veteran. and that even ties boo what i will -- into what i will talk about in a moment about washington's views 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 who are at the front lines, but on those who are at home who are also affected and in their own ways participants in war. what war does to a country and to a people. he also learns, i think, here too the extreme importance of fundamentals, of basics. this is one element of washington's character that i saw early on and that i've, it's taken a while to understand. if you look at this gentleman's fixation on detail, he's often dismissed as a micromanager, but there's a real purpose to that focus on detail which is that detail matters. if you're in the service and particularly if you're in a position of command, you ignore at your peril the basic fact that the men who serve with you must eat, they must have shelter, they must have clothing and, yes, they must be paid. sounds silly for me even to say that. well, of course, it's obvious. 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 do not pay, if you do not maintain the accounts, if you do not finance your force well, he called money the sinews of war. if you don't keep that flowing, the whole thing collapses. that process of, that learning process of management is extremely important. he returns from the the french and indian war in 1758. and he marries martha in january of 1759. i mentioned earlier how, again, martha had a choice of her own. it's frustrating how the narrative often goes. martha dandridge custis was the wealthiest widow in virginia. george washington comes back from the french and indian war, and he says, aha, the wealthiest widow in virginia is right down the road. i need the money, i'm going to go get her. and so she swoons, and he sweeps her off her feet and carries her off back to mount vernon. it didn't really work that way. certainly, he had his choice, she had hers as well. i would emphasize, whatever their motivations would have been -- and, certainly, money was part of it for george -- whatever their motivations may have been, the important thing is that they saw each other as partners from the very beginning. they saw each other as partners. we cannot judge now how much love was in, how much love was not in. there's no question that eventually if not immediately they came to love each other and to rely on each oh completely, but from the very beginning, they saw their marriage as a partnership. .. he passed away and his daughter died and it came down to george who rented it for a while before he got full control from mount vernon to martha's estates along the york river, they both looked at this task of managing this estate together. martha did not go off in the corner to knit and to wash dishes while george is managing things. they both looked at the same goal. and the same purpose. expanding the mount vernon estate and particularly improving the mount vernon estate was among the first orders of business. mount vernon would eventually -- the estate would eventually expand to some 8,000 acres by the time of washington res death and that's mount vernon alone in addition to martha's many thousands of acres. but there's a much bigger expansion, not just in termses of size but in terms of the type of estate. mount vernon is when washington takes management of it focused on, as it has been, for ages, for generations, on the cultivation of tobacco, and i like to imagine riding through mount vernon in, say, 1761. you would have heard the bird kerning, heard the -- kerning, heard the occasionol work of a spade in the field, heard the enslaved men and women, perhaps singing, talking to each other. the free workers talking to each other, the clop of horses' hoofs, the work of the occasion al plow, peaceful surrounding. this would contrast profoundly with your experience of riding through mount vernon, say in 1768 when 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 of 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 on the boat would have gone out on the potomac. how did that happen? well, it was washington's sense that the tobacco system just was not going to work in the long run. the tobacco system has disadvantages, one being that tobacco drains the soil and is very labor intensative. it requires a lot of human beings working on that production too produce a relatively small amount of tobacco as expired to other crops. but for washington the thing that upset him more than anything else was that to cultivate and sell to back quo -- tobacco you had to work in the british system. that meant you as a planter, produce the tobacco in essence you turn it over to british agents, who ship it an 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, and then they tell you how much credit you have earned. you don't get any cash out of it. you get credit. and they say, well, this happened to washington over and over again. we're sorry, we weren't able to get quite us a much as we thought we would so we can only give you this much credit. the assumes is from the american side you use the credit to purchase british goods. but there's another dimension to it. the virginia gentry were about conspicuous construction, the quality of your page and how you dress and everything else. the tendencies to buy. luxury goods. in britain. things that have no productive value whatsoever, all about appearance. what do you bring back with your credit? you can't 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 debt. george is partly to blame for this. it's 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, really want some talented artist to paint washington playing poker or playing snooker or something like that, and i just got to site, because he spent a lot of time on it. if you look at the accounts in 1759, he marries martha, the expenditures on these -- on gambling has been like this, suddenly disappears, she lets him play a game of pool from time to time but no more cards. 1762, suddenly pool disexpense he is playing cards again, and i just know he was whining to martha, come on, want to go with the guys once in a while and play some cards. he doesn't waste a whole lot of money on this but wastes some but he has trouble developing a mere disciplined lifestyle. when he is experiencing and witnesses this debt he decides to switch over into wheat. make a long story short. what does changing over from tobacco to wheat do? it's completely transformative. it allows washington to produce, to sell, on his own right. he rennovates the grist mill. spends quite a lot of money on that to make sure it can produce high quality flour. the sold george washington or g washington brand flour in the region, and anyone caribbean, g. washington brand flour is being sold in hard tack, made out of his flour, being chasmed on by sailors and breaking their teeth on it. but also it allows him to reallocate labor. i'll specify. enslave evidence labor as well as 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 with the surplus you can sell it. mount vernon is going to be restoring the fishery. i'm really excited about that and reconstructioning the boat that washington would have used in seen how the fishery would have worked. the fishery was really important. i it was profitable in its own right but fed the people working on the estate. it becomes mount vern -- mount vernon become answers enterprise, multidimensional. multilaird. it's an amazing transformation. washington sells through alexandria and to there's much i could say about the growing disenchantment with the british, their clamping down on american industry. this was a feeling that americans shared in general. i will simply very briefly say that washington shared with his countrymen a sense that we were on the verge of what would be called in later generations, takeoff. we were about to reach a point where we could really grasp toward prosperity, and there was a sense that it was the british who were holding us down. that sense of frustration, of being prevented from becoming prosperous, is a major incentive toward revolutionary sentiment, as well as taxation without representation, and all the rest of it, but washington believes for a long time, right up to 1775, that armed rebellion is a last resort, but he believes pretty confidently that economic warfare is the way to break free of great britain, right up to '75. until blood starts to flee in lexington and concord, he believes that economic warfare and boycotts is the way to break free. there was a vision of the future involved in implicit in resistance to the british, and there's a fascinating series of documents called the fairfax resolve in 1774 that washington and george mason worked on to. to make a long story short, let me quote briefly from 14th 14th resolve. the 14th and 15th resolves are interesting because they look toward not just what do we do now but what is our future goal? and the 14th resolve states that every little jarring interest and dispute which has ever happened between these colonies should be buried in the thumb of oblivion. all manner of luxury and extravagance ought immediately to be laid aside as totally inconsistent with the threatening and gloomy prospect before us. men of fortune should set examples of temperance, fortitude, frugality and industry, and give every encourage independent their power to the improvement of arts and manufacturers in america. that great care and attention should be head to cultivation of flax, cotton, and other materials for manufacturers, and he goes on to talk about husbandry, and wool, and the rest. i think it's pretty clear, based on washington's area of interests and expertise throughout his career, that this -- these resolves were written by washington. mason was extremely important but mason tended to look more at the political side. in war, there's a lot more i could say about war but i'm not a going to go on to it too much. certainly as commander in chief of the army, washington applies his own management experience in rung mount vernon, but there are just a couple of principles i would point out as commander-in-chief. washington saw big picture. he saw this is going to be a difficult war, and a war at that time we have a good chance of losing. going to strain every nerve, every resource, to win. is it worth winning at all costs? is it worth winning if you burn down your country? n the process? if you destroy your infrastructure, if your economy is ruined, if towns, ports, villages, are destroyed, families 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 resounding no to that. he views it as a primary obligation of himself, as commander-in-chief, to ensure that we emerge from this war with an intact, as much as possible, infrastructure and economy. another guiding principle of washington is that, as commander-in-chief, that the army must not operate in isolation from the people. but the army must be integrated into the national effort, into the civilian population, and part of this goes at the top. there's no doubt about it. i've spoken about it before, and others do as well. that part of it has to do with communications, with congress, with governors, with officials, but in researching this book, i saw there's a completely different level here which is really at the ground level. washington begins to talk during the revolutionary war, uses this phrase "communities of interest." he talks about self-interest being a governing principle, which i looked at the first time i thought it was just cynicism. it's really not. he believes that patriots, loyalists, undecided, not fixed categories. people's decision to fight is a daily decision, and it's a daily decision that's based in part upon your sense of hope and your sense of what is happening to your family and to yourself right now. this war -- and this soundings like pandering but it's not because it's true. had the women of america decided this war lad to end it would have ended. they were making decisions every day based on their experience on the ground, what war was doing to theirs businesses this, families, where was the american army, what was its role? whether its worthwhile fighting or not. washington makes a very conscious decision that 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 deliberately opens a market. the market is tangible but also symbolic in a sense that soldiers and civilians are trading with each other, day by day. exchanging. that sense of common interests. very conscious and very deliberate on his part. but also that we never seize supplies, we recognize property rights and we are present and visible, and we isolate the british, and push them out. the british were very ineffective. it was one of the reasons they lost the war. in developing that sense of interrelationships of common interests with the people. it was a significant part of washington's strategy, and again, there's much more that 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 becomes an advocate of the new husbandry, scientific husbandry, scientific agriculture, much of which is imported from great britain. many of the expansions of the estate, primarily, is during this period, as well as the rest of the estate, but it's based on knowledge imported mainly from great britain which has undergone an cultural revolution and now an industrial revolution. i think of washington as an early advocate of the internet. had he known about such a thing he would have ban luge advocate because he, and a gentleman named arthur young, agriculturalists and innovator from great britain, are advocates of gathering all the information you possibly can, from farmers all over europe and america, classifying that information, publishing it, and disseptember mating it for -- disseptember mating it for everybody. but there's another lot here which is the problem of slavery. slavery should not be relegated as the side issue, as something, well, yeah, and there were slaves, too. slavery was certainly integral to the development of washington's estate. the laboff on the men and women on the estate were fundamental to creating was are wealth. washington's relationship with slavery was problematic, in that he grew up accepting slavery. it's what he knew. he began to turn against slavery because of the fundamental principle of labor and work. this was a new discovery for me, is a looked at slavery and its problem. people have often speculated, why did he turn against it? i say it's because he saw blacks fighting in the revolutionary war and they could do what wild white soldiers did. i've been skeptical at about that. it comes down seasons that industry and morality go hand in hand so much so there are really two sides of the same thing. an industrious person is a moral person. a moral person is industrious, much of this borrowed from a sense of the work ethic we call the protestant work ethic, from john rock and the ideas of others, but washington is practical about it. if you deny an enslaved human being to enjoy the fruited odd their labor you undercut any motivation they have to work efficiently. they'll do the minimum possible and they will will resists. he sees it at mount vernon day by day. they will never innovate. they will never 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. and 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. again, the two things going together and that was really the thought process that would turn him away from that, and we can talk more about that in question and answer. the confederation government, and the confederation period, his seasons the weakness of that government, its inability to raise taxes, is fundamental'm to his eventual support for the constitution, which i could talk about more later, but i want to talk for a bit, before we get to question and answer, about the presidency. washington's goal as president of the united states, he says, when he becomes president -- this i right before he becomes president, before his inauguration, he says to develop the national prosperity shall be my first-my only aim. to develop the national prosperity to foster the national prosperity, my first and my only aim. that's 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. establishing a stable currency. the national credit being the trust that others have that we will fulfill our financial obligations. the stable and secure government maintained through taxation. a government that will work to build an infrastructure that will tie the nation together by commerce. he believes that commerce is what will unite us. he also believes incidentally with the native americans, that's what will tie to us native americans. naive? yes in many ways it was but he did not view as native americans as people to be conquered he thought if we traded with them, they would see the same interests. bind west to east, north to south. through commerce. the government's role is to maintain the peace. peace is essential for the development of prosperity and commerce, domestic and international. that's why he puts down the whiskey rebellion, or the whiskey insurrection. 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, and hamilton was not washington's first choice as secretary of the treasury -- was to implement those goals. hamilton certainly came up with exceptionally detailed and very important ideas, and plans, for maintaining the economy. washington studied every single word of everything that hamilton wrote, and accepted most but rejected some, came close to vetoing the bank of the united states. washington's final achievement as president, i think, to maintain and give us a foundation for prosperity, this is the jay treaty aftermath when john jay, poor guy, was burned in effigy. at least he wasn't actually burned or hanged himself. people were furious at washington should establish a treaty with the british in 1795, in which we didn't really get that much out of it. we got something out of it. but washington's goal here was twofold. peace, peace, peace, on the one hand. he was a man of peace. not despite having been a general and a soldier, but i think because he was soldier a general, he was man of peace. not at all costs, not at the cost of a national honor, certainly, but because peace 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 in 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 interests was in working with them, and trading with them. the french had a -- we had a great emotional connection with them, but they were as economically backward that's could possibly be. finally, the road home. certainly washington left the presidency partially an embittered man. the political fractionism, greatly disdistressed him. he returned to mount vernon, though, not a broken man, not a backward looking man. he was not into nostalgia at all. he was not into regrets and looking backward. he looked ahead. he looked toward developing mount vernon but was thinking of his heirs and of his family. he was a great family man. of course, he deeply regretted not having had children of his own, but he adopted his own stepchildren and grandchildren as if they were his own biologically and he looked to their interests. we wanted to leave them something behind. he had a great innovation through james anderson, distillery. he had never dealt with this before. never had any thought, comprehension, of what a distillery and managing it midwest. but anderson is a, general, you could earn a lot of money from this. i cannot do a scottish accent so i won't try, but head dade. washington characteristically studied it carely, learned out it worked and said, okay, let's do it. build the distillery. the disindustrially becomes dish believe this is the case -- by the time of washington's death in 1799, the most profitable venture on his estate, and if you like the stuff, washington's recipe for a beer i've heard is disgusting, but his whiskey they produce here is excellent. it is potent but its very good. he is already looking forward, already thinking of his family and his will he decides characteristically that 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. i it it's going to ache a lot of work compared to others. he is the most wealthy man in america help does not hand it down in bulk but geoff us each of his heirs just enough they can be reasonably comfortable and they can build from it, they can become prosperous, but he thinks that's a process. you need to work for it. unfortunately many of. the did not measure up and in the long run and mount vernon would alas come into disrepair until cunningham came in 1858 and rescued it. so in connects -- in conclusion, washington is an incredible example to us in many way. as an entrepreneur he is an example for news the process by which he strove to achieve, to become prosperous. he knew that everything he did would be closely studied and watched. and he knew that as general -- even as a farmer during the confederation and as president, that he would be setting an example for us, and that example was the sense that if you work hard, if you're focused, if you're dedicated, if you have integrity, you can build your prosperity and you can build the country. he set the foundation for the wealth that we have enjoyed up until this day, and i think he can continue to serve as an example for us even now. thank you very much. [applause] >> we're going to take questions now. people in the overflow room, please wait until the microphone comes to you before you ask you question and we'll try to get everybody. i know he'll be generous with his answers. >> your eager question or your angry question, your outraged question, is fine, too. yes, sir, right. >> your argument that slavery -- washington thought slavery was ant -- antithetical to industry morality, never weakened the country, seems to run contrary to the argument that -- the cause of his not doing more to end slavery because he thought the confrontation would weaken the country, tear it apart and -- [inaudible] -- a higher priority. >> he was clearly deeply divided on slavery. personally divided. and the division was, as i was saying, the aspect of what first turns him against slavery in his own mind, is that idea of the work idea, and 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, instability, undermines, as he believes the nation. he was quite simply afraid of what would happen if slaves were freed on a large scale. he didn't know what would happen. he was afraid what would happen. he was afraid that it would cause massive social dislocation, and even though he came to believe, at fleece theory, and practically for his even estate as well, that in the long run slavery would drag the nation down economically, he is like every other human being, he has doubts. so he had doubts in the back of his mind, yeah, but, what if. if you free the slaves, what if the result is mass bankruptcies. of the different estates of the planning class. so there's an element of fear there. here again, it's not just matter of washington being a man of his times. it's matter off washington being human being, and a human being never has complete and total confidence in one idea or another. they have to think it through. this is one area where it took him many, many years, and he never quite completely decided on this issue, until in his will he decided to free them. of course there were many other complexities, too. he can't free martha's slaves he can't free those slaves and therefore you're dividing families. there are many other considerations but it's an important but not a simple issue. >> nod todd didn't take any salary for his service, he was reimbursed for his expenditures and i know he wrote letters to the congress asking for money for his troops. did he ever use his own money to buy supplies for the troops? >> that's a good question. had he tried to draw on his own resources in any significant way to pay the expenses of the army, teen pay the expenses of his own, as he called it, his military family almost would have bankrupted himself. yes, he did spend some of his own money, but his idea was, he was giving as it turned out, eight years of his life, all of which he had to be away from his estate, and his estate was completely dilapidated by the time he got back in '83. that was a pretty significant sacrifice. his personal expenses were expenses not just for his own food, his own lodging, his own travel, but they were for all of his secretaries, all of his aides decamp. who, by the way, for very hearty young men who ate a lot and liked to dress well and liked to do a lot of other things. he had to take care of all of them, all the different associations, expenses with guards, with communications, with everything else, and ended up being quite a lot of money. but certainly from our studying his accounts, both as commander-in-chief and as president, he was super careful in making sure that everything was above board. his enemies later political enemies, george mason, thomas jefferson, suggested he had overspent his account for his own benefit, but there's no evidence of that. partly because he knew if he made one misstep he would be found out. >> i have the understanding of the internal -- what do you say about -- [inaudible] -- refers to shares -- [inaudible] >> 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, but the potomac river company, the mississippi river company, he purchases shares in banks. and he also, for example, invests when the federal city is established, what would later become washington, dc, washington invest money in building a couple of lodging houses in d.c. that he then ends out. he becomes a landlord. so, his investments were quite extensive, quite diverse. when he dies, a big part of his wealth -- although this is something that needs to be calculated. i wish i could give you the figures. you folks here at mount vernon 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 very diverse. many different areas of investment, but land remained his primary area of investment. i wish i could be more specific on that, but this is an area where we need to do a whole lot more work. >> i'd like to hear more about martha washington and the partnership, the marriage, especially -- [inaudible] so her husband took care of -- [inaudible] >> so, her first husband, daniel custus, 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, an irascible man. i think it was him on his gravestone that he had inscribed that he was married for x number of years but only really lived when he wasn't married. something to that effect. so she married into family like that. math that herself, yes, she didn't receive the education that men did. that was because she was a woman. women did not typically receive the same level of education that men did. she needed to work against that. she was for all that, clear lay very intelligent woman. it's one of the most interesting letters i've seen from martha, after daniel custus died in 1757, she suddenly got to take over all of his estate. one of the very fit letters she writes is to the british agents, robert carey and company, who george washington also deals with. the letter is very direct. she says i'm in charge now. you're going to have to deal with me. every aspect of our overseas trade, our tobacco work you write me and i'll make the decisions. we need to learn a lot more is one reason we're doing the papers of martha washington project now. exactly what was her level of involvement. she was as involved and she managed as much as a woman of her time could, and she was also very visible. it's one of the things about martha and the revolutionary war and as wife of the first president of the united states that she today not view her role as totally domestic and sitting around at home. she viewed he was as having a public role. not just symbolic but she was in every winter encampment with george to work with other women in the camp -- there were loots of them -- to produce and maintain the army's domestic economy to coordinate production of clothing other vital necessities. there was a biography of market martha washington that came out that is very good on that and also flora frasher just published a very good book on the partnership between george and math that but we need to understand her better than we do. >> thank you for your book and your wonderful talk tonight. how would have george washington viewed -- [inaudible] would he say the government overreaches -- [inaudible] >> sure. that's a natural question to ask. george washington's view of government and the nation and the economy was that taxation is essential, for the maintenance of government and its infrastructure, but the government has a role to maintain and as far as possible develop the national infrastructure, communications and the like, to further commerce. the government has a role to as he said to maintain a stable currency to establish credit to eliminate foreign debt eventually. and to main the peace but that's it. that 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 and what he would have done about them i'm not entirely sure, but based on his conception, the government should not regulate business. or do so only minimally. so that those businesses can develop and they can produce. [inaudible question] [inaudible] >> these are pour ten -- pour -- books he is reading. a wonderful book, right after he marses martha, is a book on how to get rich quick, how to manage your estate, and in the title i think it's get rich quick. so, he reads some business books. he also read adam smith, the wealth of nations. he was 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 business men but there were self help class relationships with financiers. robert morris, who ruined his own reputation. but this is another area he did interexact get involved the world but not to the level i can pull off the top of my head major business people. i'm sorry i can't answer that more clearly. you've look in washington papers available online, and indexed online, you can find many of this prominent merchants and business people corresponding with him. >> you have spoken in a fascinating way about george washington's entrepreneurial successes. i believe he did try to open a brewery at mount vernon which was an abysmal failure. what el have you discovered about this entrepreneurial. >> i think the brewery failed because the beer was really bad. it was awful. this is actually one of the doings -- since you mentioned beer, i have to talk about beer. i used to always assume that washington was all about wine and madeira. he loved beer from early on, and he drank a lot of it. he -- in the 1750, 1760s he loved porter and would order porter from dorset in huge shipments, to mount vernon, hundreds of bottles at a time. and drank it. he later on became fixated with the "buy american" movement, before the war 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's a modern concept of the fail fast technique. if you see something you get invested and it starts to sink, left it fail immediately and get out of it. he didn't stay stuck in any one investment long enough for it to have become a disastrous failure. some of his investments in western land schemes really did not work out. he had some mercantile partnerships for the sale of flour that didn't work out because his partners were incompetent. he had people lining who is horse hari lee, great soldier but aworthless businessman, trying to get george involved in different ventures, to buy western lands and create matildaville. i was discussing, you can see the ruins of that at great falls. so, there weren't any, like, disastrous investments in his life, which is telling. there were things he lost money on, but nothing on a large scale. >> good evening. my question comes from two comments. early on he -- the papers were tough to read because washington enjoyed complaining and then he later -- [inaudible] by doing these papers online would i find examples of george washington complaining about -- [inaudible] -- >> yes. you don't have to really struggle to find washington complaining. just look at his letters he wrote during the french and indian war before he learned restrain himself. the guy was a first-class complainer. he does it later on. i'm trying not to be obnoxious about it because it wasn't like a passive aggressive thing. it was more of the could be kind of grouchy and quarrelful at times. so, that's easy to find. in terms of complaining about mercantilism, yes, some of the most interesting correspondence is between washington and robert carriy and company, his british agents. i you've follow the correspondence from the 1760 1774, 1775, they are both quite candid with each other about washington's sense of the british mercantile system as well as carey's sense how the system worked, and interestingly enough, carey doesn't really try to defend it that much. he more often is apologizing for the british national policy on this. part of it is like passing the buck, saying this isn't my fault, but back and forth that correspondence i would look atlanta and washington is explicit. some i get to my book and others you can fine by exploring the washington papers online through the 1760s. i say that with a caveat that sometimes when particular crises appears, washington keep is his own counsel and takes a low profile. in the aftermath of the townsend duties and such he is pretty quiet for a while about his relationship with the british and that's partly because he is petitioning the royal government for western land and such. but more generally speaking, he does talk about the mercantile system. >> one more. [inaudible question] >> do you mean in their financial efforts or relationships with each other? [inaudible] >> sure. yes, we do, and the jefferson papers project was established in the truman administration, and have been operating from princeton for a long, long time. about a decade ago they opened a branch of jefferson's retirement series at mont check -- monticello. they do first class work and uncovered a great deal about jefferson. i cannot claim that any amazingly revealing new correspondence has been uncovered between washington and jefferson. i think some of the most revealing material that i found has been jefferson's notes on conversations that he had with washington as president. washington tended, especially during his first term to hold fairly informal -- didn't really even hold cabinet meetings. he tended to talk with members of his cabinet individually, more often records were not kept. jefferson was the exception. when washington wanted to talk with jefferson -- they would really have it out with each other sometimes. jefferson would -- as soon as the conversation was done, he would go out the door go in another room and write down every single thing they said. part of it to use against washington later on. particularly when washington started complaining candiedly about how he was feeling kind of worn out and tired, afraid his memory was going, jefferson was like, tell me more, tell me more. so their relationship has been studied quite a bit. there's been a lot written about it. but it was clearly a very nuanced relationship. i think the men respected each other. we have tended to focus on their points of division. they both respected each other very much. but they also saw flaws in each other. but washington was very much a -- almost a black and white thinking type of individual that, when he feels that jefferson has 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 it very personally. i wish washington had been more kind of candid in his own writings, and his diary, which is interesting but there's really not a whole lot of substance in there to talk about their relationship. so,ey, we do work closely with the jefferson as well as franklin, maddison, adams, the other projects. >> let's give a big round of applause. [applause] [inaudible] >> yearning for me questions to be answered and we need good research to be done. >> we do. >> the book his team put together, the financial papers project, is going to be a great source for all kinds of stories, business story. a great crop of younger grad students looking at things like land speculation, capital in america, in which those questions are being asked in a serious way, and it's -- [inaudible] -- now, like washington, he didn't get paid for doing this tonight. he is paid for his expenses, -- [inaudible] [laughter] -- [inaudible] -- that means you can help out by buying his book. you'll get an opportunity. it's right outside the doors behind it. i'm going to make him sit that table until everybody gets their booked signed, and so for those of you who want to stay and get your book signed ask ask more questions, let's do that in an orderly fashion. for the rest of you, i hope too see you soon. we have a paid event, martha washington lecture. [inaudible] another round of applause. applause. >> don't even have to read it. [inaudible conversations] >> when i tune into it on the weekend, usually it's authors sharing new releases. >> watching the nonfiction authors on booktv is the best television for serious rather. on c-span they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject. >> booktv weekends, they bring you author after author after author that's not like the work of fascinating people. >> i love booktv and i'm a c-span fan. >> one might think that given that very strong commitment to the value of liberty, and the principles of democracy, that one might adopt what the u.s. constitution also adopts, which is in article 4, something called the guaranteed clause. all states in the united states are guaranteed to have -- that is must have -- a republican -- small r -- form of government, and with our 14th amendment, of course, all states have to provide equal protection of the laws for all persons who are in the u.s. why not do that globally? if you really believe in those principles. the way that he genuinely does. well, this is not what mill argues for internationally. instead, of course, he argues for nonintervention as a general rule among civilized countries. and he says that it's so for two very important reasons. the first is that imposing liberty, good as it is, and democracy, good as it is, is radically inauthentic, unless people choose it for themselves, what does it mean to say that they're acting democratically, they're determining collectively their form of government and life. there's no really universal form of free government. authentic freedom is the freedom to make up your own version of it. let me give you a more concrete example. think of the u.s. and the u.k. two card-carrying liberal democracies if you ever had to find two. one of them, of course, has hereditary head of state and has a established religion, and the other so far does not. so, it's a very different world, equally legitimate. both of them making equivalently strong claims to liberty and democratic government. so, first of all, it would be inauthentic to attempt to impose liberty and democracy around the world. second, for mill and other liberals it's a good thing healths warns us that trying to do so would have bad consequences and here's where his utilitarianism creeps back in. he says that if a free or democratic government is pulled out of -- let's call it the knapsack of an invading army attempts to impose such a government, one established by force, there are three likely outcomes that come from that act of imposition. first of all, the local liberals, call them knapsack liberals, because they lack support from below will collapse as soon as the intervenors leave. ... the black presidency: barack obama and the politics of race in america >> thirdly, the interveners who pull out this knapsack and put them into power realize they are so weak they are likely to collapse and say to themselves we cannot allow our allies to fall a part and the interveners never leave and now you have an empire. not a free government. a new civil war, a new