Phillips discusses his historical narrativnarrative. Kevin phillips, at the end of your preference, you have a paragraph that says the year 177417 steny 5 had more than their fair share of unsung heroes. 1775 had more than their fair share of unsung heroes. What are you getting at . One of the things i like best about 1775, which was a much more spurned group of people, granted the Founding Fathers more Inspiring Group of people, granted, the Founding Fathers were not always seven out of the 10 counties, metropolitan washington, it is the country did is still great but a capital that is not. Would have predicted that . If anyone would have guessed that there would be a country of 300 million people, they may wouldnt come up with a bit of cynicism. But they were dedicated people. You say, during the last four years, during the campaign of 2012, you stuck your nose at this. The first time i did Something Like that was back in the 1990s. I wrote a book about the English Speaking civil wars, the American Revolution. I did it thinking about bill clinton and newt gingrich. It was nice to take a vacation from those guys. When i ran out of gas writing books about politics and economics, which i did a number of between 2002 and 2008, and said it is time to go back in history again. Hop in my time capsule and forget about these fellows. And i have forgotten about them pretty well. I cannot remember, for example, the name of the governor of texas who was such a jerk in the primary. [laughter] effect that he could not remember the departments in the government, i guess it is a little forgivable. I did it for the same reason in many respects. I wanted to deal with something i liked, that i thought was worth pursuing. And a long time ago, i did a book called the emerging republican majority. I thought i would take the methodologies that i would use in that book and try to come up with a good explanation of the realignment of 1775. That is a good part of what this new book is about. Before we get into this, a number of years ago, he called you a liberal. We have known you over the years as supposedly a conservative. And does your own views on liberal conservatives now pierre. Wrot i was always a bit more of a populist. Beent think i have ever where i would call a liberal. Somebody might call me a progressive. Certainly even within the Republican Party. Outsider, and iestablishment carrion, antia stable monetary and anti establishmentarian. What did you think of Richard Nixon when you worked with him . I liked him better after i wasnt working with him and he was out of the presidency. He is a very intelligent man, a man with the enormous personal problems in terms of relating to people. And i understand much better, which i did not a time when i worked for him, how he was not an effective administrator and how he couldnt keep all those worms in the can, whether you are talking about the administration or special watergate pierre had been to keep up with him after the years that he was president . He read one of my books from the early 1980s that feel like. Somehow, we started having correspondence again. I would see him max for times of year. His office was up in new york and then in saddle river, new jersey. So when i would go from washington to our house in connecticut or sometimes i would stop and see him. And we would discuss politics and some of the things that had not been the school had not been discussedable before. Did you ever get in setting to watergate and how that happened . I think i got a little. For example, one time, this was probably in 1992 or thereabouts. He told me and he indicated that John Mitchell thought so, too, that this book that was coming out, silent coup do you remember that one . That was probably some of what happened. He quoted mitchell on the cover. They thought that this was sort of how it happened. So i got that sense from him. Going back to your book on 1775, how did you pursue it to . How did your research it . How do have to go . How did you have to go . I have been interested in the revolution since there was a little kid. I was probably eight or nine when i would make a list of generals. I did nothing that was heading for anything very useful, but i always enjoyed that. Then, when i did the cousins i did somee 1990s, research on the revolution. I can go back and look at them whenever want to. But i must have wound up with 600, 800, 1000 books on the revolution. Read and get a i lead for something else. I knew where an awful lot of counties were in the eastern states. You could give me the name of the town or name of the county and i could call it, a big help in dealing with a lot of parochial things. The average person would say i am not going to read this because i dont know where those places are. And generally did not have to go to a map much. I did research the way i have always done it, pretty much of myself. Bring it all myself and having it there. Basically thinking it out or not thinking out, off by myself. Which character in the 1775 book, both british and american, was the most interesting to you . Actually, a lot more interesting. If you think interesting in were thesignificant important impression, George Washington was probably people think of him as, enormously impressive in a lot of ways. He was very careful in what he did to crate that image. To create that image. He made a number of mistakes. The rest of the time, he was very good. Sam adams, i have enormous respect for him. He burned a lot of records that might have told us more about him. But i think he seemed a lot of things brilliantly. I think, for example, he knew what happened at lexington and concord before anyone. Sam adams schemed all kinds of things out brilliantly. It would take me a documentary and a series of four books to describe everything he did and how far ahead that man must have fought. Thought. Must have flocke sir william howe, his family was very interesting. His mother was the limit was the illegitimate child of george. He first appeare georgia gustons was a brigadier in the british army. He was a here reahero to the co. He was democratic. He did not wear the red color. He had things that were not as easy to see in awards. Highlight him so much. When he was killed, they put a memorial tablet to him in massachusetts assembly, the house. They put this tablet in westminster abbey. And the family was enormously impressed by this. He was the hero of his two younger brothers. And his two younger brothers, one was the commander of the british navy at that time. William howe was the general at bunker hill and others. They did not want to win the revolution unless they won it in a way that made it possible for the americans and the british to have an effective and solid union. I think he wanted to win it in a way that the americans would say, well, we have been outmaneuvered or we cannot win this. But he did not want anything that was an inconclusive bloody mess. Unfortunately for the british, that meant that he did not always fire as another general would have. From George Washington in december 1775, of if that man, lord dunmore, does not crash before spring, he will become the most formidable enemy america has at is our first president , George Washington. I think George Washington said this when he was up in massachusetts in the beginning of december 1775 or maybe late november. Communications were slow in these days. Washington, in the point in time, probably the most recent things he knew about done more about dunmore was probably as close to the peak of his power in virginia because ultimately he was chased out of virginia. But during the summer and fall of 1775, he was very effective in sending out troops to read plantations. To read plantations. He was during of the indians. They could find refuge and get the fleet of the british army. Even stirred up the instruction of indentured servants. Not only did look like he might succeed, but there were rumors that he would ascend the party in the area of alexandria, va irginia. George washington is up there in massachusetts were about his wife. Even Thomas Jefferson were about his wife at the same time. And i put that in. I did not dwell on it. I think it is a footnote or Something Like that. But washington had a personal concern there, to. Lord dunmore, what was his position . He was the royal governor of virginia and he was also a guy with an incredible ego. An awful lot of inability to make the decision because he was so caught up in himself and his potential success. You called him combative, touchy and arrogant. Well, arrogant like so many of the british aristocracy would have been. But he was an odd duck. When he captured and build some of the ports in the ohio valley, he named them after his subsidiary titles. He was the beer and blair the baron blair. It was fort dunmore for a while. He had an ego a mile wide. So what was the relationship in those days between George Washington and dunmore . They knew each other. Late winter, before the hostilities got intense in the capital of virginia, they were on some terms. There were both land speculators and they shared in this interest and George Washington was developing those and dunmore was buying all that he could get. But then they fell out. I dont think they fell out so much for personal reasons. Way of doing business was sending raiding parties and capture people. What was his relationship with the citizens of virginia . He did not have much in the way of political clout when he was in norfolk. His troops were in control of the immediate area, but basically he did not have a wide reach, except through the sloops and little ships that they would send up some of the rivers to capture people at plantations. What kind of rights to the people of virginia or the people of the colonies have in relationship to the governors colony . The average virginian did not worry did notdunmore did not worry much about dunmore unless you were in his sphere of influence. In virginia at that time, you had a very tenuous patriot hold on the southeastern part of virginia . What you mean . The independenceminded faction, the people who would have been the supporters of washington and jefferson. They were able to raise Militia Companies on the british side. But this was only very briefly. Octobernovember 1775. Star washen dunmores highest. After they abandoned know for, moralists around new years day more or less around new years day 1776. What did you think of king george iii . He was not as bad as people made out. In other words, he was not an ogre. He was a man who had big ambitions to restore the importance of the crown and he did not really succeed. He regarded the American Revolution in the same way that a lot of politicians in washington regarded vietnam. He felt that if he could not hold america, the dominoes will fall in the rest of the British Empire. He was a bad Decision Maker for the British Government in the early years. What is your take on the 16 points that were made by Thomas Jefferson in the virginia constitution and then the declaration of independence . All that stuff about george iii being an ogre and responsible for everything, if your urging a revolution, by political theory, you could overthrow retired. Overthrowing a tyrant would be a good thing. In order to make the case they needed heading into wanting to be credible to the other nations, such as france or spain whatever, you had to make george iii out to be a tyrant. So he came up with all of these arguments about what he did and that is with jefferson did. What did you think . I was not a big jeffersonian after i did all of this. He was a wordsmith. He was not a good executive when he was governor of virginia. He was not able to organize effective resistance. He wast famous until famous in the sense that we know historically now. So when he was running for president in the 17 nineties, he held in sulphide as the author of the declaration of independence. Which in some ways he was. Nobody even cared about that in the 1770s. But that was his claim to fame when he was running for the presidency. He and john adams died on the same day. That is when the whole thing became a sainted document. It was gods handiwork that he that they died on the same day. Would you have fit back in those days . Up probably would have been a trouble maker i probably would have been a trouble maker. I probably also would have been somebody who had a strategic bent. Im not sure what i have would have done. I can conceive that i would have been a delegate to the continental congress. I probably would not have been a military officer. To tell you the truth, i did not think about that much while i was writing it. I did have a sense of kinship to some of these people because they are trying to organize the idea of national realignments and a grand strategy. Would you have been a loyal list . I wouldnt have been a low list, but the one part of my family that i can trace back to the revolution, i couldnt get to be in the sense of the revolution because my mothers family were loyalists in pennsylvania. There were quakers in us county, pennsylvania. I had ancestors involved in everything. One of them was a delegate from bucks county. What about your dads side . Your mother and father, where were they from . My fathers family is from the british isles, from southern england. I dont know. It is very hard to say. The division of loyalties in ireland a lot of the poor people and the protestants in Northern Ireland the catholic gentry of the time were trying to be accepted in the British Empire and they tried to prove that loyalty by subsidizing, raising companies to send over there. Irish publications dont like to emphasize that. But a lot of the catholic gentry in ireland will loyalists. In britain, it is hard to describe. The large chunks, and especially in east anglia, which is paid from loniten which was a thumb on the mitten,. Were you born in the bronx . No, manhattan. Going back to the early years, talking about how you were fascinated by the generals, what was your child like . How many kids in the family . Just my brother and myself. We were separated by eight years. So we were not always in each others hair. But what did your dad do for a living . My father was a commissioner. What do you remember about being so fascinated . How did you get interested in it . I got interested in it in terms of politics when i was about 11 or 12. I do not think that i had been too much interested in politics before and eisenhower was the nominee in 1952. I remember being bid on eisenhower and my father was big on eisenhower. After that, i got into politics because i was fascinated by voting patterns. By the time the 1956 republican came around, i wasnt active kid i was an active kid. I was making maps county by county in different states on how they voted in president ial elections. When i wrote this book, the republican majority came out when i was 28, but i have been doing it for 12 or 14 years in terms of research. It is hard to believe. It was not terrific for my social life concentrating on all of this stuff. You married and have twins . Thats right. How old are they . 37. And hal expert are they in the kinds of things that we are talking about . They are quite interested. One does political economics. The other consults on things that are fairly political and economic. So you can see that they sort of turned out to be i wouldnt say chips off the old block, but certainly in the same ballpark. Where did you learn how to write . I dont really know. I started writing the first book i wrote, which did not turn out to be a book because i gave it up for the next one was the republican majority. I would come to washington as Administrative Assistant to the congressman. I thought johnsons program was very vulnerable, which it turned out to be. So i wrote this book. It was very stilted and, i wouldnt say formal, but not very well written. I guess i developed a style. I did a number of commentaries for many years for both cbs and then for npr and i had to write these sure things. They had to be pretty punchy. So my riding style is kind of a lawyers analytical writing, an awful lot of writing that is not legal, and writing an awful lot of stuff that had to be punchy. That is stirred into the pot. During this time, you said there were two 0. 1 million i dont know what they were called then, but the colonists in those days in this country . There would have been 2. 1 million whites. It is very imprecise because they had official censuses in a few colonies. Where were the Population Centers . The Population Centers, the biggest populations were pennsylvania and virginia. Massachusetts had a good size population. West virginia was growing by leaps and bounds as people went south through pennsylvania and virginia to the western part of north carolina. A lot of the colonies were very small. So they had no real impact in bringing a revolution about. New hampshire and rhode island to a certain extent. New jersey and georgia was very small in population. What i call vanguard colonies were massachusetts, connecticut, virginia and South Carolina. Not new york and pennsylvania, important as their word, because they were too divided. The vanguards were out in front. What were the 500,000 that were not white . Blacks, free blacks, 50,000 may be. Black slaves, 450,000. Who were responsible for bringing the black slaves to america . A lot of people. A lot of people who regretted that they had. A lot of the merchants were quakers bringing slaves in. And then there would not do that after a certain point. In the beginning they were. The british and the french had the largest organized slave trade. A lot of people in the colonies were slave traders, too, but there were nominally british of the time. How many other countries had people, forces, military in and around the colonies . The spanish were present in the caribbean and west of the mississippi. All the way down into mexico. The spanish were a presence essentially on the southern frontier of the colonies. The french had been kicked out of north a