Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
And welcome.
I'm Robert George.
I have the honor of being the director of the James Madison
Program in American
Ideals and Institutions
here at Princeton and
it's a delight to honor
all of you today for our
Constitution Day observance.
Constitution Day is officially
the 17th of September,
yesterday, and the University celebrated
Constitution Day yesterday.
The Madison Program was
pleased to cosponsor
the University's event.
We also like to have our own special event
for Constitution Day. And I can think
of no better way to mark Constitution Day,
certainly for a program
like the Madison Program
to mark Constitution
Day than by bringing to
our campus and to you,
one of our time's leading historians
and certainly the most eminent historian
in our country of the American Revolution
and Founding period.
Gordon Wood is a great friend
of the Madison Program.
He's been here before as our guest.
He's honored us with his presence
and we're very honored that he's back
with us today.
Professor Wood is the Alva
O. Way University Professor Emeritus
at Brown University.
He also taught at Harvard and Michigan
before joining the
faculty of Brown in 1969.
His many books include The
Creation of the American Republic
his early book in 1969,
which won the Bancroft Prize
and the John H. Dunning Prize in 1970.
Later, in the early 1990s, he published
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
which won him his
Pulitzer Prize for history
as well as the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize.
His wonderful book on Franklin,
The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
was published in 2004, and was awarded
the Julia Ward Howe Prize
by the Boston Authors Club.
His book, Revolutionary Characters:
What Made The Founders
Different was published in 2006
and then his book, The
Purpose of the Past:
Reflections on the Uses
of History was published
in 2008.
He has a volume in the Oxford History
of the United States
entitled Empire of Liberty:
A History of the Early
Republic from 1789 to 1815,
which was published in 2009
and was given the Association
of American Publishers Award
for history and biography that year,
as well as the American History Book Prize
by the New York Historical Society
and the Society of the
Cincinnati History Prize.
In 2011, he received our nation's
National Humanities Medal,
a very well deserved honor.
He also received the Churchill Bell
of Colonial Williamsburg and
the Arthur M. Schlesinger Award
from the Society of American Historians.
He is the recipient of many other honors,
recognitions, prizes, medals besides.
Professor Wood is a Fellow
of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and of
the American Philosophical Society.
He was an undergraduate
at Tufts University,
earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University
and as I say, we are honored and delighted
to have him back with us
in the Madison Program
to celebrate Constitution Day
and the American
Constitution this afternoon.
Professor Wood.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you Rob.
Well I, thank you Rob that
was a lovely introduction.
I suppose there's some certain irony
in talking about Adams and Jefferson
to celebrate Constitution Day
since neither was present
at the Constitutional Convention.
Adams was Minister to Great Britain
and Jefferson had replaced Franklin
as Minister to France.
But I think in a larger sense,
I think both men contributed to the making
of the Constitution, in fact,
I think you could argue
that Adams contributed more
than did Madison to the structure
of the Federal Government
particularly the presidency
with its veto power,
that certainly was an
imitation of the Massachusetts
Constitution that Adams,
himself, had written
in 1780 and Jefferson's contribution came,
I think, indirectly by
complaining to Madison,
his friend, Madison and to others
that the Constitution
lacked the Bill of Rights.
Madison certainly didn't
publish that letter
from Jefferson, but others
did and it circulated
and people suddenly felt, if Mr. Jefferson
wants a Bill of Rights then
maybe we should have one
and Madison was forced,
compelled under pressure,
to change his mind.
But I think what's linked these two men
more than any other, these
two men, Adams and Jefferson,
is the fact that they
died on the same day,
July 4, 1826, 50 years after the writing
of the Declaration.
The Jubilee Celebration
of the Declaration.
I think this coincidence alone,
has linked these two men forever
in our national consciousness.
But I think our memory and our celebration
of the two men have differed greatly.
Until recently, Jefferson has dominated
our historical memory.
We are continually asking
what Jefferson would say
about every issue, our problems,
and we quote him on every
side of every question
in our history.
In fact, I don't think
any figure in our past
has embodied so much of our heritage,
so many of our hopes as Jefferson.
Most Americans think of Jefferson much
as the first professional biographer.
James Parton did.
If Jefferson was wrong,
wrote Parton in 1874,
America is wrong.
If America is right, Jefferson was right.
Now, no one says that
about John Adams, indeed.
Until recently, few
Americans paid much attention
to Adams.
And even now, the two men
command very different,
very different degrees of
affection and attention
as Founders.
While Jefferson has
hundreds, if not thousands,
of monographs, books
devoted to every aspect
of his wide ranging life,
Adams has had relatively few
works written about him
and with many of these
focused on his apparently
archaic political theory.
Jefferson's mountain top home, Monticello,
has become a World Heritage Site,
visited every year by
hundreds of thousands
of people from all over the world.
By contrast, Adams's modest
home in Quincy, Massachusetts,
maintained by the National Park Service,
is hard to get to and
receives only a small fraction
of Monticello's visitors.
I found out, not too long ago,
that during the off season,
they close it up on weekends.
Jefferson has a huge
memorial, as you know,
dedicated to him located
on the tidal basin
just off the mall in our nation's capital.
Adams has no such monument in Washington
and those who would like to erect one
have struggled, I think,
for nearly two decades
without success.
Now in 1776, no American
could have predicted
that the reputations
of Adams and Jefferson
would so diverge.
Indeed, at the time of independence,
Adams was, by far, the
more well known of the two.
No one had contributed
more to the movement
towards independence than Adams.
Jefferson admired Adams for that reason
and shared his passion
for American rights.
They were two radicals in the
Congress.
And the two revolutionaries
soon became good friends
because of that common passion.
During their missions abroad in the 1780s,
their friendship was enriched and deepened
and then the French Revolution
and partisan politics
of the 1790s strained that relationship.
In 1796, Vice President
Adams succeeded Washington
as President with Jefferson
selected as Vice President.
Adams assumed that he, like Washington,
would be re-elected as
President to a second term.
When after a very bitter campaign in 1800,
perhaps the most
scandalous campaign in our
entire history, Jefferson defeated Adams
for the Presidency.
Adams was deeply humiliated.
Refused to attend Jefferson's inauguration
and then the break between
the two former friends
seemed irreparable.
Actually, I think it's amazing
that they became friends,
although they agreed on the significance
of the American Revolution,
they were very, very different
from one another.
Indeed, they were divided in
almost every fundamental way.
In temperament, in their
ideas of government,
in their assumptions about human nature,
in the notions of society
and their attitude
towards religion, in the
conception of America.
Indeed, in every single
thing that mattered,
they differed.
Of course, what they did have in common
was a deep and abiding
hatred of Alexander Hamilton.
(audience laughing)
They were physically very different.
The virtual Mutt and Jeff.
There must be some people here
who remember Mutt and Jeff.
Standing next to each
other, Jefferson was tall,
perhaps 6'2 or so, and lean and gangly.
He had a reddish freckled complexion,
bright hazel eyes and reddish blonde hair
which he tended to wear
un-powdered in a queue.
He bowed to everyone he
met and usually talked
with his arms folded, a sign, I think,
of his reserved nature.
By contrast, Adams was
short, 5'7 or so, and stout.
By my physical constitution, he admitted,
I am but an ordinary man.
He had sharp blue eyes
and he often covered
his thinning light brown hair with a wig.
William Maclay, the caustic
Scotch-Irish Senator
from Western Pennsylvania
had few kind words
for anyone in his journal,
but he was especially
contemptuous of Adams,
the Vice President of the new
federal government in 1789
and thus, President of
the Senate. Adams, wrote
Maclay, was a childish man with
a very silly kind of laugh
who was usually wrapped
up in the contemplation
of his own importance.
Whenever Maclay looked at
Adams presiding in his chair
with his wig and a
small sword, Maclay said
he could not help thinking of a monkey
just put into britches.
(audience laughing)
Now, there's no doubt that
Adams could sometimes appear
ridiculous in the eyes of others.
That was never true of Jefferson.
Although Jefferson was often hated
and ridiculed in print
by his political enemies,
no one made fun of Jefferson
in the way they did Adams.
Jefferson possessed the
dignity that Adams lacked.
Indeed, for many, Jefferson was the model
of an 18th century gentleman.
Learned, gentile, and
possessing perfect self-control,
politeness and serenity of spirit.
Adams's temperament could
not have been more different.
He was high strung and irascible.
He had no serenity of spirit, whatsoever.
And to his great regret,
he lacked what he called
the gift of silence.
Something possessed by both
Jefferson and Washington.
Whereas in the Continental
Congress, Adams was always
on his feet arguing, debating,
pushing his colleagues
towards independence, Jefferson rarely
said anything publicly.
He was much more
effective in small groups.
Jefferson hated personal confrontations
and he valued politeness,
treating even his enemies
with grace and courtesy.
Jefferson's extreme politeness,
part of the enlightenment
emphasis on civility,
his acute sensitivity to
the feelings of others
and his keen desire not to offend
was the secret of much
of his success in life.
But since his polite words
and his good-humored behavior
to people could never be
an accurate expression
of his real feelings, he was always open
to accusations of duplicity and deceit,
of being two-faced.
Adams was the opposite.
He was excitable and had
little of Jefferson's sense
of restraint.
He was, as his physician
friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush
described him, fearless of
men and of the consequences
of a bold assertion of
opinion in all his speeches.
He had a sharp, sarcastic
tongue and he used it often.
Sometimes in the presence of the recipient
of his derision.
Adams was not taken with politeness
and with hiding his feelings.
He was, as Rush put it, a
stranger to dissimulation,
the very characteristic
Jefferson was often accused
of having.
Jefferson was reserved and tended to use
his good manners and
his relaxed cordiality
to keep people at a distance.
Adams was different.
Familiarity with him, with acquaintances
tended to breed amiability.
In 1787, his Harvard
classmate, Jonathan Sewall,
who would become a loyalist
met Adams in London and was reminded
of the appeal Adams had once had for him.
Adams, he told a judge
back in Massachusetts,
has a heart formed for
friendship and susceptible
of it's finest feelings.
He is humane, generous, and open,
warm to friendly
attachments, though perhaps
rather implacable to those
he thinks his enemies.
Once Adams felt at ease with someone,
he could be much more jovial and open
than Jefferson.
More familiar, more
revealing of his feelings.
As Sewall suggested, people
who got to know him well
found him utterly likable.
His candor and his unvarnished honesty
won their hearts.
But these qualities of forthrightness
did not work well in public.
Adams never quite learned
to tailor his remarks
to his audience in the way Jefferson did.
Consequently, he lacked Jefferson's suave
and expert political skills.
The two men had even more
fundamental differences.
Jefferson was an aristocratic
Virginia planter.
A well-connected slave holder.
A patriarch as he called himself,
reared in a hierarchal
slave-holding society.
He inherited land and
slaves from his father
and acquired more land and more slaves
from his father-in-law.
By the early 1770s, become
one of the wealthiest
planters in all of Virginia.
Although there was no one
in America who knew more
about more things than Jefferson
and I include Franklin in that,
it was not his obvious intelligence
and his learning that catapulted him
at the membership at the
Virginia House of Burgesses.
His political position flowed naturally
from his wealth and his social eminence.
Now, by contrast, Adams was middling born
in a Massachusetts
society that had far more,
it was far more egalitarian
than any society
in the south.
Adams had few connections
outside of his town
of Braintree and his rise was due,
almost totally, to merit,
to his intelligence, his learning
and his hard work as an attorney.
By the early 1770s he'd
become the busiest lawyer
in the colony of Massachusetts.
And in many eyes, the most respected
for the breadth and depth of his legal
and historical knowledge.
Most of his wealth was
acquired from his law practice.
He became reasonably well
off from his legal career
but he never became one
of the wealthiest members
of Massachusetts society
and that was something
that always wrangled him.
But even more important
than these differences,
I think, were their political differences.
Jefferson was a radical.
An 18th century style radical.
A liberal, as they called themselves,
who was as extreme in his views
as a popularly elected official could be.
I don't think he differs in his thoughts
from Tom Paine and if he had
written out his thoughts,
it would have resembled the Rights of Man,
Paine's Rights of Man.
And Jefferson's attitude
towards government,
especially the federal government,
he, of course, did not
resemble a modern liberal.
The radical position, in those days,
was small government.
Convinced that people
were naturally sociable,
if only the government, in it's power,
did not interfere, he believed
in the least government possible.
As they say, this is the
progressive position,
at the time, shared by
Thomas Paine, William Godwin,
the presumed founder of anarchism,
and other Anglo-American radicals.
Instead of the strong
modern and integrated
fiscal military state that
Hamilton, for example,
and other federalists wanted to create,
Jefferson wanted the
smallest government possible.
Especially the federal government.
In fact, the national
government he preferred
strongly resembled the
articles of confederation
that presumably had been laid to rest
by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787.
Under Jefferson's administration,
only the delivery of
the mail reminded people
that they had a federal government at all.
Now, like most liberals, at the time,
liberal progressives,
radicals, Jefferson believed
that society could
virtually run by itself.
That's because he had a magnanimous view
of human nature.
He believed, literally, in what he wrote
in the Declaration of Independence,
that all men are created equal.
I think that's a widely shared view
of most enlightened people at the time,
Anglo-American people.
Of course, in his case,
only all white men.
And that the obvious
differences among individuals,
that everyone recognized,
were due to the effects
of the environment.
The way in which they were raised.
In other words, for
Jefferson and other liberals,
at the time, nurture, not nature,
was all important to Jefferson and I think
to most other educated Americans.
Consequently, like most Americans today,
and I think we still,
despite all our knowledge
of DNA and the genetics, we still hold
to that basic premise,
Jefferson's premise,
that we are all created equal
and the obvious differences come
from different environments.
So, like most Americans today,
Jefferson put an enormous
emphasis on education
in order to bring about more equality.
Now, like other liberals,
Jefferson was optimistic,
confident of the future.
He was a virtual pollyanna
about almost everything.
His expectations always outran reality.
He was the pure American innocent.
He had little understanding
of man's capacity for evil
and he had no tragic sense, whatsoever.
That is, he had little or
no sense of the limitations
of life, no sense of
people being constrained
by circumstances over
which they had little
or no control.
This is amazing, I think, given the fact
that he was a slave-holder
who hated slavery
but claimed he could do nothing about it.
Jefferson thought that
the educated American electorate
would choose as it's leaders
only natural aristocrats.
Virtuous and talented men, like himself.
He believed that the
world was getting better,
becoming freer, more democratic,
and that the new Republic
of the United States
had a special role in
fulfilling that future.
America, he said, was a chosen country
and the world's best hope.
It's Jefferson who invented the idea
of American exceptionalism.
Despising monarchy, he
became a true believer
in the Republican
Revolutions that he hoped
would spread everywhere in the world.
His support for the French
Revolution was unbounded
and was worth all the
blood-shed, all the lives lost
in its name.
If only an Adam and Eve were left alive
and every country left free,
he wrote in 1793, it would
be better than it is now.
Conor Cruise O'Brien, the
Irish journalist historian,
was writing a book in the
1990s about Jefferson,
he came across that passage
and he could only conclude
that Jefferson was the Pot
Pol of the 18th century.
Pot Pol was being the communist leader
of Cambodia that killed millions of people
on behalf of his Marxist cause.
The federalist, John
Adams was very different.
He was a conservative.
Perhaps the most conservative
President we've ever had.
But Adams was anything but a
Ronald Reagan type conservative.
He had a sour and cynical
view of human nature.
He was pessimistic about the future
and a severe critic of the
Jeffersonian conception
of American exceptionalism.
Adams said over and over,
that America was no different
from other countries.
Americans were just as
vicious, just as sinful,
just as corrupt as other people.
There was, he said, no special providence
for the United States.
Indeed, Adams was the ultimate realist.
Committed, to what he
called, stubborn facts.
He challenged every American dream,
every American myth, especially the belief
that all men are created equal.
He believed that we're all born unequal
and that education could not do much
about the inherent
differences among people.
He didn't know about
genes and DNA, of course,
but he certainly was convinced
that nature, not nurture
was what mattered.
He told Jefferson that he'd
visited a foundlings hospital
in Paris
and observed babies who
were only four days old
and he was struck by
the great inequalities
among these little babies.
Some were ugly, he said, others beautiful.
Some were stupid, others smart.
(audience laughing)
they were all born to
equal rights, he said,
but to very different fortunes.
To very different degrees of success
and influence in life.
Society, he said, was inherently unequal
and unlike Jefferson, he
believed that the aristocrats
who would inevitably rise to the top
in Republican America,
would not necessarily
be the best and wisest men.
They were more apt to be the richest
or the most attractive, the most ambitious
and the wiliest.
Adams did not disparage big government
as Jefferson did, but
he was not a Hamiltonian
federalist, either.
He did fear the unrestrained
power of government.
And perhaps the most profound
statement he ever made,
and surely I think his
greatest contribution
to American Constitutionalism, he declared
that power was never to be
trusted without a check.
And as I say, I think separation of powers
that we talk about owes more to Adams
than to any other single Founder.
His pamphlet in 1776 influenced
the state constitution
makers powerfully.
Adams had little confidence in democracy
and in the virtue of the American people.
Consequently, he was willing to borrow
some of the elements
of the English monarchy
to offset the populism of
American Republicanism.
He was a great admirer of
the English Constitution,
the finest in the world, he said.
Since he believed that
England was a republic,
a monarchical republic, no
doubt, but still a republic,
he had difficulty relating his ideas
to his fellow Americans.
Most of them could not
understand what he meant
by calling England a republic.
Adams thought that sooner or later,
America's elections
would become so partisan,
so corrupt, that we would have to turn
to having office holders serve for life.
Eventually, he said,
we would have to follow
the example of England
and make the President
and the Senate hereditary.
I don't know if we've
reached that point yet.
(audience laughing)
Despite these obvious differences between
the two political opponents, however,
there were memories of their friendship
that ultimately made their reconciliation
possible.
In 1812, as Adams's partisan
passions tended to fade,
their earlier friendship
was painstakingly restored
almost entirely through the efforts,
and I would say entirely
through the efforts
of Dr. Benjamin Rush.
He worked two years to
bring the two back together.
Over the next 14 years,
Adams and Jefferson
exchanged over 150 letters
with Adams writing twice
as many as Jefferson.
In fact, Adams at one point realized
that he was writing so many letters
and he apologized to
that and Jefferson said,
don't worry I enjoy your letters,
they're better than anything I could write
and so Adams said, how many correspondents
did you have last year?
How many letters did you receive?
And Jefferson answered,
well this was in 1820,
Jefferson answered 1200 something.
Adams was appalled.
He received 120
(audience laughing)
letters.
I mean, he realized that
Jefferson was a superstar.
International superstar.
Corresponding with the Czar of Russia
or Alexander Humbolt, the
great German Naturalist.
Adams was not in that
celebrity league at all.
And he was aware of that from the outset.
His characteristic courtesy
and politeness, however,
I think Jefferson's
courtesy and politeness,
his aversion to any sort of confrontation,
I think in the end,
saved the relationship.
Although Madison, James Madison,
Jefferson's close friend
could never understand what
Jefferson saw in Adams.
Jefferson realized, told Madison that,
that Adams was a man of rigorous honesty
and realistic judgment.
Jefferson claimed that
once one broke through
Adams's crusty surface,
the irascible Yankee
was as warm and amiable
as a person could be.
Jefferson tolerated, better than most,
Adams's facetious and teasing manner.
He liked to needle, that
was his way of treating
his friends.
I'll give you an example,
in 1815, of course
with the Bourbons,
Napoleon's been defeated,
the Bourbons are back
on the throne of France,
Adams couldn't help ribbing Jefferson,
what do you think of the
French Revolution now,
Mr. Jefferson?
Polite as always, Jefferson
suffered all this razzing
in good humor.
The two men valued their
correspondence too much
to endanger it, and thus
they tended to avoid
controversial subjects,
especially slavery.
But in their exchange of letters,
the two came to realize
that they both, equally
and deeply, loved their country.
They'd always been polite
to one another, personally.
They had never said things.
Their followers were vicious,
but they, themselves,
never said anything harsh to one another
and their civility made that
reconciliation possible.
They knew that they had this
combination, you might say,
of idealism and realism that
helped create the country
and that realization was enough to sustain
the revival of their friendship.
But Adams always knew, as I suggested,
that it was an unequal relationship.
He always knew that he would never have
the acclaim from his fellow
Americans that Jefferson had
and would continue to have.
Adams may have been more
honest, more realistic,
telling us Americans what we need to know,
truths about ourselves that are difficult,
if not impossible, to
bear, but however true,
however correct, however in
accord with stubborn facts,
Adams's ideas and statements may have been,
they were incapable of
inspiring and sustaining
the United States or any
nation, for that matter.
Since the traditional
meaning of the term nation
was a people with a
common ancestry, Adams,
along with many others,
doubted whether America
could ever be a real nation.
In America, he said,
there was nothing like
the patria of the Romans,
the father land of the Dutch,
or the patrie of the French.
All he saw in America was
an appalling diversity
of religious denominations
and ethnicities.
In 1812, he counted at least 19 different
religious sects in the country.
We have such a hotch potch
of people, he concluded,
such a omnium gathering of English, Irish,
German, Dutch, Swedes, French, etc,
that it's difficult to give a name
to the country
characteristic of the people.
By contrast, Jefferson's
ideas and statements
could inspire, could
nourish, the diverse peoples
of the United States.
By the early 19th century, the
Declaration of Independence,
authored by Jefferson, had
taken on a sacred significance.
Something not at all anticipated
in 1776 by either Jefferson or Adams.
When Adams realized, this is in the 1790s
that Jefferson was becoming noted
and acclaimed as the
author of the Declaration,
he was jealous, beside
himself with jealousy.
If he had known in 1776 how important
writing the Declaration would be,
he would have written it himself.
(audience laughing)
But he was chairing about
two dozen committees,
he was in two dozen committees,
chairing many of them,
including the Board of War,
that was waging war against the English
and they let this young
squirt who had just joined
the Continental Congress, Thomas
Jefferson write the thing,
little realizing that he would
be acclaimed as the author.
Jefferson, later in his
life, realized how important
that was becoming, wrote to his son-in-law
and said, look,
the desk on which I wrote the Declaration
is gonna become a relic.
I'm gonna give it to you.
(audience laughing)
Now it's Lincoln, I think, Abraham Lincoln
who came to
see how important the
Declaration had become
and he's the one who, in a
sense, rescues the founders.
Prior to the civil war, when people talked
about the Founding
Fathers, they didn't mean
the people we talk about,
Jefferson, Madison,
Hamilton and so on, they
meant William Bradford,
John Smith, and William Penn
and the 17th century Founders.
It's only after the Civil War
and Lincoln is crucial in this
that the Founding Fathers that we honor
became the Founding Fathers.
When Lincoln said, in 1858,
all honor to Jefferson,
he paid homage to the
one Founder who he knew
could explain why the breakup of the Union
could not be allowed and why so many lives
had to be sacrificed
to maintain that Union.
Lincoln knew what the
Revolution had been about
and what it implied,
not just for Americans,
but for all humanity because
Jefferson had told him so.
Lincoln explained the
phrase in the Declaration
that all men are created
equal in order to make
a nation out of an ethnically
and racially diverse people
who lacked a common ancestry.
In other words, Lincoln
had to justify a nation
that was not a traditional nation.
Half the American people,
Lincoln said in 1858,
had no direct blood
connection to the Founders
of the nation.
These German, Irish,
French, and Scandinavian
citizens either had come
from Europe themselves
or their ancestors had and
they had settled in America
and amazingly, they'd
found themselves our equals
in all things.
Although these immigrants may
have had no actual connection
in blood with the
Revolutionary Generation,
that could make them feel a
part of the rest of the nation,
they had, said Lincoln, that
old Declaration of Independence
with its expression of the
moral principle of equality
to draw upon.
This small principle, which
was applicable to all men
in all times, made all
these different peoples
one with the Founders.
And then he goes on this incredible image.
As though they were blood of the blood
and flesh of the flesh
of the men who wrote
that Declaration.
This emphasis on liberty
and equality, he said,
and then he shifts metaphors,
was the electric cord
that links the hearts
of patriotic and liberty
loving men together
that will link these patriotic hearts
as long as the love of freedom exists
in the minds of men throughout the world.
Lincoln, of course, could
never have invoked Adams
on behalf of his cause.
Adams was too ornery, too
contrarian, too cynical,
too realistic, perhaps,
to offer any such support
for America's nationhood.
Adams had no answer for the great problem
of American diversity.
How the great variety of
individuals in America
with all their different
ethnicities, their different races,
and religions could be brought
together into one nation.
Jefferson, of course, did have an answer.
As Lincoln grasped, better than anyone,
Jefferson offered
Americans a set of beliefs
that throughout the generations
have supplied a bond
that holds together
the most diverse nation
that history has ever known.
Our saving grace, I think,
in a world of immigrants.
Since now the whole world's
in the United States,
nothing but Jefferson ideals
can turn such an assortment
of different individuals
into the one people that
the Declaration says we are.
To be an American is not to be someone,
but to believe in something.
And that something is
what Jefferson declared.
That's why we honor
Jefferson and not Adams.
Thank you.
(audience applause)
Thank you.
- I'd like some of the students to begin
thinking about questions you'd like to ask
Professor Wood.
This is a rare and wonderful opportunity
for you and for all of us
and I wanna give students
first shot, Emerson and others,
if you'd like, but Gordon,
just tell me if I'm right about this.
Wasn't Adams offered the opportunity
to write the Declaration
and kicked it over
to Jefferson or is that a wives tale?
- Well, I don't know if
he was actually offered.
He was the senior person, if you will.
Franklin was older, but
Franklin was an old man
and Adams was in a position
that he could have written it.
It's not that he was offered it,
there was a committee of five
with each section represented.
He could have said, I'm
gonna write this thing
and see what you guys think of it.
He didn't.
He gave it to Jefferson.
He gave it to Jefferson
because he had written
this pamphlet, which was
the most radical pamphlet,
the Summary View pamphlet, until
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
and it was so smoothly written
that everyone recognized Jefferson's
talent with the pen and Adams, as I say,
was terribly busy.
He's on 24 committees,
chairing many of them
and this was the last
thing he needed to do
was taking on a writing of a Declaration
which he didn't think
was all that important,
and neither did Jefferson.
They had no idea how
important it would become.
That's the point that
Adams realizes later,
much to his chagrin.
(audience laughing)
- Would any of our students like to begin
by asking a question?
Yes sir, go right ahead.
- [Male Student] So there's
a number of competitions
between Adams and Jefferson
that are pretty well known
such as the presidency or their views
on the French Revolution,
but what do you think
maybe is the most overlooked competition
or collaboration that they
had that might have had
an impact on this country's history?
- When did they come
together on something?
- [Male Student] What's
the most overlooked
competition they had between each other,
or maybe even when they came together?
- Well the competition,
of course in the 1790s
but they collaborated on the Independence.
It's Adams who's really running that show
and Jefferson's just going along with it.
I mean, he's a radical too, but he's new.
He missed the first Continental Congress
because his,
he became ill and he sent this document
along with his delegation
which became the Summary View
of the British relationship.
Now, if I follow what you're asking,
the competition was terrific.
I mean they couldn't have differed more.
Although, Jefferson tried to downplay it.
When he was elected Vice President
with Adams being President in 1796,
two different parties.
In those days, it was possible to do that,
given the nature of the Electoral College,
Jefferson actually naively
thought well maybe this is
the non-partisan, we'll get together,
he wrote a letter to
Adams to propose that.
But he showed it to his friend, Madison,
what do you think of this
letter of conciliation,
we're coming together, and Madison says
don't send it.
You might find that this
comes back to haunt you later.
Madison was far more realistic, I think,
about the political
situation than Jefferson
and so he never sent it.
And he refused to, at that
point Jefferson makes no effort
to be part of the
Administration, even though
he's the Vice President.
I'm not sure what more you wanted.
- Well maybe we could flesh
out a little this way.
One of the things they
disagreed about, profoundly
was slavery.
But you say they avoided the discussion
because they knew it was--
- They talked about it in 1819, 20
with the Missouri crisis
that couldn't be avoided.
And Adams never pushed Jefferson on it.
But he privately said to his own friends
and to his everyone in his family,
although Abigail was dead at that point,
look thank God I've never owned a slave
and I'd hate to be part of that world.
Jefferson's letters,
correspondence now being
in the retirement series
are now being published,
they're up to about 1819 or so.
Those last years, those last seven years,
are really depressing
because Jefferson becomes
a fire-eating southerner.
We have to understand
that this celebration
of Jefferson is not the celebration
of the real Jefferson.
It's the Jefferson that
we wanna believe in,
who believed in the
Declaration of Independence
and in the exceptionalism of America.
But by 1820, he has
become really frightened
of what's happening and
a defender of the south.
And its way of life.
As much as he hated slavery,
he's looking after the south, he feels
that the north is coming at them
and many of his letters
sound like somebody,
a southerner writing in the 1850s.
The fear of northern aggression.
- David McCullough in
his biography of Adams
tells us that among the
things that Adams loathed
about slavery was the sexual
exploitation of slave women
by their masters.
- Right and he knew, that charge was made
and Adams knew about it.
Not everyone believed it at the time
and of course, we've
only had in recent years,
had historians come on
board given the DNA findings
and Annette Gordon-Reed's work.
It's now, I think, very
persuasive that Jefferson
had a concubine, that is Sally Hemmings.
What's hard to understand, however,
he showed no recognition of his offspring.
You know, he'd enter the birth of a baby
by Sally Hemmings into his farm book
alongside the new heifers
and new pigs that were born
in Monticello and he'd say, a
child born of Sally Hemmings.
Those are his children, presumably,
and he shows no recognition of them
where many other planters did.
Giving them presents and so
on and Madison, Hemmings,
and the other boys said
that later in life.
He showed us no affection,
showed us no recognition.
But the Monticello is now,
has a room which they've
designated Sally Hemmings's room
where she presumably lived.
She was certainly a privileged servant
and was treated differently,
as all the Hemmings were.
You have to understand that Sally Hemmings
was his wife's half-sister.
It's a complicated
situation, she was only,
she's a quadroon, her
offspring are octoroons,
which in Virginia law, at
the time, was legally white.
That's why many of the children went off
and became white.
Sally, according to one slave,
was "nearly white."
That's the phrase he uses.
So he probably had,
although Jefferson railed
against misogynation, he
must have convinced himself
that this woman was not
all that different from him
and was nearly white.
She was only one quarter black
and all the Hemmings kids were treated,
family were treated well in the household.
- But not with personal,
paternal affection.
- No, that's right.
I mean, they had privileged positions
because Betty Hemmings was the concubine
of Jefferson's wife's father.
- Yes, right over there.
Next question.
- [Male Student] So,
Professor, when you mentioned
Jefferson and Adams were united
in their hatred, I think you
said, of Alexander Hamilton,
but then, of course, Jefferson and Adams,
as much of what your talk is about,
had their own animosities with each other,
a lot of it was political,
not just personal,
and I guess during the
Washington Presidency,
of course the Jefferson-Hamilton conflict
was the sort of main tension there
and then obviously there was
a Jefferson-Adams conflict
in the Adams Presidency.
Could you sort of rehash
that triangle a little bit
and also, I guess looking
beyond just that time period,
which conflict, Jefferson-Hamilton or Jefferson-Adams
sort of contributed more to the beginnings
of partisanship here in the United States?
- You have to understand, Hamilton and,
just to give clarify,
Hamilton and Madison
collaborated in The Federalist
and were advocates for the Constitution.
What seems strange is,
how come they broke apart
in the early 90s?
I think the answer is the
government that Madison wanted
was not the government
that Hamilton created.
If you read the 10th Federalist carefully,
you see it's full of judicial imagery.
Madison wanted the
government to be an umpire
and he uses that term, an
umpire, a disinterested umpire
that would decide, would make decisions
about what's good for the country
in a judicial-like manner.
That's not what Hamilton had in mind.
Hamilton is trying to copy
the British financial system,
which he rightly saw was the secret
of Great Britain's great success.
I mean, think about it.
This little island with
a third of the population
of France off the
Northwest coast of Europe
becomes the greatest power in the world.
How did they do it.
And that's what Hamilton
was fascinated by.
And it's this fiscal military structure.
The way in which the English were able
to tax their people
without impoverishing them.
That's the secret of commercial success
or of any kind of success
that even is true today.
How do you tax people without
it destroying their wealth?
And the English, the
Dutch had done it first,
the English copied the
Dutch and the English
were a model in Hamilton's mind.
He creates the bank, the stock market,
the whole fiscal military structure.
He wants to make the United
States the equal of Europe.
The European nation on their own terms.
He says, it's gonna take about
five, four or five decades
but by the time we're ready,
by the middle of the 19th century,
we'll be ready to take them on
on their own terms, and that's of course,
exactly what happened.
I mean, by the time there was Civil War,
the United States was a
major power, would have
if it had to fight one
of the nations in Europe,
it would have given them a real fight.
So that's Hamilton's conception.
A fiscal military state
with a standing army,
all of the military apparatus
that the European nations had.
That's not at all what Jefferson
or Madison had in mind.
They really were radicals in the sense
they thought that was the first step
towards monarchy and the
end of the Republican dream.
War, they wanted a substitute for war.
Economic sanctions we would call them.
That's what lies behind
Madison's non-importation
agreements in the 90s and
the embargo of Jefferson
in 1807.
This is, as he said, a
grand Liberal experiment
in an alternative to war and
we're still playing with that.
We're having a very difficult time
'cause war is so bad and of course
in these Republican,
radical Republican's eyes,
war supports monarchy,
creates strong executives,
and of course, that's
true in our own history.
The only President who
didn't enhance his power
during war time was James Madison
'cause he was such a strict Republican.
But historians have condemned him
for waging such a poor
war in the war of 1812.
So he paid a high price
for his principles.
But that's the difference,
they couldn't differ more
on the kind of nation that
the United States was to be
and in that sense, Hamilton
emerged victorious.
He'd love the Pentagon
and the great military
apparatus we have, he would say,
now we're finally a great power.
He was a nobleman.
His 18th century sense of glory.
To make him into some
kind of crypto-capitalist
is to miss the point.
He wanted to use the economy to make us
a great nation that
would, for him personally
and for the nation, would have glory.
He's napoleonic, as was
Burr in his ambitions.
They're not, he's not a
capitalist as he's often
been pictured, it misses
the point, entirely,
of what Hamilton was up to.
- Emerson.
- [Emerson] Thank you Professor.
You mentioned that Adams was suspicious
of the idea of a propositional nation.
I'm curious how it would have been--
- What was that phrase?
- [Emerson] That Adams was
suspicious or resistant
to the idea of a propositional nation.
And I'm curious how it would have fit in
to Jefferson's political
psyche and whether you think
that he thought maybe
slaves could be Americans
given the correct propositional beliefs
or educational environment.
- I don't think either.
Certainly, I don't think
either of them actually
anticipated a mixed racial nation.
That just was beyond
their kin at the time.
Adams certainly was proud of the fact
that he was not a slaveholder
and he actually would have recognized
the Haitian government,
which Jefferson was appalled
that he actually had a Haitian agent
come to the White House,
that just couldn't,
Jefferson couldn't understand
what Adams was doing there.
But I don't think they
actually saw or foresaw
the racial integration we have today.
They simply did not foresee that,
couldn't, it was hard for
them to even imagine it.
Certainly true of Jefferson.
Jefferson's only hope was for some kind
of colonization somewhere,
either into the west
or into the Caribbean or back to Africa.
He couldn't imagine any kind of,
Adams never talked about that.
Adams's view was this,
he realized that Jefferson
and the southern planters
had a problem, but he said to Jefferson,
I'm not going to preach to
you what you ought to do,
you're going to have
to solve that yourself.
But he had no answer.
Both of them knew that would be the issue.
They were aware that
the Union was fragile,
that it could easily break
apart and that would be
the issue on which it
broke apart, slavery.
So, Adams is,
he's willing to let the
Southerners handle the problem
but he just thanked,
he just was so thankful that
we Northerners don't have that problem.
We're so lucky.
But he was not preaching.
He would not preach to Jefferson
about what they should do.
He was gonna leave that to them.
And Jefferson had this sense,
this optimistic sense,
well things will work out.
Something will happen, it'll all work out.
That was his view.
He uses nautical images
often, the waves will come
and they'll pass under the boat.
He never, at the end, was unable to face,
but I think his last
years were quite fearful
and scared, he was scared.
Even alarmed by John
Quicy Adams's election
as President and his
proposal to have internal
improvements, canals and roads built
and Jefferson said, oh
that's the first step,
that's the camel's nose under the tent.
Next thing you know, they'll
be going after slavery.
We can't have the Congress legislating on
internal improvements and
he wrote out a big paper
and he tried to talk
Madison into supporting it
from the state of
Virginia and Madison says,
don't, Madison had a much keener sense
of the political reality.
He says leave it alone.
He said, first of all it'll put Virginia,
we're always taking
the lead on these things
and it's causing problems.
It will die of its own weight.
Politically it's just not viable.
Madison was right.
The thing, the proposal that Adams had,
John Quincy Adams had went nowhere
and died in the Congress without any fight
from Jefferson.
But Jefferson's proposal, which you have
in the Jefferson papers, was quite radical
saying that this is the first step
towards consolidation.
This'll threaten our
way of life and so on,
all as we say, dog whistles for slavery.
For protecting slavery.
- Emerson, were you pushing on the idea
of propositional nation, that is a nation
that is based on belief as opposed
to a blood and soil nation?
- [Emerson] I was curious in the context
of Jefferson's belief in the
malleability of human nature
and so why he believed
that, given that belief,
why--
- Well he never confronted the issue.
It's Lincoln and others who,
he never faced up to that question
that Adams does face up to.
He kept saying, how can we, we're such
a hotch-potch of a
nation, how can we ever,
because the conventional
wisdom is that a nation
is people with a common ancestry.
I mean, these are issues
that are of our own time.
This is what the Swedes
and the Germans are facing,
how do you integrate these
foreigners in your nation
if you have a sense of a common identity?
We have to understand that we are blessed
that there is no American ethnicity.
Now there may have been in the early,
in the 19th century
'cause we were British,
dominant British, and that's why Europeans
would call us Anglo-Americans.
But it wasn't long before
we had a diverse people,
as Lincoln points out.
He just can't imagine
how diverse we became.
So there's no American ethnicity
so what holds us together?
It's a common set of beliefs.
The French would give
anything to have that.
They think they do have
it, but they don't.
(audience laughing)
The French can't believe that those Arabs
who've been living in
France for four generations,
they're not really French.
Those Algerians aren't really French.
Because they don't look French.
I mean we're,
that's the difference.
We're lucky that we don't,
I think anyone who lives in
America for four generations
is an American and I think
that makes all the difference
and we're, so in this world of
great demographic movements,
immigration, it's gonna continue.
This invasion from the
South into the North.
It's the crisis of our time.
All our complaints that
we have about the Mexicans
coming in, it's pale in
significance compared
to the problems the Europeans are facing
with demographic movement.
So I think we're blessed
that we don't have
an ethnicity at the
heart of our nationhood.
We may not be a real nation, but we're,
we've got something to hold us together
and that's what Lincoln was appealing to
and he's the one who,
all honor to Jefferson,
he really elevates
Jefferson to the pantheon
and makes him more important
than people thought
he would be at the time.
- Okay, so let's open it up now,
students can also as
questions, but now anybody
can ask questions.
Yeah, just back here.
- [Male] So you mentioned
that in the correspondences
in the 1810s and 20s, Jefferson and Adams
were polite and avoided
their controversial issues.
- They're polite to each other, yes.
- [Male] So if they weren't
talking about those issues,
what were they discussing?
- What were they talking about?
- [Male] Yes, if not the
controversial issues,
were they doing?
- Well it depends on the issue.
In the 80s of course, they're very close
and that's when,
when they're over there in Paris
negotiating treaties,
by the time Jefferson got there,
the Peace Treaty has been signed.
So they are part of a
committee with Franklin
to negotiate treaties of commerce.
They got to know each other very well.
The families intermingled.
Jefferson was taken with Abigail.
They brought Jefferson, the widower,
into their family so Jefferson would take
John Quincy to a museum or to a concert.
They really just got to
know each other as families
and Jefferson was just smitten
with this Yankee family,
particularly with Abigail
because she not only
was smart and knowledgeable,
unlike the women,
the Southern women he knew,
she had read Milton and
history and she could quote
these people by memory,
he was taken with that
but in addition, she was an expert manager
of the household.
The combination just knocked him,
he just had never seen anything like it
and so that, I think is really the basis
for the reconciliation.
In Jefferson's mind,
those were the happiest
days they had together.
And then, of course, when the Adamses move
to London as Minister, they
kept up a correspondence
and Jefferson was actually
flirting with Abigail,
he'd buy things for her and she would
buy things for him, they'd exchange gifts.
In one of his letters,
Jefferson says to her,
he says, look I was going
to buy a little statue
of Venus for your dining
room, but then I realized
two Venuses in the same
room would be too much.
(audience laughing)
That's 18th century flirtation.
- [Male] What do you have in the 21st?
- Gentleman here, yes sir.
Chanel will pass you the microphone.
We'll catch it on the video that way.
- [Male] You made an interesting point
about their different views
on nature versus nurture,
Adams thinking nature and
Jefferson thinking nurture.
So how much do you think their differences
were due to nature versus
how much was nurture?
- Oh I couldn't begin
to solve that problem.
That's one we wrestle with.
The point I wanna emphasize
was that Jefferson was
in the mainstream of educated people.
That is to say, James
Boswell, other Anglo-American
enlightened people, this is the rejection
of the Ancien régime, this is rejection
of the medieval world,
of hereditary destiny.
So to be enlightened was to
believe, as John Locke said,
we're born with a blank
slate and experience
is what accounts for the differences.
That is the enlightened position
and I would submit that it's essentially
the American position.
For us, we put an awful lot
of emphasis on education
and we believe that sooner or later,
we've got to give enough
education we can solve
a lot of problems.
Adams is the odd man out on this.
He just takes that on head on and says
that is just not true.
Now, there are people
around that say that today
but not too many because
it's just so un-American.
So Adams is really, he
challenges that basic premise.
He says we're born, that's why he,
he sends this letter talking
about the foundling hospitals
to many people, not just to Jefferson.
I saw all these babies four days old,
they were all different.
And he just couldn't get over that.
I mean that, to him was,
but I wanna emphasize, and I
think this is important point
I've tried to make in the book
which nobody has paid much attention to
but it goes to the heart of a debate
that we still have.
But it seems to me that
Adams is somehow defying
a kind of basic American
premise with his emphasis
on nature, not nurture
and he's taking on an
enlightened position.
I wanna emphasize that
Jefferson's position
is really that of enlightened people
on both sides of the Atlantic.
That's what separates this
enlightened generation
from the world they're contesting
that the Ancien Régime,
the hereditary world
of breeding animals, breeding horses.
You know, you're aristocrat,
it's hard for an aristocrat
who breeds horses
and dogs not to believe in nature
so they had that kind
of experience, they felt
well nature is important
and since I'm on top,
I must be better than other people.
That's being rejected by America
and by enlightened people everywhere.
Nothing could be more important
in the history of western civilization
than that crisis, that rejection of blood.
Now the irony is, of
course, that Americans spend
more money on tracing
ancestors than any other nation
in the world.
(audience laughing)
We are the most ironical nation
in the history of the world.
- Gordon, did Adams worry
that enlightenment ideology
sounds great but it ends up in the terror
and the guillotine?
- Right, of course.
He thought that that's what would happen
when you, well you put a
people who are ill-equipped
for popular government,
they're gonna end up
with a Napoleon.
And so he's realistic about the world
and that's been true
in our experience.
It's not easy to build a democracy
and he said that.
He just feared that Americans
would end up doing that.
That we might not have the capacity.
He has moments of more confidence
and I think, what's
interesting in the end,
in their old age, Adams, there's
a kind of transformation.
Adams becomes more serene, happier,
and Jefferson becomes more
morose and pessimistic.
Even though Adams, he's had trouble
with his children.
Abigail dies, of course, but one of his,
except John Quincy becomes
President of the United States
and he sees, he's alive to see that.
But the other son
essentially commits suicide
or drinks himself to death
and the other boy comes
home, something familiar
to us today, comes home at the age of 35
with his career in shatters
and comes and lives
at home with his parents.
But he had John Quincy so,
and he realizes on the slavery issue,
as we say, he's on the
right side of history,
and he writes about how
he is being celebrated
by his Massachusetts citizens in a way
that hadn't been earlier.
He's on every committee,
although he disagrees
with many of these old federalists,
he realizes that he is
something of a patriarch
in the state of Massachusetts and his son
is doing well, so he, there's
a sense of well-being.
Fortunately, he dies before his son
gets defeated by Andrew Jackson.
Both of Adams and
Jefferson thought Jackson
was sort of what we think
of Trump, I suppose.
A man out of the woods
who has no education
and what is he doing,
Jefferson was appalled that
he came as close as he did
in 24 to becoming President.
He died before Jackson
actually did become President.
They were really frightened.
You see, neither man anticipated
the democratic nature
of 19th century America.
In fact, all the Founders who lived
into the 19th century died disillusioned
with what they had wrought.
Society became much more democratic,
much more paper money hungry.
They had no understanding of paper money.
They just thought that banks were,
you know a crucial thing
in the Constitution
is the Article I Section X,
which prohibits the states
from doing certain things,
one of which is to print
paper money, which had been
really one of the issues
that Madison was most
concerned about in the 1780s.
Creditors are hurt terribly by inflation
and this seemed to be a terrible
abuse of popular government
which is what was called
democratic excesses
of the 80s that helps
account for the Constitution.
That's why Madison wanted a veto given
to the national government
over all state laws
or state bills.
It's totally impractical,
although he hangs on to that
til the bitter end.
They finally get around
it by Article I Section X,
which limits the states on certain things.
You can't print paper
money, can't levy tariffs,
violate contracts and so on.
That would have stymied the economy
it never would have been able to grow
if there was no paper money.
So the states get around
that by chartering banks
which, in turn, print the paper money
and so the whole antebellum economy
which was quite vigorous,
although terribly bad
for individuals, lots of
people going out of business,
ruined, debtors and so on.
But the economy grows
through this paper money.
It's a chaotic world, we don't
have a good history of this.
Simply not, maybe it's
too difficult to right
but can you imagine
these hundreds of banks
printing their paper money
and they're circulating.
This is the capital, the
capitalism that breeds
the capitalism of the antebellum period.
And it's, we know very little about it.
They couldn't, they were appalled by it.
They just couldn't imagine
this kind of world.
As all older people, they
found it very difficult
to deal with the modern world.
(audience laughing)
- Yes, Bronwen.
Yeah, hang on they'll, to
go on to the recording.
- [Broman] I'm struck by the irony
that between the two men--
- Louder please.
- [Broman] I'm struck by the
irony that between the two men,
the more radical egalitarian
and anti-aristocratic,
of the two, is Jefferson is the one born
into southern gentry, privilege.
Is there a sense he was
naive or almost lacking
self-awareness that he,
of his own privilege,
his own high position in
society where as Adams,
you know the man of merit, had a realism
coming from his--
- Look he, Jefferson is the
first limousine liberal,
if you will.
(audience laughing)
What is ironic is that
the southern planters,
these aristocratic slave-holding planters,
are the base of the Republican party.
The Republican party,
which is in opposition
to the Federalists, the New Englanders,
which is the basis in New England,
is pro-Democratic because they,
they never saw the,
they never really saw
the abuses of democracy.
Jefferson never lost an
election in his life.
He has complete confidence in the people.
He doesn't trust legislators
'cause they somehow,
sometimes legislators get
apart from the people,
but the people itself, he just has this,
just complete confidence in.
He talks about the people.
Adams had none of that
and the Federalists didn't
because they were living
in a much more egalitarian
Democratic society.
They know what democracy could be like
and therefore they are
much more skeptical of it,
much more hesitant to
support popular government.
So it's that paradox, if you will.
It helps explain what is the great,
I mean I suppose the
greatest diary in our history
is that our spokesman for democracy,
the apostle of democracy,
as he was called,
Jefferson was a slave-holding aristocrat.
That's the ultimate irony, I guess,
but these people, all of these planters,
were the foundation, the base,
of the Republican party which
became the Democratic party.
It's just another one of
the ironies in our history.
- Yes?
Up here, sir.
Chanel will hand you the microphone.
- [Male] A few years ago, Professor George
presented a program, the title of which
was something like should the
Constitution be re-written.
Is that?
- Be re-written?
- [Male] Yes, yeah, and I remember,
one of the panelists commenting
that if we could find
a group of people as talented and as wise
as the Founders, then maybe.
Which led me to think,
how were the Founders,
Jefferson and Adams and others viewed
by their contemporaries?
Were they regarded as the
sages that we now think
of them?
- Well yeah, I think
Jefferson, except among
New England Federalists,
was regarded as a
brilliant, popular leader.
His presidency was very successful.
First term, at least, was very successful,
the acquisition of Louisiana,
which the Federalists opposed.
I mean, they didn't have
the kind of awe towards him,
although Washington had that kind of awe
almost from the beginning.
I think he stood head and shoulders above,
it is difficult to explain.
The population of
Virginia, in this period,
was 300,000, maybe 400,000, white men
and women.
That's about the size of, I don't know,
Pittsburgh and yet, Virginia produced
Washington, Madison,
Jefferson, Matt Marshall,
George Mason, I mean it goes on.
How do you explain that?
That's a very difficult question.
It's not a Democratic society and yet
it's elected, they have elections.
I think the best book on this is still
Sydnor's book called
Gentlemen Freeholders,
it helps explain the
sources of this leadership.
But it is an incredible
moment in our history
that such a small society,
I mean relatively small.
300,000 producing such
a galaxy of leaders.
It's a peculiar moment in our history
and the more democratic we became,
less differential, people
with differential in a way
that simply doesn't exist anymore.
In fact, the whole term elite, has become
a pejorative term when
they would have thought
that that's what you want,
is an elite to lead you.
So we've, we're in a different situation
all together, but explaining it is,
that's what historians are trying to do.
- I wanna know if, Professor Kateb,
I don't wanna put you on
the spot, but I'd like
to give you the opportunity
to ask a question
if you have one.
- [Professor] I'll pass.
- You'll pass?
Was there a hand up, yes?
- [Male] I'm very loud.
I have a question, I guess, about whether,
or to what extent the
correspondence involved
political economy?
In what way Adams situated himself
between the polls of
Hamilton and Jefferson
on this question of the military state
versus the agrarian ideal?
- He's closer to Jefferson
in some respects.
You know, what happened
in the first decade or so,
both John Quincy, who was elected
by the Federalist
Legislature of Massachusetts,
supports the Louisiana
Purchase and the embargo,
at least temporarily.
This was a no-no for the
New England Federalists.
The embargo was so disastrous
that they were adamantly opposed to it.
Quincy Adams is then ousted
'cause the legislature, as
you know, in those days,
he's ousted.
He very calculatedly becomes a Republican.
And Adams, the senior Adams
is influenced by that.
He comes to think that
Jefferson's administration
wasn't all that bad.
He differs, he has a lot of
complaints, but he's
not a real Federalist.
He never was, and his anger
at Hamilton helps him.
He's half way there and when his son
becomes a Republican, he's practically,
that's why he's prepared, I think,
emotionally to get
reconciled with Jefferson.
He has already accepted.
Now he would not have gone,
he never talked about
the agrarian part of it.
He certainly, both of them are opposed
to paper money, they're opposed to any,
what we would call the
origins of capitalism.
They're just completely befuddled by this.
I think in that sense, he's appeared
to accept
the policies, at least
some of the policies
of the Republican party.
But I don't think he buys
into an agrarian world
because he sees business all around him
but he doesn't like it.
None of these men are real
business men.
Hamilton's the only one who,
not that Hamilton, himself,
wants to become a businessman.
He just knows that
these are dynamic people
in society and you need them on your side.
And he's gonna use them,
is the way he would put it
to build his strong America.
Adams never, or Jefferson,
sees that at all,
they just don't.
I mean in their sense of the
future, they're just as lacking
as we are about what's gonna happen.
They just don't know and they're scared
by what is happening.
That's as close as I can come
to answering your question.
- Is it any accident
that Hamilton was the one
who was truly self made?
Came from nothing.
- Well Franklin was too.
- Well Franklin was, that's true.
- Franklin's origin is--
- But he did get rich.
- Yeah, no, he got rich.
I think Adams had a
sense that he had done it
by himself.
What he really resented
was the way in which
these rich Massachusetts merchants
looked down on him and he
was well off, we would say,
but he was never the
richest man in society
and he resented that kind of,
that kind of wealth,
the displays of wealth.
And of course, he and Abigail were thrifty
and so he never went into debt.
Jefferson couldn't understand
how Adams was running
his household so efficiently,
but he wasn't doing it.
He was borrowing money to buy books,
for example.
- And wine.
- Yeah well wine too,
but I mean the idea of taking out a loan,
a Dutch loan, for example,
with Dutch bankers
to buy books, it was just totally madness
for Jefferson and he left his family
in bad straights.
- Professor Keohane.
- [Professor] I want to
bring you back to your thesis
in your talk.
And think that the America nation
would rest on a set of beliefs,
would rest on the Declaration
and the Constitution.
Now every time one reads historians now,
not you, but many historians,
one reads that the
Constitution and the Declaration
are so stained by slavery
that they're just (mumbles).
There's a piece in the
Times Book Review this week
that claim that we can't
rely on the Constitution,
it's a problem to overcome, not a document
to revere, so how do you view
the way your discipline, now,
is doing with the Constitution?
- I think that we're in,
that's a reflection of the
zeitgeist that we're in.
The America story, the revolution,
the colonial history, our
whole history's a tale
of woe and oppression.
If that's what you believe, well then
it's a discouraging
thought to be an American.
I think there's another side, that's all.
I would hope, it's not
that the facts are wrong.
There are lots of facts
and you choose those
that you think will make a story
or a narrative or a balance, if you will.
I think that,
Sean Wilentz has got a new book
on the Constitution on this issue
and he says the one saving grace
of the Constitution, it
never uses the term slave
and identifies a slave with property.
He makes this whole argument on that point
which enables the Constitution to survive
with Lincoln.
Lincoln could appeal to the Constitution
because it does not mention slavery.
Now, it's complicated 'cause there's,
it sounds like the main southerners
interpreted it to mean
that slaves were property.
But the fact that it's
never explicitly stated
becomes important to Wilentz
and I think to Lincoln.
But these are issues that
are, the historiography
right now is very depressing.
And it's a part of our zeitgeist.
We're in a time where we are
we're feeling bad about ourselves
and we're not, we have not anything much
to be proud of, it seems.
I think that's a mistake, but I think we,
there are facts out there.
There certainly were
lots of Indians killed.
There were, and slavery
existed for decades
before it was eliminated by the Civil War.
And then, of course, racism continued
even after the Civil
War and it's really not
until 1950s and 60s that
civil rights were acquired
and even now, people feel that's not,
black Americans are not
given full citizenship
so from that point of
view, it's a sordid tale
and that's what we're emphasizing now.
I think partly because
it helps mobilize people
to do something.
History becomes politics
by other means, in a way,
so you can mobilize
your base to do things.
But the danger is that you create
such a negative view of the country
that you create a backlash
and of course, the gap
between professional
or academic history writers,
and what we call popular history writers
has never been greater.
I mean the people like McCullough, Ron Chernow
and John Meacham, that
whole group of people,
these people have no Ph.D.s,
they have no academic position
and they're writing the
history that's being read
by the populous.
The academics are writing
their sad and woeful tales,
but they're not being read except
by other historians, other
scholars and that is,
I think, sad.
There's always been a gap
between the Barbara Tuckmans
and the academics, but
never has it ever been
as great as it is today and
I think that's a function
of what's happened to the academic world.
And that'll probably continue,
at least through my lifetime,
but maybe yours too.
- We have time for just
two more quick questions.
- Ask that lady there.
- You and you.
First, and then second.
If we could do short
questions and short answers.
- Sure, okay.
- [Male] Thank you.
I wanted to hear from you a little bit
about the relationship between Tom Paine
and Thomas Jefferson?
Jefferson told Madison to get rid
of his correspondence with
Tom Paine when he was dying.
Could you comment on that?
- Wait a minute, I didn't
hear this last comment?
Who get rid?
- [Male] He got rid of the correspondence
between Jefferson and Tom Paine?
- Who told him to do that?
- [Male] Jefferson told Madison
to get rid of.
- That's a new story, I hadn't heard that.
No, I mean Jefferson,
yeah Jefferson and
Paine, as I said earlier,
had identical views
of politics, of what was happening.
Jefferson was smart enough not to publish
his views on religion, for example.
Jefferson realized that
he'd made two comments,
publicly on religion, both
of them very small things
compared to what Paine said in the age of,
Age of Reason, right.
And Paine's reputation
was destroyed in America
because of the Age of Reason.
Jefferson avoided that but
he thought the same way.
He thought Christianity was hocus pocus,
the trinity, he was not an atheist,
neither was Paine.
But they both mocked Christianity.
Payne did it publicly and that cost him.
He came back and he was scorned.
The only person who showed
any recognition of him
in the early 19th century was Jefferson.
Invited him to the White
House and befriended him.
Paine died in obscurity and it was,
they remained close in ideas
and Jefferson knew that.
Jefferson was a politician, however,
and realized he could not
afford to say what ...
Now, I don't know about
this story of anyone telling
him to destroy his
correspondence with Paine.
The correspondence is of a,
there's a kinship there,
intellectual kinship.
He got into terrible trouble
when he wrote a little note to a publisher
from the age The Rights of Man came to America.
The edition, he sent the document off
to a publisher in
Philadelphia and said,
this will be a good thing
to counter the heresies
of what's flying around,
this is 1791 or 92
and of course the publisher
went ahead and published that
in the front of the book, which
Jefferson never anticipated.
He was appalled at that and of course,
the reference was to Adams in particular
because Adams was spouting
pro-monarchical views.
Adams kept denying that he was doing this
but he's wrong.
Adams is actually defending
the English Monarchy.
But he described it,
he had this peculiar notion
that the English monarchy
was really a republic
because it had a House of Commons
and the fact that it
had a hereditary monarch
didn't seem to affect that.
So that was very difficult
for people to understand.
So he's talking about a
possibly hereditary Senate
a possible hereditary President,
well these kinds of
statements were appalling
and this is what Jefferson's referring to
and it caused
a greater rift, that was one of the things
that separated them.
- And our final question
just up there.
- [Female] I'll be loud.
I took your course in 1973
on the Federalist Papers.
I'll never forget it,
this is bringing it all
back, I'm so excited.
I just wanted you to evoke the election
that was so bitter between
Jefferson and Adams
and was there any outside interference
by a foreign power?
(audience laughing)
- Yeah, okay.
This is a complicated, and
it is an important issue.
Leading up to that election,
there was the crisis
of 1798 where the French
threatened to invade
the United States and the Federalists
were frightened of that.
And there was talk about that
and there was a possibility of that.
You have to understand the background
to the Alien Sedition Acts.
The French, under Napoleon,
were invading countries
all over Europe, creating
puppet republics.
The Bavarian Republic in Holland.
Napoleon was invading Northern Italy,
Germany, creating these puppet,
why not come to the United States?
They had invaded once
before, the French Army
had come over here.
That was a real fear.
And they had a fifth
column ready to meet them
and collaborate with them.
The Republic and the
Jeffersonian Republicans.
That's the background to the election.
Now, unfortunately,
Adams defied his cabinet and everybody
and sends a mission to kind of solve
the French problem.
Unfortunately the results
come back, a convention,
ending the quasi war,
but after the election.
If it had come before, he
might have been re-elected.
But it comes too late and he's defeated.
And the Alien Sedition Acts were passed
under this kind of
crisis which has forever
discredited the Federalists.
You still see references to it.
Well, I use the comparison to 1942
when we were apparently threatened
with an invasion by the Japanese
and we rounded up 125,000 Japanese people,
of Japanese ancestry,
many of whom were citizens
and put them in concentration camps.
This was, Earl Warren signed off on this,
he was Attorney General of California.
FDR signed off on it.
And it's a bad blot in our history.
But to understand the mentality of people
in 1942, we're truly scared
of a Japanese invasion.
Now that's the situation in
1798 and it's the background
to this very, very heated election
and so there were fears
of French influence on elections.
They thought, the Federalists
thought the French
were running the Republican Party.
There were a bunch of
Francophiles and fanatics
and the Federalists were
accused of being monarchists
because they had, they
were supporting England.
And this was, of course,
during the titanic struggle
between France, revolutionary France
with Napoleon emerging as a leader
and the English who are defending monarchy
but stability and you might
say, liberty in some ways.
So it was a momentous event
and that's the background
I think, to the very vicious election.
- Before I ask you to join me in thanking
Dr. Wood for this wonderful lecture
and discussion, I just wanna
briefly call your attention
to the upcoming events
in the Madison Program.
So Tuesday, September 25th,
we have a panel called
Consequences of an Idea,
Assessing 100 years
of Communism, it'll actually
be 101 years of communism
dating it from the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution.
That will feature Professor
Carlos Eire of Yale,
Professor Sergiu Klainerman,
our colleague here
at Princeton, Flagg
Taylor, a visiting fellow
of the Madison Program and Marzenna James,
who's a lecturer here at Princeton.
Then on Friday September
28, we'll be featuring
Sean Wilentz, who will be
talking about his new book.
The title of Sean's presentation will be
No Property in Man:
Slavery and Antislavery
at the Nation's Founding.
And commenting on Professor
Wilentz's presentation
will be the distinguished
historian, Allen Guelzo
and Law Professor, Earl Maltz.
Monday, October 8, the
Honorable Stephen Williams,
whose a Senior Judge on
the US Court of Appeals
in the District of Columbia Circuit.
We all now know what the
District of Columbia Circuit is.
Stephen Williams will be
coming to talk about some work
he's done, historical
work and this is entitled
The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought
to Preempt the Russian Revolution.
Monday, October 15, Rabbi David Dalin,
a distinguished scholar
of Jewish American thought
will be coming to talk about his new book,
Jewish Justices of the Supreme
Court from Brandeis to Kagan
and then I'll close with
this one, although we have
many more after this,
Sunday, October 21st,
we're gonna be featuring
Professor Wilentz again
in what I know is gonna be a fun program
of music and commentary.
Professor Wilentz is not
only a very distinguished
American historian, he
also knows a heck of a lot
about the life and music of Bob Dylan
having actually written liner notes
for one of Bob Dylan's albums.
So the presentation will be entitled
Untangling Dylan: Music and Conversation
with Sean Wilentz, Robert
George, and Friends.
What I and some of our
friends will be contributing
are Dylan songs and we'll
be performing Dylan songs
for Professor Wilentz's commentary.
Now please do join me in thanking.
(audience applause)
