in trouble. He had to think about how you responded. He writes, he is hamilton so hes 18 words for one word. He writes this very lengthy response in which he talks about supposedly he calls he said something still more despicable about bird, these are the words that berger picks up on. What you mean despicable . Hamilton breakfast grammar lesson letter in which he is talking about what is despicable mean. Between gentlemen is despicable that better word . Thats insulting all by itself error an angry person whos been called despicable. At the end of that letter to show hes not afraid of conflict with him, hamilton says, by the way, i always stand behind all my words and thats not an exception to that now so i will stand and willing to fight for any words that i uttered. Thats not a strategically smart thing for hamlet to send that kind of letter. Its offensive in two ways. Bird gets it and is offended and said you not behaving like a gentleman, its not a gentlemanly thing to do. So mother both offended. You can kinda see how things spiraled to the point that a trip to the dueling ground is to be the outcome. Was dueling legal . No. That was a statebystate thing. Every state had its own antidueling regulations. A challenge might be against the law, the dual itself might be against the law. The punishment was different. In massachusetts you could be publicly humiliated in some way and rhode island i think it was a fine. If you think you are in passages that you prefer to go to rhode island. It was a lot less daunting. It was illegal but it was largely the lawmakers doing the dueling. People making the law the people breaking the law, which tells you a lot about the elite in this period and the kind of power they had. Do we spend too much time talking about the actual duels . The set up to this rather than, or is it a microcosm of whats going on in the country at the time . . People tend to focus on that for in that particular region another land of hamilton musical. That duel is front and center. There was a lot of dueling. The practice of doing is worth looking at because it does tell you a lot about elite politics being a politician, political culture of the time. That can tell you a lot about the kind of emotional guts of some of the politics of the period but the burr hamilton duel should it end and for all doing its just dramatic and the Vice President of the United States