WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone.
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
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I'm Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev 250 Advisory Group.
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We are a consortium of about
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70 organizations in
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Massachusetts planning
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commemorations of the 250th
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anniversary of the American Revolution.
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And our guest today is Richard Brookhiser.
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And Richard Brookhiser is a journalist.
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He actually published his
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first article in the
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National Review at the age of 15.
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And at the age of 23,
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he was an editor and he is
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a senior editor at the National Review.
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He's also published in the
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New Yorker and Cosmopolitan
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and Commentary and in
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Vanity Fair and other venues.
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And
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I first got to know your
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work in a big way in the
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1990s when you wrote a book
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about George Washington.
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And that's the first of
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maybe a dozen books now you
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have written about history,
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particularly focusing on the founding.
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You've written about Washington, Madison,
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Marshall, Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton,
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John Trumbull,
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and a book about Abraham
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Lincoln called The Son of the Founder,
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or The Founder's Son.
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So thank you for joining us,
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Mr. Brookhiser.
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Thanks for having me.
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So can you tell us what drew
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you as a journalist to studying history?
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Well,
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the first thing is that I think being
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a journalist was not a bad background,
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especially being a political journalist,
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because, you know,
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you have some experience of
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observing politics and you
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know things like what a deal is.
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You know what a stab in the back is.
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So when you see this being
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done 250 years ago, you recognize it.
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And I do think the founders
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had a high percentage of great men,
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very great men.
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But they were also politicians.
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And politics is a contact sport.
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It always has been.
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And a lot goes on.
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that it isn't illegal necessarily,
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but it's not pretty,
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but you have to be aware of that.
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Also, there's the fun of politics,
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just the inherent interest of it,
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how things happen,
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how things are made to happen,
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how people get drawn into it,
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how they make careers out of it.
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So that was sort of where I
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was coming from.
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background.
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But I got attracted to this
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era when I was in college
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for two reasons.
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One reason was I was taking
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a course on Thomas
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Jefferson taught by Gary Wills.
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And he was, I was an undergrad at Yale.
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He was then teaching at Johns Hopkins,
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but he had this adjunct position.
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He had a fellowship.
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So he would come up every other
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a week and do like a four
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hour seminar on Thomas Jefferson.
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He was getting ready to
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write Inventing America,
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which was his first book on
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Jefferson period.
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And he liked Jefferson.
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He thought he was fascinating,
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very quirky mind, interesting figure.
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But I could tell that he
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loved George Washington.
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It was just a different
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quality when he spoke about Washington.
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And he
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Sort of used Washington as a
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stick to beat Jefferson with sometimes.
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Gently, but he did.
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So that got my attention.
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Then the second thing that
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got my attention was Yale
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has a collection of
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paintings left from by John Trump,
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who was a revolutionary veteran.
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He was...
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related to the Trumbull
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family in Connecticut,
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which produced two governors,
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very well-connected family.
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He knew Washington, Hamilton, Adams,
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Jefferson.
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He was with Jefferson when
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Jefferson was in Paris,
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introduced Jefferson to Maria Cosway,
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who was the love of
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Jefferson's life for a period there,
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very intense flirtation.
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So he was very well-connected,
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but he also had a talent.
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He was a painter.
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And he decided shortly after
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the revolution in the 1780s
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that he wanted to tell the
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story of this event in paintings.
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And it took him a long time
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to do it because he got distracted.
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He painted other things.
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Sometimes he didn't paint at all,
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tried to raise money other ways.
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It was, you know,
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it was a life like any life.
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It has a lot of twists and turns.
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But after 45 years,
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he did do the eight
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paintings that he projected
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and he left them to Yale.
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So I saw them there as an
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undergraduate and they also
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got my attention.
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Yes.
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There are tremendous scenes
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that he painted of the key moments,
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critical moments in the Revolution,
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which includes both
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military as well as political moments.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Jefferson, he'd done two battle pictures.
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And then Jefferson,
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this is when Trumbull was in Paris.
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He went to Paris to look at the art.
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Right.
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But he was also,
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Jefferson invited him to stay with him.
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Because Jefferson was always
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looking for bright, young,
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And Jefferson suggested that
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he do the Declaration of Independence.
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Jefferson described the room
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in the State House in Philadelphia.
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He drew a sketch of the room for Trumbull.
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He got a couple of details wrong,
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but that was the basic outline of it.
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And you can tell on that
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piece of paper on the back of it,
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Trumbull does his first
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little sketch of a possible, you know,
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figures for this painting.
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And then the painting
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appeared rather rapidly in
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one of the early ones that
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he was producing when he
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was going at a good clip early on.
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And that's the most famous one.
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I'm sure all of your
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listeners have seen this in textbooks or,
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you know, it gets reproduced a lot.
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It's also in the Rotunda Capital, Trumbull,
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four large copies of the
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paintings that he was doing
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in his preferred small size.
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but the Declaration being one of them,
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Washington resigning his
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commission at the end of the war,
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being the other peaceful political scene.
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And they're really a pair.
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The Declaration is why this
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revolution is happening.
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This is the theory.
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And then the resignation
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shows that they really matter.
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At the end of all this bloodshed,
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The Revolution is the
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longest war we fought until Vietnam.
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It was longer than the Civil
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War and our part of World
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War II put together.
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Eight and a half years.
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After all that, at the very end,
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Washington goes home.
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He returns his commission to Congress.
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Trumbull does this scene,
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Congress sitting on the left,
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Washington sitting
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and military men behind him on the right,
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and with very little tweaking.
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This might have been
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Cromwell dismissing Parliament.
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It could be Napoleon
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dismissing the Directory.
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And now the military men saying, okay,
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you've been talking
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We've been fighting.
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Now we're going to be the law.
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But that's not this scene.
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This scene is my authority was yours.
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You gave me this.
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Now I'm giving it back to you,
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to whom it has always belonged.
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And when Trumbull was
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talking about this painting
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with James Madison, who was president,
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And Madison said, yes,
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it was a glorious action.
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It was a glorious action.
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And it was.
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Just honestly,
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there's a wonderful scene
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when George III is asking Benjamin West,
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another artist,
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what he supposes Washington
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will do now that he's won the war.
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And West says,
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I imagine he'll go back to his farm.
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And the king says, if he does that,
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he will be the greatest man in the world.
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Yes, yes.
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And West, you know,
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West was Trumbull's mentor.
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He came to England to study
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painting with West,
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and West was an American.
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Kind of odd that he ends up
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being George III's history painter,
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but he, you know,
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he came to Europe to study
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art as a young man,
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and then he stayed in England,
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and he was a great hit there,
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and George III took him on
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as his history painter.
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But he always,
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people always knew that he
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had this American background,
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so occasionally he would be
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Either that would be thrown
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in his face or the king, you know,
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who was personally a very gracious man,
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asked his opinion.
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What do you think
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Washington's going to do?
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And to his credit,
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the king gave that answer.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Now, I noticed as you were talking,
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of course, about Gary Wills and Jefferson,
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that you have written about
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a lot of the people
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around Jefferson who didn't
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really like him or didn't get along,
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you know, the Adamses, Gouverneur Morris,
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Washington, but never Jefferson.
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I wonder if you have a
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Jefferson project in the
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works or you think
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Jefferson's been done enough.
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Well, Jefferson's hard.
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I think of Jefferson's mind
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as like a house with a lot of rooms.
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and they don't all have connecting doors.
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A great man, certainly.
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You know, in a way,
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I'm always writing about
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him because all my subjects know him,
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so he always appears.
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And I think in a way,
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I dug deepest maybe with my Lincoln book,
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Founder's Son, because I was looking at
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Lincoln scholars have looked backwards.
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A number of them have said, well,
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what was he trying to carry on?
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What was he getting from this?
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But I wanted to do it in the
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other direction,
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a founding writer looking ahead.
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And so I thought the three
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people of the founding
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generation who mattered
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most to him were Washington
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from boyish reading.
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He was very struck.
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He read Parson Weems'
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biography of Washington,
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as lots of people did.
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And he was most impressed, he said,
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years later,
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by the story of the Battle of
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Trenton and the desperation
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of that moment.
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And when Weems talks about
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crossing the Delaware and
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the ice and all that,
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he says that there's an
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allegorical being hovering
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over the American troops.
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And it's a woman who is the
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spirit of liberty.
00:11:38.177 --> 00:11:40.958
And she has been driven from Europe.
00:11:41.740 --> 00:11:43.421
This is her last refuge.
00:11:44.280 --> 00:11:45.701
But her enemies have come
00:11:45.741 --> 00:11:47.662
here to pursue her here.
00:11:48.202 --> 00:11:49.363
Who will defend her?
00:11:49.883 --> 00:11:51.303
Only this band of men.
00:11:51.443 --> 00:11:53.804
This is how Weems sets the whole thing up.
00:11:53.945 --> 00:11:56.166
And Washington says when
00:11:56.206 --> 00:11:58.307
he's on his way to his inauguration,
00:11:58.326 --> 00:12:00.408
he goes through the
00:12:00.447 --> 00:12:02.389
Northeast and New Jersey
00:12:02.408 --> 00:12:03.349
and he addresses the
00:12:03.428 --> 00:12:05.269
legislature in the New Jersey Senate.
00:12:05.951 --> 00:12:08.013
And he says that when he was a boy,
00:12:08.072 --> 00:12:09.434
he read Weems' book,
00:12:09.835 --> 00:12:11.917
and he was impressed by how
00:12:12.476 --> 00:12:13.839
Weems said that these men
00:12:13.879 --> 00:12:16.461
were fighting not just for independence,
00:12:16.520 --> 00:12:17.481
but for something that
00:12:17.542 --> 00:12:20.325
would matter to all people of all times.
00:12:21.605 --> 00:12:25.769
So Washington I. Thomas Paine, I thought,
00:12:26.150 --> 00:12:27.611
was also an influence.
00:12:27.692 --> 00:12:28.173
Interesting.
00:12:28.932 --> 00:12:29.573
Partly.
00:12:31.538 --> 00:12:33.299
in in lincoln's early life
00:12:33.399 --> 00:12:35.780
religiously because pain is
00:12:35.801 --> 00:12:37.902
the great skeptic right the
00:12:37.942 --> 00:12:39.322
great enemy of organized
00:12:39.383 --> 00:12:41.903
religion and as a young man
00:12:42.543 --> 00:12:44.264
lincoln swallowed that all
00:12:44.384 --> 00:12:46.125
up and you know their
00:12:46.285 --> 00:12:47.907
anecdotes of him holding
00:12:48.106 --> 00:12:50.388
forth to uh you know young
00:12:50.528 --> 00:12:52.489
law clerks and saying well
00:12:52.528 --> 00:12:53.710
the bible doesn't make any
00:12:53.870 --> 00:12:55.870
sense and contradictions
00:12:55.931 --> 00:12:57.451
and on and on and on now
00:12:57.731 --> 00:13:00.173
lincoln changed and he became
00:13:01.321 --> 00:13:02.662
Without perhaps ever
00:13:02.721 --> 00:13:04.822
becoming an Orthodox Christian,
00:13:04.883 --> 00:13:05.923
he's certainly one of the
00:13:05.984 --> 00:13:07.804
most religious presidents
00:13:07.945 --> 00:13:10.245
we've ever had by the end.
00:13:10.625 --> 00:13:15.808
He's an inaugural.
00:13:15.889 --> 00:13:18.791
But Paine also influenced him rhetorically,
00:13:18.831 --> 00:13:20.272
because I think Paine
00:13:20.331 --> 00:13:21.812
showed him how to use humor
00:13:21.832 --> 00:13:23.514
in making serious arguments.
00:13:24.594 --> 00:13:26.475
Something Paine is very good at,
00:13:26.575 --> 00:13:27.676
and something Lincoln
00:13:28.115 --> 00:13:29.336
became extremely good at.
00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:32.000
Then the third one is Jefferson.
00:13:32.922 --> 00:13:34.202
And of course, you know,
00:13:34.283 --> 00:13:36.224
it's in the Gettysburg Address,
00:13:36.563 --> 00:13:38.326
four score and seven years
00:13:38.365 --> 00:13:42.107
takes you back to 1776.
00:13:42.107 --> 00:13:45.649
He references that in the
00:13:45.730 --> 00:13:47.071
Cooper Union Address.
00:13:47.110 --> 00:13:50.013
He references that in the Peoria speech.
00:13:51.553 --> 00:13:53.956
Jefferson and the founding
00:13:54.620 --> 00:13:59.945
is the tool he uses to repel
00:14:00.144 --> 00:14:02.427
Stephen Douglas and people
00:14:02.506 --> 00:14:07.451
who he says don't care about slavery.
00:14:07.892 --> 00:14:09.513
We can't take that attitude
00:14:09.552 --> 00:14:12.596
because that's against our own founding,
00:14:12.775 --> 00:14:14.258
our own realization of who
00:14:14.317 --> 00:14:15.879
we are and also of our
00:14:15.918 --> 00:14:18.541
knowledge of who people are.
00:14:18.660 --> 00:14:19.721
And Jefferson is the
00:14:19.822 --> 00:14:21.423
eloquent man who wrote all this.
00:14:22.759 --> 00:14:23.799
And but for Lincoln,
00:14:23.860 --> 00:14:26.721
it's also an effort to save Jefferson.
00:14:27.162 --> 00:14:27.841
Of course,
00:14:27.942 --> 00:14:30.144
he knows perfectly well that
00:14:30.524 --> 00:14:32.065
Jefferson in his own life
00:14:32.666 --> 00:14:34.167
never freed his own slave.
00:14:35.807 --> 00:14:40.510
And he you know, he he he lives in.
00:14:41.168 --> 00:14:43.029
in illinois which was a
00:14:43.250 --> 00:14:45.451
state that is a free state
00:14:45.511 --> 00:14:46.692
because of the northwest
00:14:46.893 --> 00:14:48.514
ordinance right which was
00:14:48.573 --> 00:14:49.855
something that jefferson
00:14:49.894 --> 00:14:51.496
had had pushed for an early
00:14:51.697 --> 00:14:54.759
version of that so in a way
00:14:54.818 --> 00:14:56.240
that was a fulfillment of
00:14:56.900 --> 00:14:58.861
jefferson's youthful hopes
00:14:59.001 --> 00:15:02.965
for free trans appalachian west
00:15:05.096 --> 00:15:08.678
But then he also knows that
00:15:08.759 --> 00:15:10.340
Jefferson late in life just
00:15:10.379 --> 00:15:12.941
kind of gave up and backed off.
00:15:13.280 --> 00:15:15.042
He never said that slavery
00:15:15.062 --> 00:15:17.923
was good or that blacks
00:15:18.024 --> 00:15:18.804
ought to be enslaved.
00:15:18.904 --> 00:15:19.605
Never said that.
00:15:20.025 --> 00:15:21.206
But he just seems to have
00:15:21.726 --> 00:15:23.187
despaired of ever doing
00:15:23.268 --> 00:15:23.927
anything about it.
00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:25.440
And then Edward Coles,
00:15:25.480 --> 00:15:27.321
who had been Jefferson's secretary,
00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:28.201
becomes governor,
00:15:28.221 --> 00:15:29.260
actually brings his
00:15:29.321 --> 00:15:30.481
enslaved people to Illinois
00:15:30.522 --> 00:15:31.182
and frees them.
00:15:31.201 --> 00:15:32.241
He becomes governor.
00:15:32.302 --> 00:15:33.923
So that's something Lincoln
00:15:33.982 --> 00:15:35.143
would certainly have known
00:15:35.222 --> 00:15:37.283
about the struggle in Illinois.
00:15:37.302 --> 00:15:37.482
Sure.
00:15:37.604 --> 00:15:39.624
And Coles shakes his hand
00:15:40.043 --> 00:15:42.125
when he's on the way to be
00:15:42.184 --> 00:15:43.465
inaugurated because Coles
00:15:43.664 --> 00:15:45.365
ends up in Philadelphia.
00:15:47.398 --> 00:15:50.360
And he's voted for Lincoln,
00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:52.421
and he manages to shake Lincoln's hand.
00:15:52.500 --> 00:15:56.342
So they have this physical meeting.
00:15:56.663 --> 00:15:57.503
It's very moving.
00:15:58.724 --> 00:16:00.044
Amazing.
00:16:00.085 --> 00:16:01.365
And Lincoln does take
00:16:01.445 --> 00:16:03.125
seriously the idea that all
00:16:03.166 --> 00:16:04.386
men are created equal.
00:16:04.427 --> 00:16:06.388
As you said, he uses that against Douglass,
00:16:06.488 --> 00:16:08.629
and the others at the time are saying, no,
00:16:08.668 --> 00:16:10.169
it doesn't mean what it says.
00:16:11.302 --> 00:16:11.524
Right.
00:16:11.543 --> 00:16:12.563
They were only talking about
00:16:12.624 --> 00:16:14.846
white men or they were only
00:16:14.926 --> 00:16:17.746
talking about people who were citizens.
00:16:18.107 --> 00:16:18.368
You know,
00:16:18.427 --> 00:16:20.568
there were different ways to slice it.
00:16:20.989 --> 00:16:21.269
Right.
00:16:21.450 --> 00:16:21.669
Yeah.
00:16:22.409 --> 00:16:24.572
And Lincoln's friend, Alexander Stevens,
00:16:24.611 --> 00:16:26.013
they were in Congress together.
00:16:26.153 --> 00:16:28.134
And Stevens becomes the vice
00:16:28.173 --> 00:16:29.674
president of the Confederacy.
00:16:29.695 --> 00:16:31.556
And he just comes right out and says, well,
00:16:31.576 --> 00:16:32.456
Jefferson was wrong.
00:16:32.856 --> 00:16:33.037
Yeah.
00:16:33.376 --> 00:16:33.537
Yeah.
00:16:33.576 --> 00:16:34.577
Jefferson thought that.
00:16:36.546 --> 00:16:37.326
But he was wrong,
00:16:37.405 --> 00:16:39.427
and we in the Confederacy
00:16:39.567 --> 00:16:40.668
understand this.
00:16:40.868 --> 00:16:41.947
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:42.148 --> 00:16:42.489
And again,
00:16:42.509 --> 00:16:43.629
it's always hard to say what
00:16:43.708 --> 00:16:44.549
Jefferson would have
00:16:44.590 --> 00:16:48.010
thought had he been there in 1860, 61,
00:16:48.010 --> 00:16:49.111
or Madison.
00:16:49.131 --> 00:16:50.511
Do you have a sense what Washington,
00:16:51.312 --> 00:16:53.374
he's on the emblem of the Confederacy.
00:16:53.453 --> 00:16:54.214
You know, Frederick,
00:16:54.474 --> 00:16:56.215
if Washington or Madison showed up,
00:16:56.254 --> 00:16:56.995
they would have hung him,
00:16:57.235 --> 00:16:59.716
hanged him in the Confederacy.
00:16:59.836 --> 00:17:02.258
Washington is an American
00:17:02.337 --> 00:17:03.438
even more than a Virginia.
00:17:03.839 --> 00:17:03.979
Yeah.
00:17:04.835 --> 00:17:06.056
So I think I know what
00:17:06.135 --> 00:17:09.517
Washington would have done.
00:17:12.718 --> 00:17:15.098
Madison did say,
00:17:15.219 --> 00:17:16.259
one of the last things he
00:17:16.319 --> 00:17:17.941
wrote was that anyone who
00:17:18.040 --> 00:17:19.760
advocates disunion should
00:17:19.800 --> 00:17:22.221
be treated like Pandora.
00:17:23.103 --> 00:17:24.784
So that was, for Madison,
00:17:24.824 --> 00:17:25.983
that's pretty blunt.
00:17:27.044 --> 00:17:28.744
It's not given for blunt
00:17:28.805 --> 00:17:31.365
rhetoric of that kind, but that he wrote.
00:17:31.807 --> 00:17:32.547
So I think if...
00:17:33.375 --> 00:17:33.556
You know,
00:17:33.576 --> 00:17:35.676
if Jefferson survived all by himself,
00:17:35.777 --> 00:17:36.717
you know, oh God,
00:17:36.817 --> 00:17:38.018
who knows what mistakes he
00:17:38.057 --> 00:17:38.498
might have made.
00:17:38.778 --> 00:17:40.678
But if Madison also survived,
00:17:40.718 --> 00:17:41.659
he probably would have
00:17:43.278 --> 00:17:44.660
talked to Moran and said, come on,
00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:47.621
do you really want to go off to Richmond?
00:17:47.980 --> 00:17:49.280
Maybe we shouldn't.
00:17:49.320 --> 00:17:51.162
That's why Jefferson said to Madison,
00:17:51.201 --> 00:17:52.582
take care of me when I am dead.
00:17:52.602 --> 00:17:53.442
He also took care of him
00:17:53.462 --> 00:17:54.323
when he was alive.
00:17:54.542 --> 00:17:55.383
Yes, yes.
00:17:55.903 --> 00:17:58.263
So we're talking with Richard Brookhiser,
00:17:58.344 --> 00:18:00.144
who is the author of many
00:18:00.204 --> 00:18:01.746
books about the founding
00:18:01.925 --> 00:18:02.786
and the founders.
00:18:03.715 --> 00:18:05.076
And we've talked a bit about
00:18:05.096 --> 00:18:06.357
John Trumbull and a bit
00:18:06.397 --> 00:18:08.460
about Washington and Jefferson.
00:18:09.701 --> 00:18:11.702
One of the characters who
00:18:11.942 --> 00:18:12.703
emerges is really
00:18:12.784 --> 00:18:13.865
fascinating in this period,
00:18:13.884 --> 00:18:14.884
and you've written a book about him,
00:18:14.924 --> 00:18:15.905
is Gouverneur Morris,
00:18:16.287 --> 00:18:17.827
who was an absolutely
00:18:17.867 --> 00:18:18.808
astonishing character.
00:18:18.848 --> 00:18:19.449
I'm surprised there aren't
00:18:19.469 --> 00:18:21.111
movies made with him as a
00:18:21.250 --> 00:18:22.111
central character.
00:18:23.531 --> 00:18:25.894
Well, one problem is that first name.
00:18:26.434 --> 00:18:27.756
Yeah.
00:18:27.855 --> 00:18:30.097
This French-looking first name,
00:18:30.137 --> 00:18:31.398
and how do you pronounce it?
00:18:31.954 --> 00:18:33.936
And I still don't know 100%.
00:18:33.977 --> 00:18:37.398
Abigail Adams once wrote it
00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:38.539
out as Gouverneur.
00:18:39.101 --> 00:18:41.021
She wrote a lot of stuff phonetically.
00:18:41.162 --> 00:18:43.784
Because although she was very smart,
00:18:43.845 --> 00:18:45.205
she'd been homeschooled and
00:18:45.266 --> 00:18:47.227
her spelling was quite erratic.
00:18:47.366 --> 00:18:52.811
But look, he is a fascinating man.
00:18:52.991 --> 00:18:56.374
And the short way I put it
00:18:57.434 --> 00:19:00.538
is that if you were in four situations...
00:19:01.436 --> 00:19:02.938
And you had one phone call
00:19:02.958 --> 00:19:04.338
in each of these situations,
00:19:04.419 --> 00:19:06.279
and it had to be to a founding father.
00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:08.461
And here are the situations.
00:19:09.461 --> 00:19:10.781
You've just been thrown in jail.
00:19:11.701 --> 00:19:12.663
You've just been taken to
00:19:12.722 --> 00:19:13.762
the emergency room.
00:19:14.644 --> 00:19:17.224
You need $10,000 immediately.
00:19:18.986 --> 00:19:20.646
And you're throwing a dinner
00:19:20.686 --> 00:19:22.188
party and someone just canceled.
00:19:23.327 --> 00:19:24.909
What founding father do you call?
00:19:25.409 --> 00:19:26.630
In all of those cases,
00:19:26.650 --> 00:19:28.371
I would say call Governor Morris.
00:19:28.730 --> 00:19:30.392
He would come to jail.
00:19:31.146 --> 00:19:32.347
And he would go your,
00:19:32.508 --> 00:19:33.509
he'd put up your bail.
00:19:34.148 --> 00:19:35.569
He'd come to the emergency
00:19:35.630 --> 00:19:36.691
room and give you very
00:19:36.790 --> 00:19:37.731
sympathetic and
00:19:37.811 --> 00:19:39.333
knowledgeable medical advice.
00:19:39.492 --> 00:19:41.074
This is a guy who lost a leg
00:19:41.115 --> 00:19:42.394
in a carriage accident.
00:19:42.496 --> 00:19:43.536
When he was a little boy,
00:19:43.556 --> 00:19:45.978
he poured boiling water over his own arm,
00:19:46.397 --> 00:19:46.699
you know,
00:19:46.778 --> 00:19:48.839
and he knew from Melvison and he
00:19:48.900 --> 00:19:49.520
sympathized.
00:19:50.141 --> 00:19:52.923
He would loan you the $10,000,
00:19:52.923 --> 00:19:55.404
might even give it to you,
00:19:55.744 --> 00:19:57.787
depending on how, you know, your circle.
00:19:58.644 --> 00:19:59.263
And finally,
00:19:59.684 --> 00:20:01.185
he would be a great dinner guest.
00:20:01.425 --> 00:20:07.469
Just don't seat him next to your wife.
00:20:07.628 --> 00:20:10.590
He might stay longer and
00:20:10.770 --> 00:20:12.491
after dinner than you would like.
00:20:12.913 --> 00:20:13.073
Yeah.
00:20:13.313 --> 00:20:13.432
Yeah.
00:20:14.183 --> 00:20:15.884
He winds up marrying, actually,
00:20:15.904 --> 00:20:22.407
a relative of Jefferson's late in life.
00:20:23.048 --> 00:20:23.508
Right, right.
00:20:23.528 --> 00:20:24.509
She's a Randolph.
00:20:24.648 --> 00:20:25.729
A Randolph, yes.
00:20:25.769 --> 00:20:27.650
Jefferson has a Randolph connection.
00:20:27.730 --> 00:20:30.371
And she was on hard times
00:20:30.471 --> 00:20:32.711
because she had been
00:20:32.892 --> 00:20:34.053
indirectly accused of
00:20:34.073 --> 00:20:35.173
adultery and murder.
00:20:35.492 --> 00:20:38.074
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:39.515 --> 00:20:42.355
The story was that her...
00:20:44.118 --> 00:20:44.980
She had been having an
00:20:45.039 --> 00:20:46.820
affair with her cousin,
00:20:46.840 --> 00:20:48.823
who was also her brother-in-law,
00:20:48.923 --> 00:20:50.284
her sister's husband.
00:20:50.463 --> 00:20:50.785
Right.
00:20:51.125 --> 00:20:53.186
And that she had given birth
00:20:53.426 --> 00:20:55.449
and that they had killed the newborn.
00:20:55.848 --> 00:20:56.108
Yeah.
00:20:56.430 --> 00:20:56.690
Now,
00:20:56.950 --> 00:21:00.853
he was charged with this in a Virginia
00:21:01.032 --> 00:21:01.473
court.
00:21:02.535 --> 00:21:03.035
Or rather,
00:21:03.154 --> 00:21:05.777
he went to court to prove his innocence.
00:21:05.817 --> 00:21:06.377
He said, look,
00:21:06.657 --> 00:21:07.858
these rumors are going around.
00:21:07.898 --> 00:21:09.441
If anyone has any proof,
00:21:09.500 --> 00:21:11.241
I invite them to come to
00:21:11.321 --> 00:21:12.323
court and prove it on me.
00:21:13.203 --> 00:21:15.567
And then he discovers he has
00:21:15.606 --> 00:21:16.627
to defend himself.
00:21:16.708 --> 00:21:17.749
So who does he hire?
00:21:17.828 --> 00:21:20.111
He hires Patrick Henry and John Marshall,
00:21:20.991 --> 00:21:21.992
the first dream team,
00:21:22.452 --> 00:21:23.795
the great dream team.
00:21:24.055 --> 00:21:27.598
And Patrick Henry examines the witnesses.
00:21:27.679 --> 00:21:29.259
Marshall prepared the
00:21:29.480 --> 00:21:31.122
arguments for the defense.
00:21:31.982 --> 00:21:33.144
And so he was clear.
00:21:33.163 --> 00:21:34.905
The jury didn't even leave the box.
00:21:34.965 --> 00:21:36.507
They acquitted him.
00:21:37.835 --> 00:21:39.476
Because all the evidence, you know,
00:21:39.536 --> 00:21:41.396
people seeing things,
00:21:41.497 --> 00:21:44.678
did Nancy Randolph look pregnant?
00:21:44.939 --> 00:21:46.439
She'd asked for a drug that
00:21:46.499 --> 00:21:47.900
could produce abortions,
00:21:48.019 --> 00:21:49.681
but the drug had other uses.
00:21:49.961 --> 00:21:50.181
You know,
00:21:50.401 --> 00:21:52.602
every piece of supposed evidence
00:21:52.682 --> 00:21:54.403
could have another interpretation.
00:21:54.423 --> 00:21:55.284
So he gets on.
00:21:55.663 --> 00:21:57.644
But still, there's this taint, you know,
00:21:57.684 --> 00:21:59.726
this woman is involved in the scandal.
00:22:00.405 --> 00:22:01.767
And so 20 years later,
00:22:02.487 --> 00:22:04.087
Morris meets her in New York.
00:22:04.188 --> 00:22:06.669
She's been kicked out of the Randolph
00:22:07.309 --> 00:22:09.151
house and she's drifted
00:22:09.971 --> 00:22:12.074
north and Morris wants a
00:22:12.193 --> 00:22:13.994
gentle woman to run his household.
00:22:14.055 --> 00:22:14.855
He's unmarried.
00:22:15.355 --> 00:22:16.757
He's got a bunch of servants
00:22:17.317 --> 00:22:18.738
who don't get along with
00:22:18.778 --> 00:22:19.818
him or with each other.
00:22:19.838 --> 00:22:21.700
And he wants some gentle
00:22:21.760 --> 00:22:24.461
woman to bring them into line.
00:22:25.123 --> 00:22:26.324
So he hires her.
00:22:27.634 --> 00:22:29.695
He assures her that he will
00:22:30.596 --> 00:22:33.599
only love her as much as he can.
00:22:33.619 --> 00:22:35.901
He's not going to force himself upon her,
00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:37.403
but, you know,
00:22:37.742 --> 00:22:40.144
he wants to make that clear up front.
00:22:40.305 --> 00:22:43.768
And then they do get engaged.
00:22:44.428 --> 00:22:47.070
And his nieces and nephews
00:22:47.171 --> 00:22:49.172
are very unhappy with this because,
00:22:49.251 --> 00:22:49.772
you know,
00:22:49.792 --> 00:22:51.914
he's been a bachelor and they
00:22:51.954 --> 00:22:53.496
were expecting to inherit.
00:22:54.317 --> 00:22:55.978
So he told one of them, well,
00:22:56.617 --> 00:22:56.877
you know,
00:22:57.018 --> 00:22:59.378
if the world were to marry my wife,
00:22:59.538 --> 00:23:00.659
I would have, of course,
00:23:00.818 --> 00:23:02.058
considered its opinion.
00:23:04.079 --> 00:23:05.039
But the world isn't.
00:23:05.140 --> 00:23:09.381
So they marry and very happily.
00:23:10.300 --> 00:23:15.241
They have a son who does inherit.
00:23:15.301 --> 00:23:17.001
But the importance of him
00:23:17.041 --> 00:23:19.242
historically is a couple of things.
00:23:19.502 --> 00:23:21.563
He is the draftsman of the Constitution.
00:23:22.304 --> 00:23:23.943
He is on the Committee of Style.
00:23:24.559 --> 00:23:26.240
to put all these resolutions
00:23:26.401 --> 00:23:27.721
into a final form.
00:23:28.182 --> 00:23:30.483
He not only does a very good job,
00:23:31.344 --> 00:23:33.705
and scholars are beginning
00:23:33.766 --> 00:23:35.487
to recognize this even more
00:23:35.547 --> 00:23:37.307
than I did in my book,
00:23:37.407 --> 00:23:40.849
he really shapes it in such
00:23:40.890 --> 00:23:42.391
a way that he's almost like
00:23:42.490 --> 00:23:45.113
a pitching machine sending
00:23:45.212 --> 00:23:47.054
balls down the strike zone
00:23:47.453 --> 00:23:49.194
for Team Federalist to
00:23:49.275 --> 00:23:50.316
knock out of the park.
00:23:52.252 --> 00:23:54.114
Treasury Secretary Hamilton
00:23:54.913 --> 00:23:56.654
and Chief Justice John Marshall.
00:23:57.395 --> 00:23:59.376
He leans as hard as he can
00:23:59.517 --> 00:24:03.338
to make their lives possible and easier.
00:24:04.499 --> 00:24:05.980
The second thing he does is
00:24:06.099 --> 00:24:10.902
he is in France from February 1789
00:24:10.902 --> 00:24:12.982
past the end of the reign of terror.
00:24:13.002 --> 00:24:14.884
He is in Paris all that time,
00:24:15.064 --> 00:24:16.325
first as a businessman,
00:24:16.744 --> 00:24:18.986
then as our minister to France.
00:24:19.205 --> 00:24:20.366
And he keeps a diary.
00:24:21.166 --> 00:24:23.667
And this is just a fascinating record.
00:24:24.528 --> 00:24:26.128
It starts off, it's all business.
00:24:27.569 --> 00:24:29.893
I wrote a report on something or other,
00:24:29.932 --> 00:24:31.194
and then I had supper with
00:24:31.234 --> 00:24:32.615
this person and that person,
00:24:32.695 --> 00:24:34.898
and then I gossiped with this, you know,
00:24:34.919 --> 00:24:36.099
and then I did with this
00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:37.102
woman and on and on.
00:24:37.362 --> 00:24:38.923
And then the Bastille falls.
00:24:39.944 --> 00:24:40.065
Oh,
00:24:40.085 --> 00:24:42.288
we want to see what happened afterwards.
00:24:42.688 --> 00:24:45.869
Then he sees a politician
00:24:45.890 --> 00:24:47.050
there parading his head on
00:24:47.090 --> 00:24:48.310
a pike through the streets.
00:24:49.372 --> 00:24:50.633
And okay, all right,
00:24:50.732 --> 00:24:52.012
this is now taking a very
00:24:52.053 --> 00:24:53.153
much darker turn.
00:24:53.334 --> 00:24:55.194
And then it's back to I
00:24:55.255 --> 00:24:56.496
wrote a report and I had
00:24:56.576 --> 00:24:58.557
dinner with this person, blah, blah,
00:24:58.576 --> 00:24:58.717
blah.
00:24:58.856 --> 00:25:00.077
And then something else happens.
00:25:01.342 --> 00:25:02.923
It happens more and more and
00:25:02.963 --> 00:25:03.683
more frequently.
00:25:04.265 --> 00:25:06.865
And it's almost like cabaret
00:25:06.905 --> 00:25:08.126
at a higher social level.
00:25:08.307 --> 00:25:09.708
There's a world of people
00:25:10.429 --> 00:25:11.509
doing their thing,
00:25:11.869 --> 00:25:13.250
but then this whirlpool
00:25:13.310 --> 00:25:16.413
begins to suck them in from under.
00:25:16.813 --> 00:25:18.674
And he's there to see it all.
00:25:18.894 --> 00:25:20.655
Then he has diplomatic immunity,
00:25:20.756 --> 00:25:21.297
so he's...
00:25:21.977 --> 00:25:24.038
not much risk he's not a no
00:25:24.137 --> 00:25:25.519
risk there's one moment
00:25:25.598 --> 00:25:28.279
where uh he gets a knock on
00:25:28.319 --> 00:25:30.340
the door at night and uh
00:25:30.922 --> 00:25:32.442
you know a revolutionary
00:25:32.481 --> 00:25:33.923
says look we've got to
00:25:33.982 --> 00:25:35.003
search your house there's a
00:25:35.023 --> 00:25:36.084
report you've got weapons
00:25:36.163 --> 00:25:38.144
in here and he says there
00:25:38.204 --> 00:25:39.266
are no weapons in this
00:25:39.286 --> 00:25:41.047
house I want to know your
00:25:41.126 --> 00:25:42.666
name I want to know your
00:25:42.707 --> 00:25:43.928
boss's name because I
00:25:43.988 --> 00:25:45.729
represent a friendly nation
00:25:45.788 --> 00:25:47.369
I'm going to protest this right
00:25:48.018 --> 00:25:50.078
So he bluffs him out of the house.
00:25:50.118 --> 00:25:51.900
And he was hiding people.
00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:53.859
Oh, wow.
00:25:54.059 --> 00:25:55.961
He had people he was hiding.
00:25:56.181 --> 00:25:57.721
So then the next day,
00:25:57.741 --> 00:25:59.343
the higher up comes and says, oh,
00:25:59.623 --> 00:25:59.803
you know,
00:25:59.843 --> 00:26:01.383
we're very sorry about all that.
00:26:01.442 --> 00:26:03.483
But, you know, these things do happen,
00:26:03.523 --> 00:26:05.305
but we're sorry.
00:26:05.884 --> 00:26:08.165
So there was some danger.
00:26:08.445 --> 00:26:10.626
So that's a thing he does.
00:26:10.646 --> 00:26:12.028
And then the third thing is
00:26:12.087 --> 00:26:13.788
he pushes for the Erie Canal.
00:26:13.887 --> 00:26:14.449
He's an early...
00:26:16.530 --> 00:26:17.471
about that.
00:26:18.132 --> 00:26:19.291
The man who makes it happen
00:26:19.311 --> 00:26:20.211
is DeWitt Clinton,
00:26:20.251 --> 00:26:22.712
who's a younger politician
00:26:23.532 --> 00:26:25.294
and outlives Morris.
00:26:25.354 --> 00:26:26.973
But Morris is in at the
00:26:27.013 --> 00:26:28.213
beginning of the project.
00:26:28.233 --> 00:26:30.835
He helps survey the route,
00:26:31.674 --> 00:26:34.096
and he really sees what
00:26:34.175 --> 00:26:35.915
that can do for New York
00:26:36.036 --> 00:26:37.396
and for the United States.
00:26:37.477 --> 00:26:40.877
So those are his three legacies.
00:26:41.018 --> 00:26:42.357
And then the fourth one, though,
00:26:42.397 --> 00:26:43.417
the reason I wrote about
00:26:43.438 --> 00:26:44.919
him is he's just such a great guy.
00:26:46.624 --> 00:26:48.244
And so much happened to him
00:26:48.285 --> 00:26:49.565
and happened around him,
00:26:49.665 --> 00:26:52.267
but it never dampened his spirit.
00:26:52.666 --> 00:26:54.386
Yeah, that's true.
00:26:54.446 --> 00:26:54.948
Yeah, yeah.
00:26:55.167 --> 00:26:56.147
You gotta love that.
00:26:56.508 --> 00:26:57.588
Yeah, yeah.
00:26:57.608 --> 00:26:59.308
We're talking with Richard Brookhiser,
00:26:59.549 --> 00:27:01.430
author of a dozen or so
00:27:01.470 --> 00:27:02.770
books on the founding,
00:27:02.810 --> 00:27:05.192
as well as on more books on other topics,
00:27:05.251 --> 00:27:06.952
senior editor at National Review.
00:27:07.752 --> 00:27:10.334
And talking about the French Revolution,
00:27:10.354 --> 00:27:11.233
of course, reminds us,
00:27:11.253 --> 00:27:12.694
and we've seen revolutions
00:27:12.934 --> 00:27:14.836
in our own era since, which
00:27:15.855 --> 00:27:17.457
end badly that is the easy
00:27:17.518 --> 00:27:18.278
thing even though it seems
00:27:18.317 --> 00:27:19.759
impossible is getting rid
00:27:19.798 --> 00:27:21.461
of the bad old regime but
00:27:21.480 --> 00:27:22.101
then the much more
00:27:22.142 --> 00:27:23.603
difficult task is creating
00:27:23.663 --> 00:27:24.564
something that won't be
00:27:24.644 --> 00:27:27.105
worse you know we can name
00:27:27.145 --> 00:27:28.307
the countries which have
00:27:28.346 --> 00:27:30.167
had revolutions and how
00:27:30.249 --> 00:27:31.390
things have gone so I
00:27:31.849 --> 00:27:33.912
always wonder why the and
00:27:33.971 --> 00:27:35.272
why and how the americans
00:27:36.253 --> 00:27:37.315
avoid that you know they
00:27:37.335 --> 00:27:38.915
get rid of the monarchy and
00:27:40.491 --> 00:27:41.873
don't bring in the reign
00:27:41.972 --> 00:27:44.634
simply of a different set of tyrants.
00:27:45.433 --> 00:27:46.875
And I wonder if you've given
00:27:46.934 --> 00:27:49.875
any thought to this in your... Well,
00:27:50.355 --> 00:27:51.477
a couple of things.
00:27:52.116 --> 00:27:54.817
The enemy is mostly abroad.
00:27:55.898 --> 00:27:56.118
Now,
00:27:56.358 --> 00:27:59.799
there were lots of loyalists in America,
00:28:00.340 --> 00:28:02.241
and a lot of them suffered
00:28:03.582 --> 00:28:05.123
during and after the Revolution.
00:28:05.242 --> 00:28:05.423
But
00:28:06.133 --> 00:28:08.875
Most of the Native American
00:28:08.934 --> 00:28:10.536
population was either
00:28:10.635 --> 00:28:12.876
patriotic or indifferent
00:28:12.998 --> 00:28:14.659
and willing to go along
00:28:14.699 --> 00:28:17.480
with whoever they want.
00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:20.883
America had had experience
00:28:20.942 --> 00:28:23.663
of self-rule to a degree.
00:28:23.784 --> 00:28:25.285
Each of these colonies had
00:28:25.325 --> 00:28:28.488
at least one elected body
00:28:28.508 --> 00:28:29.667
of the legislature.
00:28:30.489 --> 00:28:32.490
Two of them, Connecticut and Rhode Island,
00:28:32.690 --> 00:28:34.230
elected the legislatures
00:28:34.451 --> 00:28:35.231
and the governors.
00:28:35.311 --> 00:28:35.432
Right.
00:28:36.636 --> 00:28:38.538
So there was some experience
00:28:38.657 --> 00:28:41.900
of politics and political life.
00:28:42.299 --> 00:28:43.599
And then, you know,
00:28:43.660 --> 00:28:46.501
the third thing is the
00:28:46.541 --> 00:28:47.801
Americans were obsessed
00:28:47.842 --> 00:28:49.643
with politics and with
00:28:49.722 --> 00:28:51.844
political theory and political systems.
00:28:52.684 --> 00:28:55.066
Because the imperial crisis was a long,
00:28:55.105 --> 00:28:57.366
was like a 10 year long thing.
00:28:57.426 --> 00:28:59.027
And then so people were thinking,
00:28:59.087 --> 00:29:00.048
what is going on?
00:29:00.441 --> 00:29:01.721
Why is this happening?
00:29:02.482 --> 00:29:04.223
Why do we feel suddenly
00:29:04.924 --> 00:29:06.465
oppressed by this system?
00:29:06.826 --> 00:29:08.386
What would a better system be?
00:29:09.627 --> 00:29:11.589
And so they thought about this.
00:29:12.230 --> 00:29:13.971
And perhaps because there
00:29:14.011 --> 00:29:16.473
was so little else going on
00:29:16.554 --> 00:29:18.075
intellectually and culturally,
00:29:18.174 --> 00:29:21.377
this is where a lot of energy got put.
00:29:21.397 --> 00:29:23.680
And then the fourth thing is luck.
00:29:25.397 --> 00:29:27.318
A lot of them were very
00:29:27.419 --> 00:29:29.858
smart and most of them, not all of them,
00:29:29.919 --> 00:29:32.859
but most of them were honorable.
00:29:34.181 --> 00:29:36.201
And I think we have to say
00:29:36.641 --> 00:29:40.182
to give the honor prize to
00:29:40.201 --> 00:29:41.362
the commander-in-chief
00:29:42.383 --> 00:29:45.022
because the military man
00:29:45.324 --> 00:29:47.703
always can have the option
00:29:48.064 --> 00:29:51.644
of oversetting the whole table.
00:29:53.346 --> 00:29:54.246
And that is something
00:29:54.980 --> 00:29:56.740
Washington does not do and
00:29:56.780 --> 00:29:58.563
never thought of doing.
00:30:01.045 --> 00:30:04.267
Has Washington surprised you
00:30:04.487 --> 00:30:06.729
as you've been engaged with
00:30:06.848 --> 00:30:07.890
learning about him or
00:30:07.950 --> 00:30:09.632
things about him that you
00:30:11.093 --> 00:30:13.674
didn't know or that didn't
00:30:13.714 --> 00:30:15.516
turn out the way you imagined they would?
00:30:17.718 --> 00:30:17.917
Well,
00:30:17.958 --> 00:30:20.259
you have to do some work with him
00:30:20.400 --> 00:30:21.441
because he is
00:30:23.088 --> 00:30:24.470
more guarded than some of
00:30:24.509 --> 00:30:26.750
these other figures.
00:30:27.171 --> 00:30:28.171
He's a good writer,
00:30:28.431 --> 00:30:30.672
but he's not an eloquent writer.
00:30:31.393 --> 00:30:35.775
He's not a self-revealing writer or man.
00:30:37.095 --> 00:30:38.836
Occasionally, but really not.
00:30:39.576 --> 00:30:41.958
You know, not like John Adams, who's like,
00:30:42.038 --> 00:30:43.178
heart can be on his sleeve.
00:30:43.397 --> 00:30:45.318
Not like Hamilton, who's so aggressive.
00:30:45.378 --> 00:30:46.259
You know,
00:30:46.279 --> 00:30:47.819
he writes a 90-page pamphlet
00:30:47.859 --> 00:30:48.961
about his girlfriend to
00:30:48.980 --> 00:30:50.481
show that it's not corrupt.
00:30:50.721 --> 00:30:51.422
Right, yeah, yeah.
00:30:51.903 --> 00:30:53.924
unimaginable with Washington
00:30:54.065 --> 00:30:54.805
either being in the
00:30:54.865 --> 00:30:56.625
situation or behaving that way.
00:30:58.327 --> 00:31:00.849
But I did feel when I was
00:31:00.950 --> 00:31:03.391
first writing that first book,
00:31:03.451 --> 00:31:06.534
there came a moment and I
00:31:06.834 --> 00:31:08.055
had to figure out something
00:31:08.095 --> 00:31:09.075
he did as president.
00:31:09.355 --> 00:31:11.636
And I did the reading, did the work.
00:31:12.198 --> 00:31:16.181
And then I had this feeling, once again,
00:31:17.101 --> 00:31:20.042
he has not let me down.
00:31:20.584 --> 00:31:20.923
Mm-hmm.
00:31:22.042 --> 00:31:24.346
Once again, he has not let himself down.
00:31:25.626 --> 00:31:26.928
And I realize there's this,
00:31:27.368 --> 00:31:28.450
when you get to it,
00:31:28.509 --> 00:31:30.392
there is this consistency
00:31:30.491 --> 00:31:34.036
there that he really means it.
00:31:36.939 --> 00:31:39.662
And I think his
00:31:39.761 --> 00:31:42.025
contemporaries watched that.
00:31:42.772 --> 00:31:45.174
You know, his life was like a performance.
00:31:46.635 --> 00:31:47.696
They watched that through
00:31:47.737 --> 00:31:48.758
eight and a half years of
00:31:48.798 --> 00:31:51.240
the war and then the post-war period.
00:31:51.640 --> 00:31:53.721
And then he's president for eight years.
00:31:53.781 --> 00:31:55.884
So 20 plus years,
00:31:56.003 --> 00:31:59.826
he's at the center or near the center,
00:31:59.967 --> 00:32:01.729
usually at the center of attention.
00:32:02.935 --> 00:32:07.218
And there's some tension and
00:32:07.317 --> 00:32:08.538
anticipation there.
00:32:08.598 --> 00:32:11.660
No one ever says this, but it's like, oh,
00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:13.401
gee, suppose he missteps.
00:32:13.601 --> 00:32:14.942
Suppose he screws up.
00:32:15.001 --> 00:32:16.782
Suppose he disappoints us.
00:32:17.843 --> 00:32:19.463
But he doesn't.
00:32:20.644 --> 00:32:21.704
And there's this letter.
00:32:21.904 --> 00:32:23.846
I have to give John Adams credit.
00:32:23.905 --> 00:32:25.767
And sometimes I can seem a
00:32:25.826 --> 00:32:27.147
little rough on him because
00:32:27.208 --> 00:32:29.588
he just goes off and he
00:32:29.628 --> 00:32:31.549
shouldn't have done that and so on.
00:32:32.414 --> 00:32:33.335
When he's an old man,
00:32:33.375 --> 00:32:34.875
Washington's been dead for years,
00:32:35.115 --> 00:32:36.336
and he's corresponding with
00:32:36.375 --> 00:32:37.876
Benjamin Rush.
00:32:39.037 --> 00:32:42.837
And they're like sorting out the founding.
00:32:42.857 --> 00:32:44.439
These old guys are trying to
00:32:44.499 --> 00:32:45.219
figure it all out.
00:32:46.058 --> 00:32:47.519
And so Washington comes up.
00:32:47.759 --> 00:32:49.680
And Adams writes this charming,
00:32:50.520 --> 00:32:51.861
very Adams-like letter.
00:32:51.941 --> 00:32:54.481
Why was Washington so successful in pop?
00:32:55.099 --> 00:32:56.260
And he gives 10 reasons.
00:32:56.840 --> 00:33:00.042
And this is like very John Adams-like.
00:33:00.403 --> 00:33:02.163
One of the reasons is, well,
00:33:02.223 --> 00:33:04.346
he was a Virginian and then
00:33:04.405 --> 00:33:06.047
all geese are swine.
00:33:06.626 --> 00:33:07.468
And they said, well,
00:33:07.587 --> 00:33:09.308
he was very rich and he got
00:33:09.348 --> 00:33:11.009
a lot of money from Martha.
00:33:11.690 --> 00:33:12.570
Well, he was rich,
00:33:12.590 --> 00:33:14.172
but it didn't all come from Martha.
00:33:14.602 --> 00:33:15.301
And, you know,
00:33:15.321 --> 00:33:17.702
and he goes through these various things.
00:33:17.883 --> 00:33:21.523
And then he says that, you know,
00:33:21.544 --> 00:33:26.484
the people wanted to admire someone.
00:33:26.885 --> 00:33:28.965
They wanted someone like that.
00:33:29.986 --> 00:33:31.146
And then he quotes some
00:33:31.287 --> 00:33:35.667
cynical Renaissance pope saying, well,
00:33:35.688 --> 00:33:36.988
if the good people want them,
00:33:37.088 --> 00:33:37.729
let them have them.
00:33:39.088 --> 00:33:40.809
Meaning, you know, it's all nonsense.
00:33:41.109 --> 00:33:42.109
Well, let them have them.
00:33:42.737 --> 00:33:46.778
And then Adams adds that
00:33:46.818 --> 00:33:49.059
they were not deceived.
00:33:49.960 --> 00:33:51.580
So he says, yes,
00:33:51.701 --> 00:33:53.441
they wanted someone to be
00:33:53.540 --> 00:33:55.541
honest and virtuous.
00:33:56.742 --> 00:33:58.843
And so they looked for this
00:33:58.884 --> 00:34:02.345
in Washington and they were not deceived.
00:34:03.450 --> 00:34:05.813
So in his great old age and
00:34:05.853 --> 00:34:08.795
with all his somewhat mixed feelings,
00:34:08.815 --> 00:34:11.077
his envy in there, but he says, no,
00:34:11.476 --> 00:34:12.798
he really delivered.
00:34:14.199 --> 00:34:17.081
And that's why he's succeeded.
00:34:17.121 --> 00:34:18.163
That's why he's honored.
00:34:20.657 --> 00:34:21.057
Interesting.
00:34:21.097 --> 00:34:22.719
We're talking with Richard Brookhiser,
00:34:23.059 --> 00:34:24.878
author of four books on Washington.
00:34:24.898 --> 00:34:25.960
The first was Founding
00:34:26.559 --> 00:34:29.541
Father Rediscovering George Washington.
00:34:30.001 --> 00:34:30.780
And you've also written
00:34:30.820 --> 00:34:32.081
about Washington's rules of
00:34:32.141 --> 00:34:34.902
civility and a book about
00:34:34.922 --> 00:34:37.322
the Adamses as an American dynasty,
00:34:37.342 --> 00:34:38.643
a book about Gouverneur Morris,
00:34:38.722 --> 00:34:40.264
the gentleman revolutionary,
00:34:41.083 --> 00:34:43.123
James Madison, John Marshall,
00:34:43.143 --> 00:34:44.684
the man who made the Supreme Court.
00:34:45.505 --> 00:34:47.106
It's a fascinating
00:34:47.126 --> 00:34:50.128
collection of a fascinating
00:34:50.188 --> 00:34:51.289
study you have done in
00:34:51.349 --> 00:34:53.070
addition to your career as a journalist,
00:34:53.110 --> 00:34:54.010
really bringing these
00:34:54.130 --> 00:34:56.652
characters to life in such
00:34:56.672 --> 00:34:57.532
a compelling way.
00:34:58.213 --> 00:35:00.253
Is there someone you hope to
00:35:00.293 --> 00:35:03.516
write about or wish you had
00:35:03.615 --> 00:35:05.336
when you were starting off?
00:35:05.498 --> 00:35:06.878
Or is this, you know,
00:35:07.438 --> 00:35:09.000
I'm just thinking of other characters.
00:35:10.201 --> 00:35:10.400
Well,
00:35:11.576 --> 00:35:13.516
An interesting moment is
00:35:14.097 --> 00:35:16.179
when Lafayette comes to the
00:35:16.239 --> 00:35:18.320
United States in 1824-45.
00:35:19.842 --> 00:35:21.623
And he was here during the
00:35:21.702 --> 00:35:23.543
war and then for a couple
00:35:23.563 --> 00:35:24.664
of years after the war.
00:35:24.724 --> 00:35:26.545
But then for decades,
00:35:26.626 --> 00:35:28.166
he has been in France.
00:35:29.188 --> 00:35:30.367
And he's been very involved
00:35:30.427 --> 00:35:31.548
in French politics,
00:35:33.130 --> 00:35:34.791
often very unsuccessfully.
00:35:35.771 --> 00:35:37.193
He's been encouraging
00:35:37.293 --> 00:35:38.753
revolutions in others.
00:35:39.434 --> 00:35:41.454
countries in Spain and Italy.
00:35:41.775 --> 00:35:44.815
And then President Monroe,
00:35:45.096 --> 00:35:46.936
towards the end of his second term,
00:35:46.976 --> 00:35:49.356
he invites Lafayette to come here.
00:35:50.396 --> 00:35:52.197
And Lafayette does.
00:35:53.018 --> 00:35:55.239
And he goes around the Northeast,
00:35:55.778 --> 00:35:57.820
but then every state
00:35:57.980 --> 00:36:00.739
demands that he visit them.
00:36:01.280 --> 00:36:03.840
So he has to go through 24 states.
00:36:04.641 --> 00:36:06.842
And this was a real epic of
00:36:07.041 --> 00:36:09.302
travel in an age when that was not
00:36:10.045 --> 00:36:12.867
easy, and also planning and logistics,
00:36:13.186 --> 00:36:16.827
because you had to keep your tempo going.
00:36:17.429 --> 00:36:19.208
So it's an interesting moment.
00:36:19.248 --> 00:36:22.030
It's interesting what he saw here.
00:36:23.391 --> 00:36:25.791
And he had a young aide who
00:36:25.871 --> 00:36:28.492
came along and wrote a long
00:36:28.572 --> 00:36:30.492
account of their travels,
00:36:30.592 --> 00:36:32.233
which was then published in
00:36:32.313 --> 00:36:33.733
France and then also in the
00:36:33.753 --> 00:36:34.534
United States.
00:36:34.974 --> 00:36:35.394
And of course,
00:36:35.434 --> 00:36:36.675
the trip was covered by
00:36:36.775 --> 00:36:38.695
every newspaper in town
00:36:39.585 --> 00:36:41.387
you know, he went to.
00:36:41.746 --> 00:36:44.768
And it was a moment where
00:36:44.929 --> 00:36:47.972
you ask of a revolution, okay,
00:36:47.992 --> 00:36:49.793
you've had almost 50 years.
00:36:50.934 --> 00:36:53.516
How has this worked out?
00:36:53.936 --> 00:36:54.858
How have you done?
00:36:55.798 --> 00:36:59.661
And a lot of things had
00:36:59.722 --> 00:37:01.083
worked out very well.
00:37:01.222 --> 00:37:02.965
I'd say maybe most things.
00:37:04.045 --> 00:37:06.407
Some hadn't.
00:37:06.507 --> 00:37:07.367
There was still
00:37:08.596 --> 00:37:11.297
slavery in half the country.
00:37:12.197 --> 00:37:16.278
Lafayette is anti-slavery,
00:37:16.358 --> 00:37:17.239
and he brings it up.
00:37:17.719 --> 00:37:19.721
He asks his host about this.
00:37:20.501 --> 00:37:22.121
And they tell him, well,
00:37:23.222 --> 00:37:24.182
it's on the way out.
00:37:24.682 --> 00:37:26.963
We all understand that it's a bad thing.
00:37:27.364 --> 00:37:30.284
And the people who are
00:37:30.344 --> 00:37:32.425
telling him this want to believe that,
00:37:32.485 --> 00:37:34.947
and Lafayette wants to believe that.
00:37:36.007 --> 00:37:36.728
It's a mistake.
00:37:37.516 --> 00:37:38.998
Because people are beginning,
00:37:39.157 --> 00:37:40.659
are just at the point where
00:37:40.679 --> 00:37:42.820
they will soon say, well, no,
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:44.643
it isn't a bad thing that's lingered.
00:37:44.983 --> 00:37:47.965
It's actually a good thing.
00:37:48.005 --> 00:37:49.146
There's a lot of good about it.
00:37:49.385 --> 00:37:53.829
So, you know, he misses that development,
00:37:54.210 --> 00:37:55.391
doesn't foresee it.
00:37:56.192 --> 00:37:58.012
But so it's an interesting thing.
00:37:59.487 --> 00:38:01.608
contrast between the still
00:38:01.688 --> 00:38:03.789
rather young United States and Europe.
00:38:04.409 --> 00:38:05.469
And it's an interesting
00:38:05.550 --> 00:38:08.010
moment of a revolution
00:38:08.510 --> 00:38:10.110
being able to judge itself
00:38:10.971 --> 00:38:12.891
both by the people who live
00:38:12.951 --> 00:38:14.711
there and also by this
00:38:15.532 --> 00:38:19.393
visitor and admirer from another country.
00:38:19.793 --> 00:38:24.014
So that might be something of interest.
00:38:24.034 --> 00:38:25.273
I've been thinking about that.
00:38:25.514 --> 00:38:27.054
That's a great topic.
00:38:29.025 --> 00:38:30.206
leave it to you or one of
00:38:30.286 --> 00:38:31.427
our listeners might pick up
00:38:31.507 --> 00:38:33.547
that story because that is, as you said,
00:38:33.608 --> 00:38:35.108
really a tremendous moment.
00:38:36.869 --> 00:38:39.190
We've been talking with Richard Brookhiser,
00:38:39.311 --> 00:38:41.952
who is the author of Founding Father,
00:38:42.112 --> 00:38:43.494
and I think your most
00:38:43.574 --> 00:38:45.355
recent book is Give Me Liberty,
00:38:45.375 --> 00:38:47.476
A History of America's Exceptional Idea.
00:38:47.577 --> 00:38:48.777
You've probably written
00:38:48.818 --> 00:38:49.637
something since then.
00:38:50.057 --> 00:38:51.860
Well, I've got a book coming out in May.
00:38:52.260 --> 00:38:55.302
It's Glorious Lessons, John Trumbull,
00:38:55.382 --> 00:38:57.182
Painter of the American Revolution.
00:38:57.545 --> 00:38:58.146
Oh, wonderful.
00:38:58.547 --> 00:39:00.307
And Glorious Lessons is from
00:39:00.367 --> 00:39:01.909
a letter he writes to his
00:39:02.009 --> 00:39:05.791
friend Thomas Jefferson in 1789,
00:39:05.791 --> 00:39:07.693
where he wants to describe
00:39:08.172 --> 00:39:09.253
what he hopes to do,
00:39:09.414 --> 00:39:10.655
which is paint the history
00:39:10.675 --> 00:39:11.695
of the revolution.
00:39:11.735 --> 00:39:13.436
He says he wants to give
00:39:13.496 --> 00:39:15.657
glorious lessons to present
00:39:15.858 --> 00:39:17.239
and future sons of
00:39:17.358 --> 00:39:20.360
oppression about how they should live.
00:39:20.891 --> 00:39:22.512
maintain their rights.
00:39:23.492 --> 00:39:25.074
So he's not just doing the
00:39:25.134 --> 00:39:26.494
history of this event.
00:39:26.614 --> 00:39:30.717
He's saying this event has consequences.
00:39:30.936 --> 00:39:32.438
You can look at the story
00:39:32.918 --> 00:39:34.619
and you may have to do this
00:39:34.699 --> 00:39:35.699
yourself later.
00:39:36.099 --> 00:39:36.400
You know,
00:39:36.481 --> 00:39:40.342
you in France or South America or
00:39:40.543 --> 00:39:43.364
also you Americans later in the future.
00:39:44.324 --> 00:39:47.686
But here's examples and here
00:39:47.947 --> 00:39:50.429
are examples that you may have to follow.
00:39:51.981 --> 00:39:52.782
Maybe we can have you back
00:39:52.822 --> 00:39:55.244
to talk about that when it comes out.
00:39:55.686 --> 00:39:56.586
Sounds like a great book.
00:39:56.646 --> 00:39:57.967
And I want to thank you for
00:39:57.987 --> 00:39:59.429
the glorious lessons you've given.
00:39:59.449 --> 00:40:00.371
I'm really glad you took
00:40:00.411 --> 00:40:01.771
this up and you're taking
00:40:01.811 --> 00:40:02.793
time from your career as a
00:40:02.833 --> 00:40:04.514
journalist to illuminate
00:40:04.574 --> 00:40:06.157
history in this way and to
00:40:06.197 --> 00:40:07.217
give us these glorious
00:40:07.297 --> 00:40:09.260
lessons about the founders
00:40:09.320 --> 00:40:10.440
and what their work meant.
00:40:10.581 --> 00:40:11.802
So thank you so much.
00:40:11.822 --> 00:40:12.824
Thank you for having me.
00:40:14.059 --> 00:40:15.701
And I want to thank Jonathan Lane,
00:40:15.740 --> 00:40:16.280
our producer.
00:40:16.300 --> 00:40:16.541
And, you know,
00:40:16.561 --> 00:40:17.880
we have listeners actually
00:40:17.940 --> 00:40:18.701
all over the world.
00:40:18.740 --> 00:40:20.521
And every week I thank folks
00:40:20.541 --> 00:40:21.641
who have been tuning in.
00:40:21.722 --> 00:40:22.561
And if you are in one of
00:40:22.601 --> 00:40:23.902
these places and want to
00:40:23.961 --> 00:40:26.702
get some of our Revolution 250 gear,
00:40:27.063 --> 00:40:29.523
lapel pins, magnets, posters,
00:40:30.003 --> 00:40:31.403
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:40:31.443 --> 00:40:33.603
jlane at revolution250.org.
00:40:33.704 --> 00:40:34.885
And this week I'm thanking
00:40:34.965 --> 00:40:37.505
folks in Philadelphia and in Goose Creek,
00:40:37.565 --> 00:40:40.085
South Carolina, Idaho, Florida, Idaho,
00:40:40.606 --> 00:40:41.786
Pensacola, Florida,
00:40:42.469 --> 00:40:45.530
And in both Manhattan and Queens,
00:40:46.050 --> 00:40:46.751
and I think we also have
00:40:46.791 --> 00:40:48.550
listeners in the Bronx, Staten Island,
00:40:48.710 --> 00:40:50.891
and Brooklyn, Hanover, Massachusetts,
00:40:51.012 --> 00:40:51.992
Shelburne, Vermont,
00:40:52.092 --> 00:40:53.592
all places between and beyond,
00:40:53.652 --> 00:40:54.554
thanks for joining us.
00:40:54.634 --> 00:40:56.833
And now we will be hyped out
00:40:56.873 --> 00:40:58.074
on the road to Boston.
00:40:58.135 --> 00:40:58.474
Thank you.