coming up tonight, booktv in prime time features books about the founding fathers. first, the author of first entrepreneur. and then the life of john quinty adams. and then lous -- louisa. next, edward lengel talks about his book on george washington. it took place at the president's former home mount vernon. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everyone. lovely to get a full crowd like this. my name is doug bradford and i am the founding director of the study of george washington which is where you are in the ruben stein hall. you made it. it is very exciting to have these book talks, free book talks, and thank you for supporting the book and mount vernon has never accepted any government money. they have been operating since the 1960s when they took over the estate of george washington. they are on all-woman run organization and they are all built on private donations from individuals and foundations and the people that come there visit. it is a great honor to serve that mission to preserve the estate at the highest level and teach people all over the world about the life, leadership and legacy of george washington. we could not do it without the importance of donors. henry ford was an early donor to the mount vernon giving us the first firing. every since we have gotten fire engines from ford motor company and they sponsored a number of exciting things including this book talk. i would like to welcome the c-span audience who is filming tonight. they are poplar and they are poplar on c-span as well. now, we have a special guest tonight, on old friend to mount vernon and the story of george washington. we have ed langel who is the washington chief editor. this is one of the most scholarly projects to copy, transcribe and annotate the conversations of washington. it is used by all historians who write on the era. it is an extroidinary scholarships that has been going on. we have been partners partially. ed is really heading up the leadership for programs and to encompass the scope they changed it from the george washington papers to the washington papers. we are delighted to have him here talk about what he does on the side which is write many, many books. he is a prolific, i am not envy about this. he has published six mongraphs in addiction to the edited volumes he is the soul editor on and the project he manages. he is an ex extraordinary love of writing. he is a wonderful writer and developed a great poplar style in magazine writing in addiction to the scholarly styles. it is a very challenge thing for people trained phd university to walk out and get out of the intense conversations to look at the bigger picture. ed is a master and became a master at that. if that is not enough, the thing that makes him extraordinary as a historian is he doesn't write about george washington and the founding era. he writes about world war history and world war one. he was writing on the greek civil war and i said which one and it is the one in 1944. 1825? no. he is an ex extraordinary range and it is my delight to welcome him up here. he is widely known, won many awards, i have said enough. let's get him up here to talk about his grand new book "first entrepreneur; how george washington built his and the nation's prosperity" ed langel. >> what he was trying to say, perhaps in not so many words, is i am a hack writer. i try to understand my subject. i try to be honest about my subjects and washington is an endlessly truthful subject. as i found, working at the washington paper sais. we changed our names from the papers of george washington to the washington papers deliberately because he did not want to offend martha. blessed it me suggested that martha was in some sense an auxiliary to george or that she operated in his shadow or her role was to prop him up and help him to become great. we need to emphasize the fact she was in herself a very important person. we thank the mount vernon for supporting us in publishing the full papers of martha washington and two volumes and the papers of the washington family which will be in three volumes. letter press and a comprehensive digital edition that will include george's parents, his siblings, martha's children, and grandchildren, and george's step children and grandchildren and our good friend justice of the supreme court, bush rad washington. one of doug's favorite people. first of all, as i begin to talk about george washington as an entrepreneur, i need to give than above all for this work, for what is good in it to my good friends jim and joe carol porter who are in the audience with us. -- jim and jill -- who developed the idea of writing a book. we had lunch, or dinner actually it was a few years ago, and they pointed out to me do you know there has been nothing written about washington as a business man since 1930. that book, in 1930 by a fellow named ritter, is possibly the dullest book ever written about george washington. there is no doubt about it. it is extremely dull. i hope mine is somewhat an improvement. i think it can only go up hill from there. up correspondenurse a tremendou owed to mount vernon but the work of current and formal colleagues at the washington papers project in virginia. we have been working since 1968. we have remained on schedule i shall point out from the very beginning. we are going to be finished eight years from now. we really will be finished eight years from now. this is not an empty promise. in identifying, securing copies of, editing, transcribing and publishing everything letter known to george washington. we are finishing up the revolutionary war now. they are available inlon letter press and available online for free. i owe a tremendous debt to my colleagues on the washington papers for their important work. for the financial papers project we began three years ago thanks to a grant from the national historical publications and records commission which is a granting arm of the national archives to edit and publish all of washington's financial papers which is a fascinating document for washington, for his family, for the whole community it is amazing how this collection of financial papers is not simply a series of ledgers but it documents the every day life of thousands of ordinary americans, both free and enslaved. people who were on the mount vernon estate, who were part of the community, and interacting from mount vernon to hall to bell for, the seat of the fairfax family to alexanderia and throughout the region. it will be available freely online beginning at the end of this summer. we began with washington's three main ledger books and have expanded into all of his other account books, receipts, vouchers, one of my friends, the economic historian john mccuster, suggested we should not call these simply washington's financial papers which implies he was a sincere, but his business records. but it goes further than that, they are his public papers as commander and chief of the army. all of the accounts he took as commander and chief and also as president. these were very public accounts. they are very important documents. so, those working on those documents was as well as jim and joe carol's idea it was this wonderful resource. this new resource that was a genesis of this idea; first entrepreneur. it is looking at washington through a different lens; seeing a different aspect of this end lessly fascinating man. also to put washington in the context of the family, into the context of the times, and the nation and what would become the united states of america. how did he develop as a businessman and entrepreneur and as i try to show in the book how did he take the lessons he learned, and the principles he emphasized and how did he apply them to the leadership of our nation. and how do his lessons and deeds resonate down to this day. it is a fascinating topic. we need to begin by looking at washington as an entrepreneur with the washington family. john washington was the first washington to arrive in virginia in 1656. and his idea was to simply load up his ship with tobacco, and sail back to england and sell it there. he had no intention of remaining in virginia. we owe the whole future history of our country to the fact his ship sank. he was ready to go. he was going to go back home and the poor guy's ship sank. he displayed among the first attributes of the washington's and there were many of them. adaptability, flexibility. he complains a lot, too. the washington's are complainers. he complains about who is going to pay for the loss. he is very adaptable and decides well, this is the reality. i have lost my ship. i am going to make my fortune here. the next thing he does that is very characteristic of the washington's is he marries very well. before i go on, i would like to talk about good marriages in the washington family. i would like to emphasize the fact this was not a matter of the washington men looking around saying where is a good place for a wife because women were waiting to be swept away. didn't happen that way. the women were making choices of their own of who they wanted to marry. who was the right man for them. we look way too often and i will talk about this in the context of martha but why did george chose to marry martha. because she was wealthy. why did martha chose to marry george? why did the wives of the washington's, the woman who became their wives, those to marry the washington's? it was partly because they npd stood they were sober minded, determined and focused men and they were dogged and intelligent and not wasteful. for the women, part of their goal was to find man who would be good partner, a good father to their children as they hoped they would have, and managed their estate. when we look at individual in the 1600s and 1700s, there is a tendency to assume these wealthty individuals of the virginia jenry were complacement. somehow they had easy lives and could look forward to comfort and wealth. this was a volatile period. when a gentry man, a farmer, and a planter could in the equivalent of an instant lose their entire fortune and find themselves impoverished. the one thing that was always a threat at the door was death. death was the hard part of prosperity. john washington marries wealth, he begins to develop estate and that is focus on land and people of the time. he is very determined and dies young. unfortunately like many washington's i believe john died when he was 46. his son lawrence died when he was 38. their grandson, augustine likewise died when he was in his 40s. aug augustine washington is a fascinating character who see through parson weems and the lege legends of the washington family. the cherry tree story, i would venture to guess if you asked any american, whether well educated or not, how they know agustine washington, they would say george washington's father, how do you know him? he is the guy who asked washington did you chop down the cherry tree and george said i cannot tell a lie. augustine was more than that. he was a savvy business in his own right. a record keeper, entrepreneur and believed in investment, and ventured to other areas of production. not just tobacco but he was involved in an iron works. what this meant, among many other things, in addition to helping to grow the washington family wealth is that the guy was away from home a lot. his first wife died leaving lawrence washington and another child to be taken care of. augustine had to go around managing the estate and trying to take care of the children and knew he needed to find another wife. he found one of the most under a underappreciated women in history mary ball or mary washington as she would later become. we made the assumption george washington didn't like his mom so much therefore she must have not been likable. that is unfortunate. the decision to wed goes in both directions. we can only infer what their reasons were. i like to think with mary, and she had been single before this and faced the prospect of a single life for the rest of her life. she was in her late 20s when they got married and at hat time that was regarded at the verge of a woman's marriageable age. she was facing a life of spinsterhood as it was called at the time. she married augustine because partly she saw him as sober minded, focused and entrepreneural individual. he was interested in her apart from personal qualities which we can only guess by the fact she was tough, strong-minded, strong-willed, and independent and he needed a woman who could manage things. who could manage a family, an estate and wealth while he was running around doing this own various things and following his own investments. mary ball was all of that. when augustine died she had to bring all of these qualities to bear in the management of her estate and children and her first born being george washington. the decision was made for various reasons among them being at augustine had died and george would not go as lawrence had to school in england but would instead stay at mount vernon and receive his education through tutors and also i think clearly from her. she certainly spent a lot of time with him, talking with him, educating him, as well as the educate he received from others in the area. among the principles she passed on to them were the principles of thrift, determination, hard work, organization, the washington's -- george washington especially was a really detailed, oriented, organized guy. his older half brother lawrence wasn't that way and augustine wasn't even that way. george was super organized from an early age. that was not a personality trait but his mom telling him you have a lot of stuff going on you have to be very organized and careful. i like to think she also put a horror of debt in him. i often make the joke there were two things george washington absolutely had nightmares about and one of them was thomas jefferson and the other was debt. she didn't know top yet and that would come to haunt his later years. debt was terrifying. he saw what would happen to many of his neighbors. you can see it in the newspapers. these lotteries and fire sales of gentry men going out of business and what would happen. she was a huge influence on his life. she was the woman who prevented him from going off to sea at 14. he resented this and their relationship became tense and problematic later on in life but part of this was george, you know, he had an irresponsible side to him, but she was constantly keeping it down and he chased that restriction. young george had the fortune of a mom focusing on ggeometry and algebra and other things. he had a good first teen job. he got this through connections with the fairfax family. lord thomas fairfax, a proprietor, george's good friend, george william fairfax whose wife sally fairfax, george had a relationship early on with. his connection with the fairfax family gave him an opportunity to work as a surveyor and that gave him an opportunity to apply his own native abilities again in geometry and all of the rest but also the experience to learn what it is like to earn money, he began as an apprentice, but to become an independent contractor and surveyor on his own right. they began to earn the money, save the money and invest the money. washington is a guy you don't want to not pay back. he as a temper and that came out when you did not pay him back. he learned how to judge character from that and when he earns money, as a surveyors, what does he work? the land. he develops a sense of the lands's wealth and richness and potential. he invest in land and saves and buys more and more land. as a surveyor, he develops an understanding of america during the french and indian war and america's potential richness and wealth that is not only buried within the soil waiting to spring out but geographically the connection of the east coast cities and settlements to the frontier and how the waterways were essential to connecting east to west. and how they were potential highways of commerce and trade. he not only goes from east to west during the french and indian war, he goes north and south and back and forth. he learns a lot about the relationship between the colonies and great britain and the subservant nature of that relationship which i will revisit in a moment. he becomes, during the course of the french-indian war, and although this talk and the book is about washington as an entrepreneur, i think it is important to remember that george washington was a combat veteran. that even ties into what i will talk about in a moment about washington's view of peace and how essential peace is. as a combat veteran, washington understands a number of things about the nature of war and what war does, and what its impact is, not only on those at the front lines, but on those who are at home, who are also affected and in their own ways participants in a war. what war does to a country and to a people. he also learns, i think, here too, the extreme importance of fundame fundamentles, of basics. this is one element of washington's character that i saw early on and that has taken a while to understand. if you look at this gentlemen's fixation on detail, he is often dismissed as a micro manager but there is a real purpose to that focus on detail which is that detail matters. if you are in the service, and particular a position of command, you ignore the men who serve with you must eat, must have shelter, must have clothing and yes, they must be paid. of course it is obvious but you would be perhaps surprised to see how many people in the revolutionary war did not understand that basic reality. washington understood it. if you don't pay, if you don't maintain the accounts, if you don't finance your force well, he called money the sinners of war. if you don't keep that flowing the whole thing collapses. that learning process of management is extremely important. he returns from the french-indian war in 1758. he marries martha in january of 1759. i mentioned earlier how aga, ag martha had a choice of her own. it is frustrated the narrative goes. martha was the wealthiest widow in virginia. washington comes back from the french and indian war and says the wealthiest widow of virginia is right down the road, i need the money, i am going to go get her. so she swoons and he sweeps her off her feet and carries her back to mount vernon. it didn't really work that way. but i mind emphasize whatever their motivations may have been, and certainly money was part of it for george, whatever the motivation was the important thing is they saw each other as partners from the beginning. we cannot judge how much love was in, and how much love was not in, there is no question that eventually, if not immediately, they came to love each other and rely on each other. it focused on the management of dual estates. they earnhardt jred it and then ann and their daughter died. -- inherited -- and from mount vernon to martha's estate along the york river, they both looedd at this task of managing this estate together. martha did not go off in the corner to knit. or wash dishes while george is managing things. they both looked at the same goal and purpose. expanding the mount vernon estate and particularly improving the mount vernon's estate was the first order of business. it would expand to 8,000 acres by the time of washington's death and that is mount vernon alone in addition to martha's many thousands of acres. but there is a much bigger expansion. not just in terms of size but the type of estate. mount vernon is when washington takes management of it and focuses on, as it has been for ages and generations on the cultivation of tobacco. i likes to imagine riding through mount vernon in say 1761. you would have heard the birds chirping. you would have heard the enslaved men and women singing and talking to each other. you would hear the free workers talking to each other and the work of the occasional plow. but that was pretty much it. it would have been a peaceful surrounding. this would contract profoundly with your experience of riding through mount vernon say in 1768 where you would have found a bustling hive of production and industry that it became an enterprise in its own right with noise and work going on with multiple different types all at the same time. you would have heard metal clanking on metal, spinning and weaving, you would have heard shoes being cobbled, you would have heard men hauling in nets and the boat would have gone out on the potomac. how would all that happen? it was washington's sense that the tobacco system just was not going to work in the long run. the tobacco system had a number of disadvantages. one being tobacco drains the soil, another is it is very labor intensive and requires individuals working on the production to produce a small amount of tobacco compared to other crops. to cultivate and sell tobacco you needed to work in the system that means you as the planter produce to tobacco and turn it over to british agents who ship it on british ships to europe. they decide where they think it can and should be sold. they figure out what prices they can fetch and where it will go. the virginia gentry were about consumption and how you appear, address, entertain, what is the quality of your saddlery and carriage and everything else. the tendency is not just to buy essential manufactured goods but to buy luxury goods. things with no productive value whatsoever. what do you bring back with your cred credit? you cannot invest it in anything. you just waste it. what happens? debt. debt which washington has learned to fear and to hate above all else. he himself in his own estate begins to fall in the early 1760s fairly heavily into the debt. george is partly to blame for this. it is interesting in his accounts if you look up to 1759 he spends a fair amount of money wasting money on cards and billiards. i really want a talented artist to paint washington playing poker or something like that. suddenly it disappears, but martha let's him play a game of pool from time to time but no more cards. 1762, pool disappears and he is playing cards again and i know he was wining to martha saying i want to go out with the guys once in a while and play cards. he has trouble developing a more disciplined lifestyle. when he experiences and witnesses this debt he decides to switch over into wheat to make a long story short. what is the changing over from tobacco to wheat do? it is transformative. it allows washington to produce and sell on his own right. he renovates the mill and makes sure it can produce high quality flower and sold george washington flower in the caribbean. also it allows them to reallocate labor. i will specify, enslaved labor and free labor. he allocates them to different industries where they can become productive and self sufficient. you don't need to go to somebody else to get your clothing, to get your tools, to get your shoes, to get your food. you can produce all of it right here and they are going to be restoring the fishery and reconstructing the boat washington would have used and seeing how the fishery would have worked. mount vernon becomes an enterprise. multi dimensional and multi layered. washington shared we were on the sense of what would be called later generations take off. we were about to reach the point where we could grasp prosperity. there was a sense the british was holding us down. that sense of frustration of being prevented from becoming prosperous in our own right is a major incentive for revolutionary sentiment as well as taxation without representation. washington believes for a long time, right up to 1775, that armed rebellion is a last resort. but he believes economic warfare is the way to break free of great britain right up until '75. until blood flows in lexington and concord he believes economic warfare and boycotts are the way to break free. there is a fascinating set of documents where washington and george mason worked on. let me quote from the 14th and 15th result. they are interesting because they look toward not just what we do now but our future goal. the 14th resolve states every jarring interest and dispute which happened between these colonies should be buried in oblivion. all men all of luxury and immediately should be laid aside as inconsistent with the threatening and gloomy prospect of the forest. men of fortune, should set examples of temptress and industry and give encouragement within their power to the improvement of art and manufacturing in america. great care and attention should be made to the cultivation of flax, cotton and other materials for manufacturing and goes on to talk about wool and the rest. mason was important but mason tended to look more at the political side. in war, there is a lot more i could say about war. i am not going to go on to it too much. as commander and chief of the army, washington applies his own management appearance in running mount vernon. there are just a couple principles i would point out as commander and chief. washington saw big picture. he saw this is going to be a difficult war and a war we have a good chance of loosing. it is going to strain every never and resource to win. is it worth winning at all cost. is it worth winning if you burn down your country in the process? if you destroy your in -- in structure, if your economy and villages and towns are destroyed and you end up throwing out the british and standing on a heap of ashes and facing a future of impoverishment and suffering. washington answers a pretty re-sounding no to that. he views it as a primary obligation of himself as commander and chief to insure that we emerge from this war with an intact as much as possible infrastructure and economy. washington also said the army must not operate in isolation from the people. but the army must be integrated into the national effort, into the civilian population. part of this goes at the top. there is no doubt about it. i have spoken about it before and others do as well. part of it has to do with communications, with congress, governors, with officials. but in researching this book, i saw there is a completely different level here which is really at the ground level. washington begins to talk during the revolutionary war using the phrase communities of interest. he talked about self-interest being a governing principle which i looked at the first time and thought this is cynicism. it is really not. he believes that patriot, loyalist, undecided are not fixed categories. people's decision to fight is a daily decision. it is a daily decision that is based in part on your sense of hope, and your sense of what is happening to your family and to yourself, right now. this war, and this sounds like pandering but it is not because it is genuinely true. if the woman decided the war ended it would have ended. they were making it decision of what war was doing to their businesses, families, and where was the american army, what was its role, and whether it is worth fighting or not. washington makes a conscious decision his army must join together in a shared sense of interest with the american people. so whenever he forms a camp, a winter camp or other camps, he very deliberately opens a market. the market is tangible but it is symbolic n sense soldiers and civilians are trading with each other and exchanging that sense of common interest. it is deliberate on his part. we never cease supplies, recognize property rights and are present and visible. we isolate the british. we isolate them and push them out. the british were very ineffective and that is one reason they lost the war in developing the sense of relationships and common interest with the people. it was a significant part of washington's strategy. there is much more i could say about that had i more time. returning from the revolutionary war and rebuilding mount vernon, two things i would emphasize here. washington is an a new symbol of scientific agriculture much of which is imported from great britain. many of the great expansions of mount vernon, the expansion of the mansion house, is primarily during this period and the rest of the estate as well. it is based on knowledge imported mainly from great britain which underwent a cultural and now industrial revolution. i think of washington as an early advocate of the internet. had he known about about the internet, he and another innovator from great britain, are advocates of gathering all information from farmers all over america. this is the problem with slavery. slavery shouldn't be relegated and decided as well, there were slaves, too. slavery was integral to the development of washington's estate, the work and the labor of the enslaved men and women who were on the estate helped to create, were fundamental to creating washington's wealth. washington's relationship with slavery was problematic in that he grew up accepting slavery, it was what he knew. he began to turn against slavery because of the fundamental principle of labor and work. this was a new view for me. people said he turned against it was he saw blacks fighting in the revolutionary war but i have been unsure about that. industry and morality go hand and hand he supports. an industerous person is a moral person. a moral person is industryous: washington is very practical about this. if you deny an enslaved human being the ability to enjoy the fruits of their own labor you immediately under cut any motivation they have to work efficient efficiently. they will do the minimum possible. and they will resist. he sees it at mount vernon day by day. they will never innovate and work to the limit of their capacity. they will never grow and they become corrupted by that very process and those who force themselves and maintain them in that system are also corrupted. it is ultimately a dead end for himself, and his estate and he comes firmly to believe for the country. economically as well as morally. the two things going together. we can talk more about that in question and answer. the confederation government and the con fillederation theory is the sense of the weakness of that government, inability to raise taxes and fundamental through this eventual support for the constitution. i want to talk before we get to question and answer about the presidency. washington's goal as president of the united states, he says, this is before becoming president, before his inauguration, he said to develop the national prosperity shall be my first-my only aim. my first and my only aim. that is a pretty significant, i think. his vision for the country is focused on building the foundation for prosperity, on establishing the economy. the few main points there, establishing the national credit, stestablishing a nation currency, a stable and secure government maintained through taxation, a government that will work to build an infrastructure that ties the nation together by commerce. he believes that commerce is what will unite us. he also believes incidently with native americans and that is what will tie us to native americans. naive, yes, in many ways it was, but he didn't view native americans as people to be conquered. he thought if he traded with them they would see the same interest. bound west to east and north to south through commerce. the government's role is to maintain the peace. piece is essential for the development of prosperity and commerce domestic and international. that is why he puts down the whiskey rebellion. briefly, alexander hamilton is often spoken of as being the guy who somehow created american economic policy during washington's administration. make no mistake washington set the strategy. washington set the goals. hamilton's job was to implement those goals. hamilton came up with exceptionally detailed and very important ideas and plans for maintaining the economy. washington studied every single word of everything hamilton wrote and accepted most, but rejected some. came close to vetoing the bans bank of the united states. washington's final achievement as president, i think, to maintain and give us a foundation were prosperity. this is the jay treaty aftermath when john jay, the poor guy was burned in effergy and at least he wasn't burned or hanged himself. people were furious that washington should establish a treaty with the british in 1795 in which we didn't get that much out of of it. washington's goal here was two-fold. peace, peace, peace. he was a man of peace on one hand. not despite having been a general and soldier but i think because he was a soldier and general he was a man of peace. not at all cost. not at the cost of the national honor, certainly. but because piece was essential to give us a chance to climb up on to our own two feet and become prosperous. but also because he saw great britain very realistically as being at least over the next several decades the best hope for our economic future. the british were by far the most advanced people, the most advanced country in the world economically. our interest was in working with them and trading with them. the french, we had a great emotional connection with them but they were as economically backward as they could possibly be. finally, the road home, and certainly washington left the presidency partially an embittered man, the political faction distressed them. he returned to mount vernon not a broken man. he wasn't into nostalgia and regrets and looking backward. he looked ahead and toward developing mount vernon but he was thinking of his errs and family. he deeply regretted not having had children of his own but he adopted his own step children and grandchildren has if they were his own biologically and looked for their interest over the long run and wanted to leave them something behind. he had a great innovation through his scottish farm manager james anderson, 1798. the distillery. he had never dealt with this before. never had any thought comprehension of what a distillery and managing it meant. he said general, you could earn a lot of money from this. i cannot do a scottish accent but he did it in his own compelling way. he studied it, learned how it worked, and said let's do it. build the distillery and that becomes, i believe this is the case, by the time of washington's death in december 1799, the most profitable adventure on his estate. for those who like the stuff, washington's recipe for beer i heard is disgusting. but his whiskey they produce here is excellent. it is potent. but it is very good. so he is already looking for it. he is thinking of his family and his will. he decides, characteristically he is not going to pass everything down in one bulk. he is one of the richest men in virginia. more work needs to be done and i haven't done it on exactly where he fits, how much, and he never wrote what his net worth is. it is going to take a lot of work. there is no question he is one of the wealthiest men in america. he doesn't hand it down in bulk. he gives each ere just enough they can be reasonably comfort but they can build from it and be prosperous. unfortunately, many didn't measure up in the long run and mount vernon was in disrepair until cunningham came in 1858 and rescued it. in conclusion, washington is an incredible example to us in many ways. ... he knew that everything he did would be closely studied and watched, and he knew that, as general or even a farmer during the confederation and this president that he would be setting an example for us. and that example was the sense that, if you were card command fewer focused, if you are dedicated, if you have integrity you can build prosperity. he set the foundation, for the wealth that we have enjoyed up until this day, and he can continue to serve as an example for us even to now. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. that was fantastic. we will take questions now. please wait until the microphone comes to you before you ask your question we will try to get to everybody. >> your eager question or your angry question. >> your argument that slavery, industriousness and morality we can the country seems to run contrary, because of his not doing more to end slavery, the confrontation over slavery. solidifying the country as a higher priority than ending slavery. >> he was clearly deeply divided on slavery. personally divided. end the division was, as i was saying, the aspect of what 1st turned him against slavery in his own mind is that idea of the work idea in the labor idea, but at the same time he is very much a law and order guy, partly for the reasons i mentioned. social disorder, and stability undermines come as he believes, the nation. he was quite simply afraid of what would happen if slaves were freed on a large scale. he did not know what would happen. he was afraid what would happen. he was afraid it would cause massive social dislocation, and even though he came to believe at least in theory and practically for his own estate that in the long run slavery would drag the nation down economically, like every other human being , he had doubts. he had doubts in the back of his mind. if you free the slaves what if the result is mass bankruptcy of the different estates of the planning class.class. and so there is no element of fear. here again, it is not just a matter of washington being a man of his time but washington being a human being. a human being never has complete and total confidence in what idea or another. they have to think it through. it took him many, many years and he never quite completely decided on this issue. until in his will he decided to freedom. of course there are many other complexities. he cannot fremont the slaves , and therefore your dividing families. there are many other considerations, but it is an important but not simple issue. >> i know washington did not take a salary for his service. reimbursed for his expenditures, he wrote asking for money for his troops. did he ever use on his own money substantially to buy supplies 1st troops? >> that is a good question. had he tried to draw on his own resources in any significant way to pay the expenses of the army, even to pay the expenses of, as he called it, his military family, he would have bankrupted himself. yes, he did spend some of his own money, but his idea was he was giving a years of his life, all of which she had to be away from his estate, and his estate was completely dilapidated by the time he got back and 83. that was a pretty significant sacrifice. his personal expenses were expenses not just for his own food, lodging, travel but for all of his secretaries, his aides decamp, hearty young men who ate a lot and likes to dress well and do a lot of other things. he had to take care of all of them. different associations, expenses with guards, communications, everything else ended up being quite a lot of money. certainly from our studying his accounts both as commander-in-chief and president, he was super careful in making sure everything was above board. his enemies, political enemies suggested that he had overspent his account for his own benefit,benefit, but there is no evidence of that. partly because he knew, if he made one misstep he would be found out. >> i have an understanding of the internal plantation. what did you say about his investments? investment in shares that he often drew from, expenditures. >> he purchases shares in quite a lot of different ventures. some of them are in companies that are often land-based companies and speculation on the western frontier, the potomac river company early on, the mississippi company. he purchases shares in banks , and he also invests when the federal city is established, what would later become washington dc. he invests money in building a couple of lodging houses that he then rinse out. so his investments were quite extensive, quite diverse. when he dies a big part of his wealth -- although this is something that will need to be calculated. you folks here as well as other scholars who are working in this area will need to work to see exactly what was the base wealth that was focused in the different shares that he had. but most of it -- all that being said -- certainly was diverse, many areas of investment. i wish i could be more specific, but this is an area where we need to do more work. >> more about martha washington, especially because it was so far from mount vernon. not well-educated. so her husband took care of such things. >> so, her 1st husband, daniel parke custis, i believe, was 20 years older than her. he was quite wealthy. his family was a difficult family. his father was, to put it mildly, and irascible man. i think it was see on his gravestone that he had inscribed, you know, he was married for x number of years but only really lived when he was not married, something to that effect. [laughter] so she married into a family like that. martha herself, yes, she did not receive the education amended because she was a woman. women did not typically receive the same level of education amended. she needed to work against that. she was clearly very intelligent woman. it is one of the most interesting letters that i have seen from martha after daniel parke custis died, she suddenly got to take over all of his estate. one of the very 1st letter she writes as to the british agent robert carrying company who incidentally george washington deals with the letter isthe letter is very direct. she says, i am in charge now. every aspect of overseas trade, tobacco work, you write to me and i make the decisions. we need to learn more his one reason we are doing it. exactly what was her level of involvement. she was as involved and managed as much as a woman of her time could and was also very visible. it's one of the things about martha and the revolutionary war and as wife of the 1st president of the united states that she did not view her role as being totally domestic and sitting around at home, but she views herself as having a public role, not symbolic but practically working in camp. and every single working encampment with george working to produce and maintain domestic economy,, coordinate production of clothing and other vital necessities. there is a biography called martha washington in american life that came out about 12 years ago and also for frazier has published a good book on the partnership. more needs to be done. >> thank you. [inaudible question] >> sure. that is the natural question to ask. george washington's view of government, big government's role in the nation and in the economy was that taxation is essential for the maintenance of government and its infrastructure, that the government has a role to maintain and as far as possible develop the national infrastructure, communications and the like to further. the government has a role to, as he set forth, maine staying -- maintain stable currency, establish credit to eliminate foreign that eventually. but to maintain the piece domestically and internationally, but that is pretty much it. ultimately government cleared the field for the people by their own industriousness to produce their own prosperity. so regulation of businesses, washington could not have foreseen corporations. and all of their permutations in the 19th and 20th centuries and what he would've done about that i'm not entirely sure. the business can develop a bruise. >> particular books that he is reading. >> these are pretentious issues we are discussing. books that he is reading, we do know many of the books that he has read. there is a wonderful book, i wish i had written down the title, right after he marries martha, one of the 1st books he orders is on how to get rich quick, self-help book about how to manage your state. in the title is get rich quick. he reads from business books he read locke, adam smith, not as rightly -- not as widely read in those areas as, say, jefferson was. so far as businessmen and merchants in new york city, yes, he interacted with many of them, particularly during the course of the war but also even before and after the war in reaching out and diversifying on his own right and trading throughout the united states. i'm struggling, off the top of my head, to recall the names of particular new york businessman and merchants that he worked with, but i'm working on the washington papers i came across several. their close relationships with robert morris who, of course, eventually ruined his own reputation. but, you know, this is another area certainly that he did interact and get involved in. but not to the level i can pull off the top of my head major business people. but if you look in the washington papers available online and index online, you can find many prominent merchants in business people corresponding with him. >> you have struggled in a very fascinating way about george washington's entrepreneurial successes. i believe it one time you try to open a brewery at mount vernon, which was an abysmal failure. what else of you discovered about his attempts from entrepreneurial attempts? >> well, part of the reason the brewery failed was the beer was just really, really bad come awful. but this is actually one of the things about beer. i have to talk about beer. i used to always assumed washington was all about wine. he loved beer from early on. he drank a lot of it. in the 1750s and 60s he left porter, and so he would order porter, often from dorset in huge shipments to mount vernon, hundreds of bottles of time. and drink it. he later on became fixated with the buy american movement, which is another thing i could have talked about before and after the war only buying american brewed beer, and there were a number of brewers in philadelphia and pennsylvania and maryland that he patronized, that he was really into. so far as his failures were concerned, there is a modern concept, you know, if you see something, you get invested in it and it starts to sink, let it fail immediately and get out of it. he did not stay stuck in anyone investment long enough for it to become a disastrous failure. some of his investments in western land schemes really did not work out. he had mercantile partnerships for the sale of flour early on that did not work out because his partners were incompetent. he had people, a great soldier but a worthless businessman trying to get george involved in different ventures to buy western lands and to create matilda ville, i was discussing with doug before the talk. so, there were not any disastrous investments. which is telling in and of itself. there were things he lost money on, but nothing, you know, on a large scale. >> my question, very early on washington that enjoyed complaining. elated spoke about mercantilism. so if i go to these papers online what i find examples of george washington complaining about mercantilism? i feel as though that is why he switched. did he come out and say that? >> yes. youyes. you do not have to really struggled to find washington complaining. [laughter] just look at his letter zero during the french and indian war before he really learned to restrain himself. the guy was a first-class complainer. he does it later on. i am trying not to be of noxious about it, because you know it was not like a passive aggressive thing. it was more of, he can be grouchy. so, yes, that is easy to find. in terms of complaining about their content -- mercantilism some of the most interesting correspondence is between washington and robert carrying company, iscompany, has british agents. if you follow that correspondence from the early 1760s i cannot claim that any amazingly revealing new correspondence has been uncovered between washington and jefferson. some of the most revealing material that i found has been jefferson's notes on conversations. he tended to hold fairly informal camp cabinet meetings. he tended to talk with members of his cabinet individually. more often records were not. jefferson was the exception. when washington wanted to talk with jefferson -- and they would have it out, as soon as the conversation was done jefferson would go out the door go on another room command write down everything they said. part of it to use against them later, particularly when washington started complaining candidly about how he was feeling worn out and tired, freight his memory was going. jefferson was saying, tell me more. so their relationship has been studied quite a bit. there has been a lot written about it. but it was clearly a nuanced relationship. i think the men respect each other. we have tended to focus on their points of division. the both respect each other very much, but they also saw flaws in each other. but washington was very much almost a black and white thinking type of individual, that when he feels that jefferson was made a promise and he feels that jefferson has broken that promise, at least to keep quiet after he leaves the administration and starts working against him, washington takes a very personally. i wish washington have been